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Car-O-Lines: Colescott Recognized In Indiana For High School, Carolina Career
January 24, 2002 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 24, 2002
By Rick Brewer, SID Emeritus
He came to Carolina as one of the most highly-regarded high school players in America.
His responsibility here would be a simple one-eventually fill the starting spot of college basketball's best player.
It actually seemed no major problem to many people back home for Dave Colescott to step into the Tar Heel lineup after Phil Ford.
Colescott had, after all, been Mr. High School Basketball in Indiana-an honor greater than making any of the various prep All-America teams. That put him in an elite class that had included players like Oscar Robertson, George McGinness, Kyle Macy, Rick Mount, Dick Van Arsdale and Kent Benson.
However, Colescott had even surpassed those players with his high school accomplishments. He had played on two consecutive state championship teams at Marion and won the Trester Award as the state's top scholar-athlete, in addition to being Mr. Basketball. No one else had ever achieved all that.
His prep career had been so outstanding that this March he will be inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.
Marion had gone 28-1 in his junior season to win the state title. That feat was repeated the following year with a 23-5 record, despite Colescott being the only returning starter. He averaged 26.7 points a game as a senior to spark that championship drive.
This all came in Indiana where high school basketball is king. Certainly, most people were either fans of Indiana University, Purdue, Butler, Notre Dame or any of the other colleges in the state. But everyone was a high school basketball fan.
Much of that interest was been driven by the state tournament in which schools of all sizes competed against each other for one state crown. There were no different classifications as in other states where schools of different sizes were split up and there four or five different state champs.
In Indiana the high schools in small towns like Madison, Jasper, Corydon and Elwood battled the much larger ones from Indianapolis, Gary, Anderson, South Bend and Fort Wayne. Tickets to the state tournament were tougher to get than to the ACC Tournament.
To a great public outcry, that all changed a couple years ago. But, for decades that's what helped make Indiana high school basketball almost a religion in the state.
Colescott's father had been a highly successful coach and athletic director at Marion for over 20 years. But, when Dave became a freshman, he gave up his coaching duties. He didn't want any possible conflicts about coaching his son. He persuaded Bill Green, whose teams had beaten Marion twice in the state finals, to take the job.
With that type of background there was no doubt Colescott would be a college star. He had learned so much from his father and he was about to be taught by Dean Smith, the greatest coach in the country.
However, the person who might have had the greatest influence on him was to be Phil Ford.
"I thought college would be just like high school," said Colescott about his career. "I knew Phil was a great player, but I didn't have any idea how great he truly was.
"I was trying to learn how Coach Smith wanted things done and every day I was getting killed in practice by Phil.
I usually ended up trying to guard him and it was impossible.
"There was one day he hit three long jumpers in a row and I went out to guard him tighter. He simply drove around me two or three times for layups. Coach Smith yelled 'Dave you've got to contain your man.'"
Reality was setting in for Colescott. It didn't help when he missed 14 games at mid-season with a broken foot and was bothered by that injury the rest of the year.
"I lost all my confidence," he admitted. "In high school, I had been the star. Now I was coming off the bench cold. It was so different. I tried to do things too fast to prove I could play and that only caused mistakes. I was finding life could be tough and that taught me a lot."
He improved somewhat as a sophomore, but still saw sporadic playing time behind Ford. Unlike Macy, who transferred from Purdue to Kentucky, or Bob Bender, who left Indiana for Duke, because of problems at their first schools, Colescott stuck things out.
"I think I could have transferred to a smaller school and been a big scorer," he said. "But, Carolina played basketball the way it should be played. Still, it was tough going home and people asking why I wasn't playing more. They didn't understand what it took to be successful at a place like Carolina where everyone had been a high school star and we were playing the best teams in the country.
"Phil showed the world what a perfect point guard was and he helped a lot. He talked about running the offense, making the defensive calls, how to keep an eye on the bench for specific plays and some things to do in the Four Corners."
Even after Ford graduated, Colescott's struggles weren't over.
"Mike O'Koren told me that summer people would be comparing me with Phil," he remembered. "I hope no one really thought I was going to replace him. That would have been impossible for anyone. And I'm not talking about at that time. He was the best I've ever seen."
Colescott continued to be plagued by injuries. He had missed three games as a sophomore when an elbow from Duke's Mike Gminski accidentally caught him in the eye. He developed tendonitis in one knee and "jumper's knee" in the other as a senior. He also injured an elbow that final year.
His individual statistics would pale against those of Ford or other great point guards since then. He only had a 4.9 career scoring average, including marks of 8.7 as a junior and 7.5 as a senior. His career shooting percentages were 49.0 from the floor and 73.3 at the free throw line.
"I had a lot of ups and downs in my career," said Colescott. "But, I got over them and they could have been the best thing to happen to me. Bad times on the court can help when life off the court gets difficult. It's easy to be happy when things are going well. But, when times are tough, it helps to be able to put them in perspective.
Basketball has done that. It's supposed to be fun. However, sometimes people lose perspective of what sports are supposed to be and take the game too seriously. I wanted to win as much as anyone. But, Coach Smith helped me realize that sports aren't the most important thing in the world."
Still, Colescott's college career was far from mediocre. He was an important part of teams which finished first in the ACC regular-season race three times and in second place once, won two ACC Tournament titles and reached one Final Four.
As a junior he made the All-ACC Tournament team. He hit nine of 13 shots from the field, made seven of eight free throws and scored 25 points in wins over Maryland and Duke. He committed just two turnovers in the entire tournament. The regular-season champion played just twice as the league only had seven teams at the time and Colescott was superb in both.
But, his biggest moment may have come the following year in a game in which he scored six points.
Playing fourth-ranked Indiana at Assembly Hall, Carolina had just a 57-55 lead with 30 seconds to play. Colescott was at the foul line with two shots. He hit them both to seal the win.
"That was the most pressure I've ever felt," he said.
With a smile, he added, "But, people probably thought I should have shot more."
Back home in Indiana, he had proven that even if not a college superstar, a person could still be an exceptional player. Further evidence of that will come in two months when he join's Indiana's greatest players and coaches in the state's Basketball Hall of Fame.