Last Call
March 02, 2007 05:28 PM | General
March 2, 2007
GAME NOTES
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| Frank Young |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Having already been a college coach for 20 some years, John Beilein had a bad feeling when he saw Frank Young’s mother Hattie waiting outside the Coliseum as the team bus pulled up to the curb.
Moms waiting for team busses rank right up near the top of the things coaches most want to avoid, with the exception of maybe long talks with know-it-all sports writers. When he saw Mrs. Young approaching the bus Beilein was expecting the worst.
“Mothers can scare you now when they are waiting for you and she was waiting for us,” Beilein grinned. “I said, ‘Oh my goodness here we go.’”
Frank was just a freshman then in 2003, and he didn’t get a single minute of playing time in West Virginia’s 70-57 loss to nationally ranked Florida. Other freshmen had gotten into the game so just as Beilein got off the bus still thinking about how he was going to handle the situation, Mrs. Young came up and gave him a big hug.
“She told me Patrick (Beilein) was her favorite player and I ended up saying to the team, ‘I don’t care what the score is Frank Young is playing!’” Beilein laughed. “He went out and he ended up getting a couple of rebounds in our next game and then he played in the NIT: the rest is history.”
On Saturday, Frank Young and Rob Summers wrap up the home portion of their memorable WVU basketball careers with a 4 pm game against Cincinnati.
Summers came to West Virginia after playing two years at Penn State. After enduring two difficult seasons with the Nittany Lions, the 7-foot center was simply looking for a place where he could go to post-season play.
“After my sophomore year a lot of the guys from my class left,” Summers recalled. “Because the older guys were transferring out I pretty much saw that they were going to be rebuilding for the next couple of years and I wanted to go to post-season play. I figured the best thing for me to do was to transfer here.”
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| Rob Summers |
Summers came to West Virginia and he sat and watched All-American center Kevin Pittsnogle play for two years.
“Here is a kid who at Penn State had a couple of rough years and then he comes here and sits out and sees nothing but success,” Beilein said. “Last year he plays a minute a game.”
Young -- his mother’s efforts notwithstanding -- got his big break when Tyrone Sally couldn’t keep down his breakfast before West Virginia’s Big East tournament quarterfinal game against Boston College in 2005.
“He came out and after he hit his third jump shot against BC I said, ‘Who’s the coach that hasn’t been playing him all year?’” Beilein said.
Young finished the game with 14 points and helped the Mountaineers advance all the way to the NCAA tournament “Elite Eight.” Last year, he was the only underclassman to start on West Virginia’s “Sweet 16” team.
“It’s been a fun four years for me,” Young said Friday.
Young remembers traveling up to Morgantown from Tallahassee, Fla., and arriving at the Towers dormitory as a freshman, his eyes (and mouth) wide open.
“I can still remember like it was yesterday moving into my dorm room and my first experience on the track my freshman year,” he said.
Young was looking for someplace to grow both as a basketball player and as a man. That’s why he picked John Beilein and West Virginia University.
“I liked Coach Beilein and the direction he was going in,” Young said. “I wanted the opportunity to play in the Big East Conference with the best competition night in and night out, and I liked being around the team once I came up here.”
Young wasn’t the team’s go-to player during those two NCAA runs; he wasn’t the best shooter, the best rebounder, the best defender or the best passer. What he was was a critical piece of its heart and soul along with senior J.D. Collins. It's kind of like those great Cincinnati Reds teams of the 1970s with Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Pete Rose: Frank Young was West Virginia’s Tony Perez.
When the oil was leaking and the wheels were about to come off, it was Frank Young who was usually the guy who stood up and said something like, ‘Hey fellas, let’s get it together.’
Beilein distinctly remembers the time last year in the NCAA tournament when he had to use two time outs in a row when Northwestern State had cut West Virginia’s big lead to six. Some of the players were looking around and talking to each other in the huddle when Young snapped, “Hey, shut up and listen to what Coach is telling us.”
Right then and there, the baton had been passed to 2007.
“I put pressure on my shoulders to lead this team and help the younger guys to know what Coach Beilein expects day in and day out,” Young said.
Beilein thinks Young has all of the ingredients necessary to someday be one heck of a coach.
“I think I might have offered him a job the other day as a matter of fact,” Beilein said, only half joking. “When he’s done playing I would love to have him work for me, that’s for sure.”
Young’s not so sure he’s cut out to be a coach.
“I’ve thought about it a little bit but I’ve always said that I don’t have the patience to be a coach. I might be another Bobby Knight,” Young chuckled, adding that he would be a Bobby Knight without throwing chairs.
“You don’t see how I act in the locker room or in practice sometimes,” Young said. “I try not to get upset with the young guys like I did last year. I get on them every now and then but I try not to lose my temper too much.”
Beilein, who made the walk out on the carpet as a father with his oldest son Patrick last year, admits he feels like a father to every player that’s ever played for him.
“I hope that when you are with a kid for four years or Rob for three that you become a father figure to them in some ways,” Beilein said. “It’s difficult because no matter what you end up trying to do it’s never the same. You end up saying, ‘Oh, I’ll see you.’ I haven’t seen Johannes Herber since he walked off this campus. I’ve seen Kevin Pittsnogle twice. It’s much more difficult than people think to stay in contact with them.”
Beilein says Young’s legacy at WVU is his perseverance and persistence.
“When things didn’t look so good for him his first couple of years in this microwave generation where they want everything now, he just hung in there and hung in there and he’s had a splendid career,” Beilein said.
Summers has not only developed himself into a starting player on a team still in contention for an NCAA tournament bid, but he’s also been a model student in the class room.
“Rob has been a great student: he got well over a 3.0 and he is going to have a great career in sports management. I’m proud of both of these guys.
“Both of them have made significant contributions to this team to what everybody would agree has been a rebuilding year,” Beilein said.
Twenty wins is a pretty good rebuilding year.
Summers, for one, is proud to be a part of the history of West Virginia University basketball.
“It’s special knowing that years from now people are going to be looking back to our teams and thinking about that with all of the great teams they’ve had here at West Virginia,” Summers said.
Young wants to be remembered as a player who left everything he had out on the floor every time he pulled that West Virginia jersey over his neck. He understands he is playing for more than just a university -- he is playing for a community and an entire state. Otherwise, his uniform would read DePaul or Villanova or Marquette or Marshall.
“I hope they remember how hard I played and remember all of the good times I was part of … the last two years in the NCAA tournament and hopefully we get back to the tournament again this year,” Young said.
On Saturday around 4 o’clock when Frank Young and Rob Summers take their last walk down the carpet, be sure to watch what takes place at center court. It’s a safe bet that John Beilein is going to repay Mrs. Young with a great big hug of his own. Mrs. Summers is going to get one, too.
