Chris Dokish, the writer of the very interesting article on J.O. Stright for Pittsburgh Sports Report was kind enough to agree to answer a bunch of questions I had for him regarding Stright. Because of the length, I’ve broken this into two parts.
I understand there are still a lot of questions but I had a word limit and unfortunately I had to have a big intro for the casual fan who may not know as much. Believe me, I could have written a book on the subject.
Fortunately, this Q&A doesn’t have such restrictions.
What kind of help did Gore and Smith provide Stright back when he was starting his AAU team back in ’81? Do they maintain any present connections with Stright or J.O.T.S. at this point?
The JOTS actually started in 1987. I wrote 25 years ago but that was when Stright actually started mentoring high school basketball players. It wasn’t until six years later that the JOTS started. Stright was a big Pitt fan and gave Smith and Gore summer jobs while they were playing for the Panthers. When he decided to start an AAU team, he asked Smith and Gore to use their popularity to get his team off the ground. I don’t know if he still talks to Gore but he is still very close with Smith and actually helped with Smith’s first NBA contract.
How far do Stright and Huggins go back? My assumption has been that they met while Huggins was at Akron, and that he came to Pitt to watch the AAU team — sometime around 1984 or 85. Was it earlier or later?
The earliest I can confirm their friendship is 1991 when Danny Fortson was a 15 year old playing for Stright on the JOTS. They may have known each other before that, but I can’t say for sure.
[The mystery continues.]
I know he was once, just as close to Calipari. Are they still on good terms or did the fallout from Danny Fortson — Calipari tried to go around Stright and Huggins to get him to UMass along with Hunter — end that.
Stright and Calipari used to be close but not so much anymore. All three were very close, in fact, until they made a deal that Huggins would get Fortson and Calipari would get Tino Hunter. But then UMass made it to the Sweet 16 and Calipari thought he now needed Fortson so he tried to recruit him. They had a falling out because it was not part of the deal. Huggins got Calipari and Hunter went to Minnesota.
Other than Fortson and Hunter, what other players has Stright directed to certain schools/coaches?
It’s tough to say who he “directed” to certain schools, other than Fortson, who Stright admits to directing to Cincinnati. There are many former JOTS players who ended up playing for Huggins at Cincinnati but they played for the Youngstown JOTS. There are five JOTS teams in total, four being in PA. The only JOTS members to attend Pitt were Josh Lay, Nate Byham, and Yuri Demetris. And Lay and Byham did not attend Pitt for basketball, of course. The most famous of the Pittsburgh JOTS were Dante Calabria (North Carolina), Archie Miller (NC State), Brandon Fuss-Cheatham (Ohio State), Chris Kirkland (UMass), Dave Young (Xavier), Matt Carroll (Notre Dame), and Ben McCauley (NC State).
[With that many teams, and really the only AAU outlet in the area for kids, there is no way to avoid dealing with Stright, it would seem.]
Regarding his Paul Evans comment — why? Was it a personal issue? Did it have to do with the sour relationship Evans had with most of his players. Charles Smith doesn’t say many nice things about him; and Jerome Lane cracked Evans, saying that Calipari should have been coaching the team and they would have made the final four.
I don’t know what he had against Evans. A lot of people have speculated that it was because Evans did not recruit Stright’s son, Justin, who frankly could not play at Pitt’s level. But he did not get into details with me. I know he holds a grudge against the current staff for not recruiting Ben McCauley hard enough, so the theory is possible.
On the subject of Herb Pope. I don’t dispute that Pope’s verbal as a HS Sophomore could not be taken seriously. Even before Stright was known to be involved, Pope had amassed a disturbing early history of school transfers. Why would anyone think choosing a college would be different?
Unfortunately, like many top prospects, Pope has a past of attending many schools. And it’s probably not over yet. I would not be surprised at all if Pope did not come back to Aliquippa next year. But western PA is home, he likes Jamie Dixon, and he wants to attend school with his cousin, Pitt football player Tommie Campbell, whose family Pope lives with.
Also, every time that Pope talked to me, he said the word “we” when talking about Pitt and told me even after he de-committed that the chances of him going to Pitt was “98.6%”. Truthfully, given the evidence, you would think Pitt would be a very heavy favorite.
But not any longer after, he talked more and more about Huggins, and how Cincinnati wronged him by firing him. He also said, before this previous season, that he was told “by a coach” that Dixon would not be there for long. He intimated that Dixon would be fired. Around Cincinnati, it was considered a done deal that after Huggins got fired, he would end up at Pitt after Dixon also got fired. Who was spreading these rumors were setting off alarm bells for many people who follow college basketball and, correctly or incorrectly, Stright’s name came up.
End of Part 1.
