Pac-12 Men's Basketball Hall Of Honor Inductees
By Andrew Kahn
This year’s Pac-12 Men’s Basketball Hall of Honor inductees include national champions, trailblazers, and record-setting scorers. The 12-man class, which includes 11 players and one coach, will officially be inducted before the conference tournament championship game in Las Vegas in March. Each school has a representative.
Fred Snowden might be the most important member of this class. He was the first black head basketball coach at a major college (and second in all of Division I, following Will Robinson at Illinois State). Born in Alabama, he moved to Detroit at a young age, where he would later coach the high school team at his alma mater. He moved up to an assistant position on the University of Michigan staff before taking the head job at Arizona in 1972. He was named the Western Athletic Conference Coach of the Year the following season and helped turn the program around. According to his New York Times obituary following his death in 1994 at the age of 57, Snowden was proud that he had more success than two other black coaches hired shortly after he was: John Thompson and George Raveling. “It was a good thing one of us succeeded right away,” he said. “People have told me that the success of my teams in those first four years was one of the pivotal reasons that opportunities began to open up for other black coaches.” He would coach Arizona for 10 years, leading the Wildcats to three postseason berths.
Dave Meyers won two national championships at UCLA, the first as a sophomore in 1973, when the Bruins went 30-0, and the second two years later in John Wooden’s final season. He was a consensus First-Team All America that year after leading UCLA with 18.3 points and 7.9 rebounds, and was the No. 2 pick in the NBA draft. He played in the UCLA frontcourt alongside Bill Walton and Jamaal Wilkes his first two seasons. His No. 34 uniform is not retired by the school, but the No. 15 worn by his younger sister is: Ann Meyers (Drysdale) is one of the best women’s basketball players of all time.
Younger fans will be more familiar with Stanford’s Casey Jacobsen and Washington’s Jon Brockman. Jacobsen, a shooting guard, was a two-time All-America who led Stanford in scoring three years in a row. Ron Riley (Arizona State, 1996) and Sean Lampley (California, 2001) could also fill it up, both graduating as their school’s all-time leading scorer. Jim Jarvis (Oregon State, 1965) and Danny Vranes (Utah, 1981) are the other All-Americas being honored.
The other inductees in the 2015 class are Jim Davis (Colorado), Anthony Taylor (Oregon), Alex Hannum (USC), and Bennie Seltzer (Washington State), who will join Pac-12 legends like Wooden, Gary Payton, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Andrew Kahn is a regular contributor to CBS Local who also writes for Newsday and The Wall Street Journal. He writes about college basketball and other sports at AndrewJKahn.com. Email him at andrewjkahn@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter at @AndrewKahn.
