Terrible news. DW almost single handily beat UCLA in the tourney.
One of his best games. Set Iowa State's single-game 3 point make record of 9 in this game. Should auto-start at 19:35 for a vintage Willoughby Three Pointer.
100% agree. Great teams, but definitely a surprise to the Big 8 and the rest of the college basketball world. I was at ISU at the time, and really loved to watch those teams. Tim Floyd did a great job in these years, both coaching and recruiting....That team came out of nowhere—at least for a person who didn’t know how to follow recruiting. I remember my Dad saying that he had noticed Cato on the bench while he was sitting out![]()
I remember the Iowa game that season as well. Dedric could barely walk. Pratt was academically ineligible. The Clones went into Carver and absolutely dominated them. Iowa made a couple late, meaningless threes to make it look close, but ISU was up double figures all night.Yep, and he played pretty much every minute of the game also. I thought he was an underrated defender, but I think in his final season he was battling injuries (which made that performance against UCLA in the tourney that much more impressive).
100% agree. Great teams, but definitely a surprise to the Big 8 and the rest of the college basketball world. I was at ISU at the time, and really loved to watch those teams. Tim Floyd did a great job in these years, both coaching and recruiting....
I've never heard it from his own mouth, but many people said behind closed doors he wished he never left.I think Floyd leaving might be a bigger what-if for ISU basketball than Hoiberg leaving. The way he was recruiting towards the end they were setting up to have some monster teams.
My favorite player ever. And a class act.
I've never heard it from his own mouth, but many people said behind closed doors he wished he never left.
I've read heart attack.This is just, awful tragic news.
And you're spot on with him being a class act; I remember in the summer of 1997 I was home for the summer after just graduating from UNI and I was working as day camp counselor for the Ames Park and Recreation Department. One day we had taken our group of kids to play for the afternoon at Brookside Park and I had a small group of them with me. I noticed a rather tall young man standing in one of the baseball fields who just happened to be Dedric Willoughby. The kids and I talked with him for a few minutes and he could not have been nicer and more gracious to myself and the kids. This was just a week or so after he had gone surprisingly undrafted, so I'm sure he had more pressing matters to attend to and could have been in a worse mood than he was, but he was just great with the kids. From that moment on I was a big fan, and I was happy to see that he had a cup of coffee or two in the NBA a few years down the road.
Damn, I'm getting a bit teary just writing this.
RIP to one of the all-time greats in ISU basketball.