Dedric Willoughby Passes Away at 49

cyatheart

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Nov 18, 2008
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This is awful….my favorite cyclone ever, truly a great great player. One of the reasons we have a good basketball history. My god.

So many great memories….guy made 8 threes against UCLA, unguardable

I don’t even know what to say
 

0u812

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Jan 14, 2012
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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 ;)
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....
 

ruxCYtable

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Aug 29, 2007
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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).
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.
 
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Cyched

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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 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.
 

cedarstrip

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Aug 26, 2013
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No idea what game, but I'll never forget him pulling up on the pioneer logo and swishing a three, just because he could. This was my time at ISU. This one hurts.
 
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ISUChippewa

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My favorite player ever. And a class act.

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.
 

jsb

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Also, we've been pretty spoiled over the last 10 or so years with great success in the conference tournament, so it is easy to take that for granted. But winning that first one was really, really cool and the most fun.
 

Cyched

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May 8, 2009
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I've never heard it from his own mouth, but many people said behind closed doors he wished he never left.

He was a bit of a journeyman after he left Ames. He took things up a notch from what Johnny had built so he probably knows he could’ve built a strong program had he stuck around.
 

NoCreativity

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Nov 12, 2015
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Awful, one of the all time Cyclone greats for sure. I still have the newspaper from the day they won the Big 12 tourney in 96. He's in the front page picture holding the trophy.
 
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Mr Janny

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Awful news. Just terrible
 
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CloneLawman

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Apr 13, 2006
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Wherever I go, there I am.
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.
I've read heart attack.
 

houjix

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Jul 21, 2021
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Damn. That was one of my Cyclones as we overlapped on our time at ISU. Absolute sniper from 3.

RIP
 
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