Greatest Accomplishment
December 23, 2004 02:25 PM | General
December 24, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Tyrone Sally’s long journey to what he’s become today really began six years ago when he was a sophomore at Meadowbrook High School in Richmond, Va.
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| Tyrone Sally is leading the team in scoring with an average of 13.8 points per game.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
The 6-foot-7-inch forward had an outstanding season that year and was convinced to transfer to Mount Zion Christian Academy in North Carolina, where he joined Richmond prep legend Jonathan Hargett of Highland Springs High School.
Sally played one season at Mount Zion before coach Joel Hopkins left and moved to another North Carolina private school, Emmanuel Academy, taking most of his players with him. Sally started school there but the basketball program was soon disbanded due to a lack of funding. That forced Tyrone to return home and re-enroll at Meadowbrook for his senior year.
Sally says he basically followed around Hargett, one of the country’s most highly recruited players who possessed a prep reputation in Richmond on par with Moses Malone.
“We were close back home and it was sort of like, ‘If you go here I’ll go here,’” Sally said of his relationship with Hargett.
In the eyes of college recruiters Sally wasn’t on the same level as Hargett, but he says he did receive interest from Virginia Tech, Villanova and Cincinnati although he didn’t visit any of those schools. Of course a big obstacle for Sally was the fact that he attended four different high schools in two years which created a complicated academic status.
West Virginia found his transcripts satisfactory and offered Sally a scholarship which he accepted, knowing that his friend Hargett was going to sign with the Mountaineers, too. Also in that recruiting class was high-scoring guard Drew Schifino -- one of the country’s top 100 players. Those three were supposed to begin a new era of success for Mountaineer basketball.
The exact opposite happened.
The team got off to a good start Sally’s freshman season winning its first four games, including an 88-85 victory at New Mexico where Hargett hit the game-winning three-point shot. But the problems started with a road loss at James Madison and were accentuated in the first game of the Fiesta Bowl Classic when West Virginia lost by 21 points to Valparaiso. A 32-point loss to Pepperdine the following night sent the team into a tailspin that eventually led to long-time and successful coach Gale Catlett retiring and forcing the school to go through a difficult two-month coaching search that saw alumnus Bobby Huggins turn down an offer to coach the team and Dan Dakich walk away after just a week on the job.
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| Sally as a freshman in 2002.
Sports Communications |
Stuck in the middle of all this was 19-year-old Tyrone Sally, who was left twisting in the wind with his teammates. Sally says the team found out about the coaching change when assistant Drew Catlett came into the locker room the day after the Virginia Tech loss to tell the team.
“Everyone was in shock,” Sally remembered. “He told us that there was a good chance that they wouldn’t be back next year and there would be a new coaching staff coming in. Everyone didn’t know what to think.”
Most of the players immediately thought Huggins was going to get the job and began preparing themselves for that possibility.
“There were rumors going around that there was a good chance that he was going to come in and coach us,” Sally said. “He was such a well-known coach and with all of the success he had everybody wanted to play for him.”
Sally admits his slashing, high-flying game would have probably fit in well with Huggins’ up-tempo style. “I’ve seen a lot of Cincinnati’s games and I like the type of players they brought in and I felt I could have adjusted well to that style.”
But Huggins and West Virginia couldn’t come to terms and the school soon turned its attention to Bowling Green coach Dan Dakich, a Bobby Knight disciple with a reputation for having a hard edge.
“Two days before they had the press conference for him (WVU Director of Athletics) Ed Pastilong told us he was coming and we thought it would be okay,” said Sally, admitting that he had never heard of Dakich before the team’s meeting with Pastilong.
“We found out he went to Indiana and coached with Bobby Knight and then had success at Bowling Green and everyone thought it was an okay move,” Sally added.
To many of the players Dakich was okay simply because they wanted to have a head coach and get on with their careers. Their clocks were ticking. According to Sally, Dakich made his intentions crystal clear during his very first meeting with the team.
“Things were going around about us being such a bad team and that we didn’t get along,” Sally said. “We already knew that whoever came in that they were going to lay the rules down and try and be as tough as they could so we already expected that.”
But some players didn’t like being challenged that way and began making plans to transfer. Sally was willing to give Dakich a chance.
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| Sally today.
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“Everyone deserves that one chance,” he said. “I would hope they would give me that one chance to see how everything goes. If I didn’t like it I would do my other thing and if I did I would just keep moving forward.”
Instead it was Dakich doing the moving. He got the team together before a Friday morning workout, shook each of the player’s hands, and said he was returning to Bowling Green. No hard feelings.
Tyrone’s mother Sheral Coleman was obviously concerned about her son’s situation.
“I was constantly calling and the main thing was to keep his head up,” she said. “I kept talking to him and I assured him that it was going to work its way out and it has.”
Sally to this day isn’t privy to all of the circumstances surrounding Dakich’s decision to leave but it did make a profound impression on him. He saw first-hand that college basketball is big business.
“There were a whole lot of things going through my head all at once and I’m just glad I had good people around me to keep me level-headed so I could focus on what I needed to do,” he said. “That was a time when I had to grow up real fast and take on whatever came toward me.”
Still, Sally says the players felt the sting of rejection.
“It seemed like nobody wanted to take a chance on us so we just had each other,” Sally said. “It was a big question mark. Where do we go from here? When all of that happened the players became tighter because we realized that it was just us for a while.”
Then just days later West Virginia hired John Beilein from Richmond. Sally knew about Beilein growing up in nearby Chesterfield and was aware of the success Beilein had building the Spiders program. But Sally also knew that Beilein’s playing style was completely different than anything he was accustomed to and he realized it was going to take a great deal of sacrifice on his part to fit in.
Even before the team’s first practice Tyrone was asked to remove the braids from his hair and take his school work more seriously. Then he was handed a playbook as thick as a New York City phone book.
“When he first came here with everything that we were learning it was like a headache,” Tyrone said. “It was a big commitment and you’ve got to want to do it and want to learn it.”
“There was no hesitation on Tyrone’s part,” said Garrett Ford, WVU associate athletic director for student services. “He did what they asked him to do.”
“Even if he doesn’t want to do it he’ll do it, that’s just the type of person that he is,” said his mother.
Mrs. Coleman admits when she found out Beilein was taking the West Virginia job she was able to breathe a sigh of relief having known about him as a coach at Richmond. She says Tyrone even attended his camps a couple of times as a youngster.
“Here is the man who can be his mother and his father all built up in one; Coach Beilein is the one,” she said. “He’s been a very positive role model.”
Eventually most of Tyrone’s friends and teammates, including Hargett, were gone.
“We looked at each other like brothers and we still do and it was like my brother was in trouble,” Sally said of Hargett. “There was nothing I could do for him and it was a struggle for me and I know it was a struggle for him. I would try and be there for him for support and then I just tried to move on.”
Tyrone did move on and began learning basketball from a man whose practices are a mixture of strategy, fundamentals, philosophy, history and whatever else Beilein thinks can make his players become more well rounded. A discussion on the 1-3-1 defense on the team bus could very well turn into a lecture about the Normandy invasion.
Before the start of this year, Beilein made it a point to line his team up on the court to show them how to properly honor their country during the national anthem.
“That was something on my list of things to do and every time we’d go out for the anthem I would forget to tell them,” he said. “Do people always know how to stand? I learned that but a lot of kids today don’t learn that. We assume they all know that but they don’t. It’s just another part of the package.”
To John Beilein there is more to college basketball than just learning plays, making shots and playing good defense. It’s about building a circle of trust and appreciating the teammates around you. The sum is always greater than the parts.
These turned out to be the very things Tyrone Sally needed in his life. Sally remembers having a conversation with his mother about all of the things Beilein was asking him to do.
“(She) told me whatever I did, don’t leave anything unfinished,” Tyrone said. “Whatever you start you must finish. I just said to myself, ‘I’ve got myself into this and now I’m going to finish it.’”
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| Sally went to four different high schools before enrolling at WVU prior to the 2001-02 season.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
Among those more than mildly surprised with Sally’s willingness to conform was Beilein, who probably learned a few things himself about the way Tyrone Sally handled his situation.
“When we inherited Tyrone on April 18, 2001, he was just a kid looking for direction,” said Beilein, pausing momentarily to collect himself. “Of all those kids we inherited he was the one guy …
“His mother was the key,” he continued. “She said, ‘You listen to those men and they will help you if you just do what they say.’”
In a lot of ways John Beilein was the perfect coach for Tyrone Sally. His positive encouragement and can-do mentality provided the right stimulus for Sally to grow and develop as a basketball player. Timing was also important. Because West Virginia had such a poor season in 2002 and there were no expectations for success in the immediate future, there was time for Beilein to allow younger players like Sally to develop.
And Sally soon began improving as a player, boosting his scoring average to more than 10 points per game last year as a junior and helping the Mountaineers make a run in the NIT. But more importantly, Tyrone was making tremendous strides in the classroom. Ford believes Sally always had the potential to do outstanding things but he just simply needed someone to give him a little push.
“He never sought attention like some kids and he was always laid-back,” Ford said. “Through all of the things that happened Tyrone never got into trouble and it was never about Tyrone.”
Sally is on course to graduate this spring in athletic coaching education. John Beilein is certainly pleased with Sally’s team-best 14 points-per-game scoring average and his improved shooting percentage, but he is even happier about Tyrone’s performance during final examinations last week.
“He just had a very successful exam period,” Beilein said. “He may have been tutored more than anyone that I’ve ever had and he just did tremendous on all of his stuff.”
“He has overcome the hurdles and the storms these last four years and he stuck it out and he’s been a man,” says his mother. “He went from being a young man to a man.”
Ford admits it’s student-athletes like Tyrone Sally that make his job so rewarding.
“Every now and then you get a couple like Tyrone that make you want to come back to work tomorrow,” says Ford. “Sometimes you come across some people that frustrate you but it makes you feel like you’re doing something right when see what Tyrone has done for himself.”
Beilein admits he will probably have to fight back tears watching Sally receive his college diploma this spring.
“I already spoke to (wife) Kathleen and I said, ‘Thank God the Big East meetings aren’t on graduation because I know one graduation that I never would miss. It’s a pretty special thing because he was just a kid who was looking for direction. It just chokes you up.
“When it all comes down Tyrone Sally will be one of the greatest stories in my coaching career,” Beilein added.
“Proud mother is not the word,” says Sheral. “I’m going to be standing up hollering, ‘That’s my baby!’”
Sally, too, says his greatest accomplishment was finishing what he started.
“Making it all the way to my senior year and still playing basketball … I’m proud of myself for that,” he said.
You should be, Tyrone, you should be.
MSNsportsNET.com would like to wish everyone in Mountaineer Nation a very happy holiday season.
