The Dave Cowens Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Saturday, March 5th, 2005
You were
born on October 25, 1948 in Newport, KY and played on your first basketball team
at age eight. Please tell me a little about your childhood in Newport, and also
about your basketball career at Newport Central Catholic High School.
I came from a large family with four brothers and one sister. We were spread
out, age-wise – the youngest two weren’t born until my teens – so the oldest of
us had a lot of responsibility around the house. There were chores to do,
siblings to care for, and homework assignments to finish. It was busy, but
really no different than any other family situation. You were expected to step
up and do your part.
We were a family of modest means, but our parents believed in the power of education. They sacrificed to make sure that we all had an opportunity to better ourselves. We all went to private school and looking back on it now, there’s really no comparison between a public and a private education. There are great public schools with excellent teachers out there, but private schools, on the whole, offer a much better education. Parents who put their children in private schools do it for a reason – they want them to learn without all of the other problems and distractions getting in the way. And because they pay for it themselves, parents know that the quality of education is going to be so much better. They understand that private schools also operate by a different set of rules– there’s a lot more leeway within the school’s framework, which you see in everything from homework to discipline to dress code. And it paid off: Two of my brothers went to Xavier, the twins went to Centre College in Danville (KY), and my sister went to a good Division II school.
Central Catholic was an all-boys high school, and heavy on sports. I ran track and field for four years, played freshman football, and swam as a sophomore. I grew five inches between my sophomore and junior years, and that’s when my basketball career really took off. We made the state tournament during my senior season, and by then I’d started getting a lot of attention from college recruiters.
Tim
Barrow was your teammate at Central, and was also a teammate at Florida
State University. Did it help having a familiar face so far away from home?
I think it helped both of us. It helped having someone there with a shared
past, especially during that freshmen year when there’s such a big
adjustment period to go through.
Your
father wanted to you stay in Kentucky, but you ultimately chose FSU. Did
you ever regret your decision play outside of the state?
Not
really. By graduation I wanted to be away from home, and to experience
something altogether new. I looked at the map and knew that Florida was
nice for a lot of different reasons. When you go to an all-boys high
school, there comes a point when you realize you’re missing out on a lot.
At Florida State, the ratio was something like 4-to-1 in favor of the girls,
so that definitely had a certain amount of appeal to me – but when I got
there I still had a hard time getting dates [laughs]. I had no money and
wasn’t a big man on campus, so the girls really showed no interest.
My parents understood my decision, but it wasn’t easy on either of them. They had watched all of us play sports growing up, were members of the boosters club, and were at all of our high school games regardless of where they were being played. They were also very active in the school, so they would have preferred to have had me closer to home. That way they could have seen me play more, taken trips to the road games, things like that.
I wanted to play basketball. I didn’t’ want to sit on the bench and watch the action. My father wanted me to play at UK, but I didn’t know how I’d measure up. Florida State had no basketball tradition, and it was an independent school at the time. There was no SEC conference and no tournament to go along with it. The program was also on probation, but those things really didn’t matter to me at the time. I just wanted to play as much as possible, and as soon as possible.
Your
coach at Florida State was Hugh Durham, who is one of just 11 Division I
coaches to lead two different schools to the NCAA Final Four (Florida State,
1972 & Georgia, 1983). Please tell me a little about Mr. Durham.
Hugh
is the man who sold me on Florida State University. If it hadn’t been for
him I’m not sure I would have gone to school there. He worked my tail off
and made me a better player, and he made me prove to him that I could
perform on the basketball court.
We both share Kentucky roots – Hugh is from Louisville, where he was a triple sport star in high school. He played basketball at Florida State in the 1950s, got his masters from the school and began his coaching career there as an assistant coach to Bud Kennedy. Hugh became the head coach in 1966, right when I was looking at colleges, and he really impressed me with what he wanted to do down there. He wanted to play an up-tempo style, and he wanted to fast break at every opportunity. I liked the idea of pushing the basketball. Attacking, that was my style. I felt like my talents could be used to their fullest in his system, and that’s what made the Florida State program so appealing.
You just have to look at the FSU record book to know that Hugh was one heck of a player, and he’s an even better coach. He took FSU to the Final Four, and then he did it again with the University of Georgia. He won more games at Georgia than any other coach. He has the best winning percentage of any coach in the history of FSU. I can’t say enough about Hugh Durham.