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Here is the story from Chris that somehow didn't make it onto the board (unless I'm overlooking it):
McLean goes from longshot to LU's big man
By Chris Lang
Lynchburg News & Advance
December 13, 2006
Liberty forward Alex McLean was 6-foot-2 and "a lot fatter than I am now" when he was a high school senior.
He hardly touched a basketball in high school. He had no reason to. Pudgy 6-2 kids didn't play varsity basketball. They found other outlets. In McLean's case, it was music; he played bass, piano and drums in Bay Shore (N.Y.) High School's band.
Only when he sprouted six inches during his first year at Suffolk Community College did basketball become part of McLean's life. SCC coaches liked McLean's size and athletic ability (the growth spurt only added height, not girth) and encouraged him to try out for the school team.
He averaged 8.0 points and 8.1 rebounds a game as a freshman and began to wonder if playing Division I basketball was a dream worth pursuing.
"I started talking with the coach during the summer and worked out with him a little bit," McLean said. "I started to grow a little bit."
After a sophomore year in which he earned NJCAA all-Region XV honors for averaging 18.1 points and 13.9 rebounds per game, McLean earned a scholarship to Southeast Missouri State. And what seemed like an unlikely turn of events for someone who didn't play a minute of prep basketball had become reality.
Then McLean's dream was crushed. Two weeks before he was set to start classes at the school's Cape Girardeau campus, SE Missouri's coaches called McLean.
Sorry. We don't have a scholarship for you any more. We needed to give it to someone else.
"They jerked me around," McLean said with a slight tinge of anger.
Despondent, McLean went back to Suffolk, took classes and tried to stay in basketball shape. Liberty assistant coach Alexis Sherard knew someone on the SEMO coaching staff, who told Sherard that McLean was a pretty good player, but they had no place for him.
So Liberty started going after him "hard and heavy," Flames coach Randy Dunton said. Only McLean was a little wary of pulling the trigger so soon after the SEMO fiasco.
McLean went through his first semester of classes at Suffolk before accepting Dunton's scholarship offer. Once he transferred to LU in January, Dunton breathed a little sigh of relief.
His team was stumbling through a 7-23 season and was in desperate need of post help. McLean was seen as a quick fix for the 2006-07 season. It seemed like a lot of pressure to put on a forward who had played all of two years of competitive basketball, but McLean was up to the challenge.
Entering the week, he was sixth in the Big South in scoring (16.7 ppg) and fourth in rebounding (8.9 rpg). He's commanding double teams on the block, which leaves other offensive options open. He passes well out of double teams and runs the floor well for a player his size.
Plus, he's still fairly raw, so it's safe to assume McLean is only going to get better with experience.
"He's learning all the little nuances of the game, especially at this level," said Liberty assistant Zack Jones, who coaches the Flames' post players. "What we're seeing now is just the developing stages of what he can become."
What he's becoming, very quickly, is a solid Division I basketball player. McLean briefly thought about his chances of playing college basketball at any level when he was in high school, but quickly dismissed them.
"I thought, maybe, Division III, at the most," he said.
Three years later, he stepped onto the floor at Oklahoma's Lloyd Noble Center for Liberty's season opener against the Sooners. He had arrived. McLean and Liberty can only hope that night was just a start.
"It was like a dream come true," McLean said. "To some guys, it might be normal, they're used to it. But I had been waiting on this my whole life. I thought it would never happen."
had ace on the money also. double double.. surprised you scar. lol im feeling good! lol.. really im just board because there isn't anything else going on on the ol site.
- By rtb72
- By LU Armchair coach