What did you think of Neil Reed as a basketball player
- Thread starter GeorgeStrait IU
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Man. The guy passed away unexpectedly. Leave the man and his family alone. No one wants or needs to talk about it. Find something else to discuss please.
It looked like he was was going to a prototypical tough as iron RMK guard... I'll never forget the Vitale "A Star is born" game...
He was good. And he was tough. If you've ever tried to play basketball with a separated shoulder, you know how much pain he was dealing with while going through that injury.
I’m not sure anyone would play through that in this day and age. He was tough and a really good player.
And while I think the 30 and 30 story was likely very 1 sided...the fact that he played through that injury, for a guy that he obviously didn't like very well after he got there...that takes a very distinct level of mental toughness. Its not like he quit a few weeks after getting to campus.
I loved the kid as a player
He was tough as iron. Just like Evans, Neil played with a shoulder brace and played well
Neil was as tough as they come. I'm glad he played for The Hoosiers and it is a terrible thing that his life ended far to soon. RIP Neil.
that 30 for 30 was a BK hatchet job
Loved him. Tough AF. I live in Ames and had season tickets to Iowa Sate at the time. There were rumors swirling then that he wasn’t happy at IU and was going to transfer to Iowa State.
I prefer to pretend like their wasn't... LOL.
I played against him in high school. He was a tough ass kid,the typical coaches kid who did a lot of things the right way.
A few guys I know played against him too. They hated him. That’s how you know he was good.
Micheal Lewis type. But Neil’s team was loaded with talent.
Loved him as a player. Tough kid. Gave 100%.
Kids were changing and Knight didn’t adapt. Reed, Recker and Collier were run off and that was the beginning of the end for RMK. You could argue it started with Funderburke but it is a stretch. That said, with Funderburke for 4 years we hang at least one more banner and maybe 2 and that likely extends his run a few years. Maybe not because it could have emboldened him even more.
Some might say that RMK ran off kids in the late 70s and early 80s and still won. Bird, Brooks, Simmons, Giomi, etc. That is 100% true but his margin for error decreased as recruiting opened up and his antics worked against him some.
FACT…He didn’t run off Bird. Bird was so overwhelmed being at IU away from small town French Lick, he left after no more than a month on campus.
Marty Simmons played well as a freshman. Ate himself out of the rotation late in his 2nd year and lied about his weight to boot. Had he gotten in shape, probably a different story.
Is benching a guy because he’s not getting done what’s been asked of him “running off?” RMK was
Asked to win games. Del Ray wasn’t going to help that with his inability to play man to man D, so he sat A LOT.
Giomi, okay, I will give you he got run off, but why?? Not meeting RMK’s edict for class attendance, which he had already violated.
I, too was a Reed Fan. A shame things ended the way they did both at IU and after.
Marty Simmons played well as a freshman. Ate himself out of the rotation late in his 2nd year and lied about his weight to boot. Had he gotten in shape, probably a different story.
Is benching a guy because he’s not getting done what’s been asked of him “running off?” RMK was
Asked to win games. Del Ray wasn’t going to help that with his inability to play man to man D, so he sat A LOT.
Giomi, okay, I will give you he got run off, but why?? Not meeting RMK’s edict for class attendance, which he had already violated.
I, too was a Reed Fan. A shame things ended the way they did both at IU and after.
Some might say…
Look, I know those stories. Probably a lot of truth there with why guys left or were asked to leave
FACT: Knight had one of the best basketball players of all-time on campus, on his basketball team and the kid left.
But you are for sure right. He didn’t run off everyone that transferred.
I stand by him running off some kids near the end that put a few nails in his coffin.
You drastically overestimate Funderburke's overall abilities. A big stretch to believe his presence would bring one or two more banners to AH.
at least we would have had 5 more fouls for Teddy to hand out against Dook
It is not so much Funderburke and more so how thin we were upfront. That was exposed with Henderson going down. Even with BAl we were thin up front.
Funderburke was not an all-american but he was putting up 11 and 7 as a freshmen when he left. Not too shabby.
So maybe not two. Who knows but in 92 we were a few calls away from being in the final game against a team we beat twice.
In 93 we were clearly the best team but the injury and lack of depth hurt us badly. It would have even been nice to have Lawson to throw in there that year. We needed another big body or two.
Funderburke was not an all-american but he was putting up 11 and 7 as a freshmen when he left. Not too shabby.
So maybe not two. Who knows but in 92 we were a few calls away from being in the final game against a team we beat twice.
In 93 we were clearly the best team but the injury and lack of depth hurt us badly. It would have even been nice to have Lawson to throw in there that year. We needed another big body or two.
Postscript:
The guy averaged over 16 points and almost 7 rebounds in that 92-93 season for OSU. That is pretty damn good in anyones scorebook.
He also played 6 seasons+ of NBA ball. Who could we say that about on those rosters except Cal?
Nobody laments players lost, or never even gotten, like we Hoosiers! Incredible we're still talking about "what-if" with names like Montross, Funderburke, May, etc... Heck, if we are playing that game, the ones I see as the biggest losses program wise were named Lovelette and Oscar! Don't know what the quality of the teams were at that time to begin arguing for more banners, but those were 2 great players that IU was in the lead for at one time.
Saying that reveals you must not think very highly of him. Personally, I thought he was tough as nails. I liked his game. JFK passed away unexpectedly. Is it wrong to speak of his attributes afterwards just because he and Bobby were later discovered to be porking Marilyn Monroe? "Happy birthday...Mr Presid-d-dent!" (hic-cup!)
We're still waiting for Giomi's scathing book on Knight he promised to publish after he got to NC State. Perseverance is a virtue.
He played with a chip on his shoulder, perhaps in response to his overbearing father, his high school coach. Does anyone recall seeing anything but a scowl on his face? Maybe it was because of the many floor burns from diving for loose balls. I don't recall a smile. His mother and father uprooted to Bloomington from Metairie, Louisiana so they could keep a closer watch on their son. What college fun would that have been for Neil?
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Yep. He’s stated many time how he wished he’d stayed. His head was the thing holding him back.
I think its pretty easy to diagnose RMK's "downfall"...
The overall culture changed in the early 90's. Fab 5, hip hop culture, youth bball exploding and leading to more entitled kids, etc... this led to a fundamental shift in the mindsets of the players coming in to college. This was the beginning of people and players starting to worry more about themselves than teams, schools, communities.
RMK's success and greatness was built largely on things that butted heads with the changes I mentioned above. Team over self. Gradual hard work leading to solid, sustained greatness, over immediate results.
RMK was either unwilling or unable to adapt to the cultural changes. So he got "passed" by society. Obviously that's open to interpretation whether Society passed him going up, or passed him going down. There's no question his fall from greatness is pretty much 100% because he didn't adapt to the changing times though. And his unwillingness to adapt, in general, did cost him quite a few players even before the cultural changes started taking effect. On the flip side, that stubbornness forged some pretty damn good teams through the years. If RMK were more nuturing and accomodating, maybe Bird would have stayed. But maybe those teams wouldn't have been as machine like, lazer focused, as they were. So maybe despite also having Bird, they wouldn't have won any more games than they did? Same with Funderburke or Montross...
Very good points made, and agree with you. However, Knight did compile a nice set of players in the late 90's to year 2000 that Davis ended up coaching to the final game in year 2002. We'll never know if Knight could have reeled in another banner or not. Or, if such tournament success would have carried forward to the recruiting trails. Also, if memory serves me correctly, Knight did have success at Texas Tech.
Me either UK running Pitino's full court press and the boxed Neil in the corner.
He did for sure...he had some highly rated players in the mid 90's too. Recruiting was only part of his downfall, he had to get the kids that did end up coming to play for him, to buy into his style and his system. I think it was pretty obvious he struggled with that part too, with the mid 90's kids on. So I'm not one of the people that just assumes he would have gotten the most out of guys like Jeffries and Newton. Heck, Coverdale didn't blossom until Knight left. Would he have if Knight stayed? Would Jeffries have had as many ISO opportunities? Would Haston have been given the freedom to play outside as much as he did for Davis? Lots of question marks. And based on his teams relative struggles from 95-00, with guys like Patterson, Reid, Collier, Guyton, Recker, etc... I'm not sure he would have done any better with the Jeffries led teams.
With regards to TT...I've always thought he chose that school for a reason. The players he inherited, the school culture, etc... They were about as receptive to RMK ball as anyone would have been. Andre Emmett came and bought in, which was huge. But relative to what he showed his genius was capable of at IU, and it happened very quickly for him at IU...I don't think the TT results were all that earth shattering. RMK would be "solid" anywhere he went. And that's what they were.
Or atleast Lindeman should have been redshirted the year before. He could have been valuable in the 5 mpg he could have gotten in 92-93.
I do believe Knight would have landed Sean May and DJ White at the very end of his career to keep things top 20.
He was the beginning of the end in more ways than one for Knight. Most players who have daddy up in the programs business = an unhappy ending. I feel like Knight was more than able to balance this during his career, but he missed on this one. Recruiting was obviously slipping .
Reed was tough as nails.
Four of Knights last 6 Burger Boys, including Reed, transferred. A Burger Boy typically transfers due to lack of playing time but that was not the case with these guys (except perhaps S Wilkerson).
I especially hated seeing Collier and Recker transfer. Colliers transfer, however, did not surprise me as I can still vividly see him running down the court, early in the season, excitedly fist pumping but later In the year he looked as miserable as someone that had just been sentenced to a gulag in Siberia.
Four of Knights last 6 Burger Boys, including Reed, transferred. A Burger Boy typically transfers due to lack of playing time but that was not the case with these guys (except perhaps S Wilkerson).
I especially hated seeing Collier and Recker transfer. Colliers transfer, however, did not surprise me as I can still vividly see him running down the court, early in the season, excitedly fist pumping but later In the year he looked as miserable as someone that had just been sentenced to a gulag in Siberia.
I agree 100%.
RMK undoubtedly belongs on the Mount Rushmore of college coaches but, as you point out, he had done less with good players prior to the 2001-2002 season.
I don’t give Knight credit for the FF run as that team was the second season after Knight was fired, had one player drafted by the NBA, was a 5th seed with a 19-10 regular season record (ie not a juggernaut put together two years prior by Knight). The team got hot during the tourney.
