Louisville basketball coach and Long Island native Rick Pitino thinks basketball in the area is suffering because of affluence.
“How can you double a population and say why? It’s called affluence. Long Island was blue collar — every town was blue collar,” he told Newsday. “The rich happened to move out to Long Island and there goes basketball.”
There was an influx of basketball players from Long Island in the 1960s and 1970s, including big names like Julius Erving, Randy Smith, Mitch Kupchak, Clarence “Foots” Walker and, of course, Sachem alum Jeff Ruland, as noted in the article.
It’s true, you’re lucky to find a couple of Division I men’s basketball prospects in these parts now. The last strong one was Tobias Harris out of Hills West, who went to Tennessee and is currently playing for the Orlando Magic in the NBA.
From a boys basketball program, Sachem hasn’t had a true big Division I prospect in a number of years and none bigger then Ruland, who went to Iona and spent more than a decade in the league. Mark Griebe, who played briefly at Division I Pepperdine and graduated from Sachem in the mid-1970s, was another big name at the time as well.
Pitino, on this year’s ballott for induction to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, played ball at St. Dominic’s in Oyster Bay, N.Y. and was also the head coach at Kentucky when former Sachem coach and teacher Mike Atkinson took a one-year sabbatical to coach with the Wild Cats. Christian Laettner spoiled the fun.
-Words by Chris R. Vaccaro