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CSU hoops coach's past a lesson in dreaming big

Coach Doug Lewis has Central State University ready to roll into its first NCAA Division II tournament. “Our guys are hungry, and they’re buying into what I’m teaching and preaching.”

Staff photo by Jim Noelker Coach Doug Lewis has Central State University ready to roll into its first NCAA Division II tournament. “Our guys are hungry, and they’re buying into what I’m teaching and preaching.”

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By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer 12:59 AM Thursday, March 4, 2010

WILBERFORCE — He said she happened to see the CBS broadcast of his Southwest Missouri State team playing Nevada-Las Vegas in the NCAA tournament.

He was a slick, sure-handed guard back then as his team nearly pulled off the monumental upset, losing in the final seconds.

“About two weeks after the tournament I was back at school and I got a call,” said Central State basketball coach Doug Lewis. “It was a woman’s voice and she said, ‘May I speak to Doug Lewis?’

“I said, “This is him,’ and she said, ‘This is your mom.’... And all I could think of was, ‘My mom? I haven’t heard from you since fourth grade.’ ”

In the most out-of-the-blue, unimaginable way that day in 1988, Lewis found out that dreams sometimes do come true in the NCAA tournament.

Now, more than two decades later, his 22-5 Central State team has made the NCAA Division II tournament for the first time in school history — regional pairings will be announced Sunday, March 7 — and that, too, is almost unimaginable when you know the whole story.

But as he sat in the deserted Beacom-Lewis Gym late the other night after practice, he found himself thinking about that other NCAA trip so long ago.

He said his parents had him when they were teenagers and that his mom eventually left: “I didn’t grow up with a mother. She was prostituting and doing other street stuff.

“From first grade on I remember seeing her only that one time. It was at my grandma’s funeral. After that, I never saw or talked to her again until I was a senior in college and got that call.

“My dad had custody of us and he did the best he could. He worked in a factory but couldn’t read or write and we were pretty poor.

“Later on, guys at the barbershop told me, ‘We knew you were gonna be a good basketball player ’cause you always played out there on the playground wearing street shoes.’ I did it because we didn’t have money for tennis shoes.”

And the barbershop guys were right.

After leading his Milwaukee prep team — Rufus King High School — to the 1984 Wisconsin state basketball title, the 6-foot Lewis played two seasons at Mesa Community College in Arizona and was regarded as one of the nation’s best junior college guards.

Then came two seasons — and two trips to the NCAA tournament — playing for Charlie Spoonhour at Southwest Missouri State.

After graduating, he began coaching at Washington High School in Milwaukee, then spent five seasons as a college assistant at Wisconsin-Milwaukee before Michael Grant asked him to join his staff at CSU in 1998.

When Grant left for Southern University five years later, then-Athletic Director Theresa Check took a chance on Lewis, who had no head coaching experience.

As it turned out, some of those hardscrabble lessons growing up paid off for him.

“The way I was raised,” he said, “it made me able to endure anything.”

Doing more with less

Central State began switching from an NAIA school to NCAA Division II seven years ago. That required a five-year probationary period that prevented NCAA postseason tournaments as the program built a foundation to support the upgrade.

And while the Marauders now play a much tougher schedule, they are still trying to shore up their cash-strapped coffers in these lean economic times.

“I’ll be truthful, I’ve got just four scholarships for my team, so I’ve got to divide them up,” Lewis said. “Every other team in the tournament — Findlay, Kentucky Wesleyan, all of ’em — will have 10 full-ride players on their bench.”

He said his recruiting budget last year was $1,700. “I talked to my friend at Gannon (University) and asked what his budget was,” Lewis said. “He told me he didn’t really have a certain budget. He said if he spent $12,000, well, then that’s what it was.

“But no matter what, you’ve got to see kids in person, so if I go to Chicago to recruit, I stay with my best friend. If I go to Milwaukee, I stay at home with my sister. In Indianapolis I stay with my cousin. If I’m in Detroit, I’ve got one of my best friends there.”

Lewis said he and assistant coach Donte Jackson take care of many of their expenses out of their own pockets: “You got to do what you need to do if you want to build a program and get kids in here.”

For CSU that often means going after players other schools have passed over or given up on.

Seven of the 14 players on the roster are transfers, including Anthony Passley from Tennessee and Gino Smith from Eastern Michigan. Most of the others are from junior colleges. Several of them, Lewis said, had been out of basketball and working jobs:

“Damone Pledger was working at the post office in Detroit. Gino was out two years and working, and Passley hadn’t played in three years.”

A drug arrest helped derail Passley at Tennessee, but Lewis said he went to visit the 6-foot-4 forward at his home and was comfortable with what he found:

“He was living with his dad, working, staying out of trouble. Like a lot of guys in this situation, he realized he wouldn’t be getting a good job without an education. He knew this was his last chance.

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