‘I want to be here,’ WSU women’s hoops coach Kamie Ethridge details program vision

‘I want to be here,’ WSU women’s hoops coach Ethridge details program vision

With a new conference, new AD and new team, Ethridge remains

By Sam Taylor Lewiston Tribune  July 28, 2024

In a matter of months, Washington State lost its volleyball coach, men’s basketball coach and athletic director as it prepares to enter a new age of college athletics in the wake of the Pac-12 Conference’s collapse.

One coach who has remained? Six-year Women’s basketball coach Kamie Ethridge.

“I want to be here,” Ethridge said in May. “I don’t think there’s very many jobs that can be better than this job. You know, the fact that we’re able to retain most of our athletes and they’re not hitting the portal, the fact that we can continue to have success in recruiting. I really do believe I’m in a situation where I’m not looking to leave, and I feel very much supported here.”

The former National Coach of the Year and College Basketball Hall of Famer has made the postseason in each of her past four seasons, including three straight NCAA Tournaments. She led the Cougs to the 2023 Pac-12 Tournament Championship in Las Vegas, WSU’s first women’s conference championship in school history.

Ethridge recruited program legends Charlisse Leger-Walker and Bella Murekatete and has assembled a current roster that has included an All-Pac-12 freshman selection in each of the last two years – Astera Tuhina in 2023 and Eleonora Villa in 24.

With renowned recruiting and winning records, Coug fans seemed sure that Ethridge would be gone within a matter of weeks following a 2023–24 season in which the Cougs weathered the loss of Leger-Walker to a season-ending knee injury to reach the semifinals of the inaugural Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament.

Instead, after WSU had endured the departures of two head coaches and an athletic director in the nine months since news of the Pac-12’s destruction dropped, Ethridge signed a one-year extension, her third straight such deal. Her contract runs through the 2029–30 season.

Ethridge said that former WSU AD Pat Chun, who left Pullman to take the helm of in-state rival University of Washington, painted the picture of how successful WSU women’s basketball could be.

“Believe me, our resources were 12 out of 12. We were 12th out of 12, you know, compared to everybody else in the league, but you don’t have to be first in the league in resources. You don’t have to be the first in facilities. You have to be first in people,” Ethridge said. “And I thought that (Chun) was an example of hiring great people and giving us the support that we needed, you know, and being okay with being who we are.

“We don’t have to apologize for being Washington State and living in Pullman. I love this place. I love the kinds of athletes we can attract here. And I think (Chun’s) vision was something really appealing to me.”

Ethridge said Chun’s vision aligned with what AD Anne McCoy, who has worked for WSU for over 20 years, holds.

While the Cougar coach is staying, WSU is losing someone who Ethridge said “changed the program forever.”

Charlisse Leger-Walker, third all-time leading scorer in program history, announced she was transferring to UCLA in May.

Ethridge said there was no doubt that Leger-Walker would have gone pro if she had not suffered a season-ending ACL injury Jan. 28. The injury gave her three options: Go pro anyway, return to WSU or enter the transfer portal.

“She grew up together with a group of players that— we were so young when they all came in, and now we’re really old, and they’re all leaving, you know, her best friends are leaving and I just think sometimes in life you get to the end of a road and you know, you don’t feel like ‘Oh, I need to start over in the same place,’” Ethridge said.

While Leger-Walker’s departure does leave a program-legend-sized hole in the roster, Ethridge is more than prepared to replace her with a strong international recruiting class and the continued development of program leaders Tara Wallack, Astera Tuhina and Eleonora Villa.

“We literally have 13 players that can all compete for a starting job. I mean, so we’re really really deep. I think we’re really versatile. I think we’re probably as talented as we’ve ever been, in a lot of ways, but it’s inexperienced talent right now. You know, like, like, there’s going to be some growing pains,” associate head coach Laurie Kohen said.

The program has found great success in recruiting and retaining student-athletes because they don’t promise too much up front, Ethridge said.

WSU does not have a name, image and likeness donor base on par with other schools.

“If they want money, then they probably won’t choose us,” Ethridge said.

“That’s one of the attractions of staying here: if I can continue to do it the way we’re doing it and not lose players and compete at a high level without getting into the world of, you know, NIL, I’d gladly you know, want to stay here and see if we can do something special here.”

While organizations such as the Cougar Collective, a collection of WSU alumni who want to support student-athletes with NIL opportunities, do their best, small crowds at WSU basketball games have become the norm.

Ethridge said she wants the women’s basketball team to win more and at the right time in order to catch a similar flame that the men’s team caught.

Kyle Smith’s Cougs were drawing just 3,000 people in mid-February, before getting ranked, beating Arizona in Tucson and hosting Bronny James and USC. That confluence of factors led to three straight 8,000-plus crowds with WSU’s final regular season game seeing a 9,000-person crowd.

Ethridge said the Cougs need to get out into the community and make a lot of friends who will go to games, from elementary school kids and their families to ZZU CRU, WSU’s organized student section.

“We need ZZU CRU to really get committed to us,” Ethridge said. “It usually starts well, we haven’t finished very well. I think we have a hard sport, because sometimes there’s four games a week. And then there’s two games the next week and you just want to take a break the next week. So you don’t go to those games and you know, we’re competing for the same person, right?”

Each player in their end-of-season exit interviews with Ethridge said they considered making the NCAA Tournament a top team goal.

WSU women’s basketball will compete in the West Coast Conference as an affiliate members for the next two seasons. The Cougs will play a full conference schedule alongside fellow remaining Pac-12 school Oregon State, guaranteeing them quality matchups against reigning tournament teams Gonzaga, Portland and OSU.

Ethridge said she is confident WSU women’s basketball can succeed in the WCC and nationally at an even greater level because her program prioritizes people.

From the nutritionist to the academic support staff to the trainers to her coaching staff, the Cougs offer a top-tier experience, Ethridge said.

“Those are the things that are gonna affect your life every single day,” Ethridge said. “So we want to make those elite and if we do that, I think we can continue to succeed in recruiting and getting great, great talent in choosing us and staying in here to be with us [for] four years.”

PHOTO: Coach Kamie Ethridge and WSU basketball team 3/6/2024 at Pac-12 Women’s Basketball Tournament in Las Vegas. (Photo by News for CougGroup.

In new AD Anne McCoy, WSU gets a new leader — and a committed supporter of student-athletes

 In new AD Anne McCoy, WSU gets a new leader — and a committed supporter of student-athletes

July 16, 2024 Updated Tue., July 16, 2024 at 9:55 p.m.

By Greg Woods, Spokane Spokesman-Review

PULLMAN – Jake McCoy always knew when his mom was at his sister’s swim meets. He’d be watching the live stream of Taylor’s race, a couple years back when she swam for Washington State, and he’d hear a certain voice start cheering somewhere in the background.

“You can hear our mom,” Jake laughed. “You can hear her screaming. It’s hilarious. But then she sits down, and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m nervous.’ ”

That would be Anne McCoy, who was introduced Tuesday as WSU’s new athletic director, four months after she became the Cougars’ interim AD and three weeks after she was promoted to the permanent position. A mother of two, McCoy’s elevation comes at a critical time for WSU, which needs someone to guide the program into a hazy new chapter nearly a year after the Pac-12 collapsed.

That responsibility now belongs to McCoy, who made a few things clear in her introductory press conference. Her top priority is securing a permanent conference home for the Cougars, who are competing as affiliate members in the Mountain West and West Coast conferences this upcoming season, and she anticipates that happening no later than July 2025.

“I think as much as the temptation would be to try to finish things or get things nailed down or just make a decision sooner rather than later,” McCoy said, “I just think that we don’t know all the variables yet. And I don’t think we have all the information we’re gonna need to make a good decision and the right decision.”

McCoy also emphasized the importance of fundraising, which previous AD Pat Chun took to “a different level,” president Kirk Schulz said. Chun may have departed for rival Washington back in March, but in McCoy, Schulz sees a successor who can keep that up.

“Raising money, everybody sometimes thinks there’s some magic piece to it,” Schulz said. “A lot of it is vision and shoe leather work, and sitting down with people, having a conversation and talking about ways mutually they can support Washington State University. And guess what – you gotta know a place to be able to do that well.”

Turns out, that was a key reason why Schulz hired McCoy, who has worked at WSU in different capacities since 2001. She knows WSU well, and she knows Pullman well, and that’s not a bad starting point.

But in McCoy, the Cougs are also getting an athletic director who draws on her personal experiences as much as her professional ones. In her rise to the top of WSU’s athletic department, from her start as an intern in Connecticut to her most recent post of senior deputy director of athletics at WSU, she has kept in mind her reason for getting into the business in the first place.

“You had a chance to be part of a student-athlete’s life from the time they came to college, when maybe they were 17 or 18 years old, to when they left when they were 22 or 23,” McCoy said. “And just really watch them grow and get to know them as people, to really feel like there’s a human connection and that you can be part of their journey.”

In that way, there isn’t much difference between Anne McCoy the WSU athletic director and Anne McCoy the mom, her kids explained. The same person who works as her kids’ personal Uber driver – “She’ll go from the hotel to the pool, back to the hotel, to food, to the hotel, to the pool and back,” son Jake said – is the same one who gets to figure out which conference the Cougs will be competing in on a permanent basis.

In fact, she proved it in the process of taking this job. Last month, after Schulz offered McCoy the job while the two were at a meeting in Vancouver, she broke the news to her family at the dining room table in their home. Jake, Taylor and husband Brian had known about the possibility for some time – Jake was the last to find out, he joked – but it wasn’t until she arrived back home that she delivered the news: She had the offer in hand.

“She was like, OK, here’s the situation. Here’s what’s going on,” Taylor said. “How do you feel about this? Because I want this to be like a family decision and something we all do together. Because we’re all one unit here.”

“She wanted to make it a family decision, to make sure that we didn’t have any concerns,” said Jake, who has committed to swim at Tennessee beginning in the fall of 2025. “I was like, concerns? You’re gonna be great at it. I know that. Her biggest thing is staying kind and I know that’s not gonna change.”

Much is changing at WSU. That much is clear, especially because McCoy said Tuesday that “just because we’re not talking about things real publicly right now doesn’t mean there’s not a lot happening.” She didn’t want to elaborate – these kinds of things happen behind closed doors in that way – but whether the Cougs end up in a rebuilt Pac-12 or another conference entirely, the woman leading the charge is the same one who can get too nervous to watch her kids swim.

“She’s usually got a ‘go TT’ for me,” Taylor said, “but then she sits there and acts like she’s gonna throw up during our races. We had a meet this past weekend, and we both had races we were very excited with and she was like, first one there afterwards, after our coach, and was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so proud of you guys.’ Just our biggest supporter.”

Drink beer, support WSU student-athletes

Coug fans can now support WSU student-athletes by drinking beer.

The Cougar Collective, a name, image and likeness organization comprised of WSU alumni with an interest in supporting student-athletes, partnered with Pike Brewing in Seattle to debut the “Ol’ Crimson Lager.”

Story/photo by Sam Taylor, Lewiston Trib, 7/16/2024

The beer is available in several businesses (many of them owned by WSU alumni), including Flatstick Pub (with locations across Seattle and one in Spokane), Marco Polo in Seattle and, as of a week ago, The Coug in Pullman, said Luke Wetzstein, a Cougar Collective board member who met his wife at The Coug.

About 25 years later, the couple was in The Coug on Monday night introducing the Ol’ Crimson Lager to Pullman.


A portion of the proceeds of each purchase of the Ol’ Crimson Lager goes back to the Cougar Collective, which uses that money to support WSU student-athletes through various NIL opportunities.

The beer is also sold in 6-packs, with the can containing art depicting Ol’ Crimson, the WSU flag synonymous with college football, appearing on every single ESPN College GameDay broadcast since 2003.


Wetzstein said the cans are available at Flatstick Pub locations and may soon be available in certain grocery stores in the state.

The Cougar Collective partnered with the Ol’ Crimson booster club for the naming and image rights and the can artwork was designed by WSU alumnus Jim Carey (no relation to the actor), Wetzstein said.

Wetzstein said he could not share how much the Collective has made so far or what percentage of the proceeds the Collective will receive because of their contract with Pike Brewing.

The beer is one more attempt at helping WSU adjust to a new age of college athletics.

Wetzstein said the Cougar Collective noticed other NIL collectives introducing beers, particularly Iowa State and Boise State.

“We’d be idiots not to do it, especially with our fan base and alumni base,” he said.


Three years after the NCAA adopted new rules, spurred by state and federal legislation, to allow student-athletes to benefit off of their name, image and likeness, the state of Washington passed Bill 5913, which amends the state’s ethics laws, allowing universities within the state to participate fully in NIL affairs up to the point allowed by the NCAA.


These new rules came into effect June 6 in Washington.

Nick Garner, WSU assistant athletic director of student-athlete experience, showed his support for the Cougar Collective by going to the event at The Coug on Monday night.

Garner said the new rules have helped the school provide “more holistic support” for student-athletes within the past month.

“Not only are we able to work more closely with the collective, but we can be much more supportive of local businesses when they want to do things, we can do much more for our student-athletes who are trying to build their brand or connect with businesses,” Garner said.

The legislation allows WSU Athletics, including individual programs and employees, to support organizations out in the open. WSU football wasted little time, posting a statement from football coach Jake Dickert and tagging Cougar Collective’s social media account with the caption “hey @CougCollective” on June 6.

“We can now publicly endorse the work that the Cougar Collective is doing to support Washington State University student-athletes. We are excited to grow this relationship as we work to deliver on the standard of excellence here at WSU,” Dickert said in a June 6 statement.

Wetzstein said this change to state law allowed the board to spend the week in Pullman and meet face-to-face with various coaches.

“We have relationships with some of the coaches, mainly football, I would say in the past, but it was more behind the scenes, off the record,” Wetzstein said. “Now it can be as public and as transparent as we need it to be. So it’s opened a lot of things up and WSU has been great in helping facilitate that.”


The Pullman launch party for the Collective’s NIL beer was one part of what WSU Athletics coined as “Cougar Collective Media Week.”

Cougar Collective board members had one-on-one meetings with various coaches, talked to student-athletes and coaches at a Sunday evening barbecue, shot video content with various stakeholders in Pullman and today, will attend athletic director Anne McCoy’s introductory news conference, Garner said.

With most of the Cougar Collective board living outside of Pullman, the chance to meet face-to-face with coaches and athletic staff members allowed the Collective to put a face to all of their efforts.

Among the faces at the Coug on Monday night were WSU alumni Rick and Kim Wood. The couple moved to Pullman last summer and volunteered to join the Collective and serve as their “boots on the ground.”

“It means a lot to feel like I’m part of the university (and part) of Pullman again,” Rick Wood said.

Before the Woods joined Cougar Collective, they operated an Airbnb in Pullman called the WSU Crimson House, and focused on renting the house out to friends and family of student-athletes, Rick Wood said.

“I’m really focused on how we can help the Collective build revenue through business ventures, as opposed to just asking you for money,” Rick Wood said.

As for the quality of the Ol’ Crimson Lager itself, Coug fans Dawn and Sean Wells described it as “A summer beer, hot day beer.”

Dawn Wells works remotely for Alaska Airlines and Sean Wells serves as Pullman’s public works director. The couple said they donate to the Cougar Collective.


“We have to be realists and understand this is how it’s going to be and we got to support our Cougs,” Dawn Wells said.

For a recent graduate like Patrick Dinges, who teaches in the Spokane public schools, buying a beer is a lot more affordable than a monthly donation.

“As a recent graduate, you know, money’s tight. So this is a really nice way for me to give back in any small way that I can,” he said.

Wetzstein said he believes there is no donation too small.

“I think WSU’s alumni base has 30-some thousand license plates in the state,” Wetzstein said “If all of those people paying for a license plate were part of the 1890 Club, we’d be in unbelievable shape.”

The 1890 Club is the Collective’s donation program, encouraging Coug fans to donate $18.90 a month in honor of the year WSU was founded.

Toward the end of the event, a majority of the WSU men’s basketball coaching staff walked down Cougar Way and stopped by the Coug.

Each member of the staff has only been in Pullman for a matter of months as coach David Riley enters his first year at the helm.

Assistant coach Donald Brady followed Riley to Pullman from their previous post at Eastern Washington and assisted with building a roster, almost from scratch, as just two players from last season’s NCAA Tournament team, Isaiah Watts and Parker Gerrits, chose to stay in Pullman.

“I think we’re competitive. Yeah, we don’t have Ohio State money or Indiana money or Alabama money, but what we do have allowed us to bring in a really solid team,” Brady said. “And obviously, the more that’s donated to the collective, the more it’s going to help the program.”

Insightful column

 Dave Boling: Washington State coaching icon George Raveling continues to offer wise advice when it comes to college athletics

By Dave Boling  Spokesman-Review 7/4/2024

College sports, having lost their way, need George Raveling more than ever.

It might require a visionary like Raveling to renew the conscience, spirit, and ideals that have gone missing.

Considering that he just turned 87, we better learn from him while we still can.

With extreme graciousness, Raveling answered a recent inquiry for a brief phone interview for background on a story about a former Washington State basketball player with whom he’d been very close.

His answers were so thorough and heartfelt, and he was going so well, that he kept weaving stories without prompt.

He talked for half an hour, and it became clear that Raveling is still an impressive orator, deep thinker, innovator, and activist. And his recollections remain strong of his years as an influential and pioneering basketball coach, as well as an international ambassador for the game.

He recounted his love for WSU and Pullman, and his biggest mistake as a coach (not landing Spokane’s John Stockton). And he gave examples of the life-long relationships that are possible when coaches and players share common space in their minds and hearts.

It was a privilege to be given his time. So, in the final minute, I asked: What’s wrong with college sports?

His answer wasn’t specific nor curative, but he saw the ways in which the environment has changed after court orders turned college athletes into professionals, with even fewer regulations.

And that’s the place to start as we review the impact George Raveling had on the game of basketball – from Pullman, Washington, to all points around the globe.

•••

“We’re teaching kids the wrong values,” Raveling said. “It’s all about money. Sports have become driven, insanely, by money. I worry about these kids when they become adults.”

Some athletes collect millions of dollars, and change schools several times, sometimes playing into their mid-20s – while the connection between athletics and academics seems abandoned.

“I coached during a time when getting an education was important. Today, you don’t even hear any academic discussions,” Raveling said, noticing that classwork seems a quaint and forgotten concept.

George Raveling stands during the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall Of Fame 2014 Class Announcement at the JW Marriott on April 6, 2015 in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Getty Images)

Further, Raveling said he sees no one willing or able to step up to discover solutions.

“The biggest thing with college athletics is the same as (the problems) globally – we lack courageous leadership,” he said. “I say ‘courageous’ leadership because it takes courage to stand up and make the right decisions and advocate for the right reasons, and be willing to do the right thing at almost any cost.”

Still intellectually curious, Raveling has tried to pinpoint the core qualities of leadership, asking friends to provide lists of great contemporary leaders, not including the business arena, in which money is too-commonly used as the yardstick.

“No one has yet been able to get to five (on a list),” he said.

Raveling recalled when recruiting was not a matter of name-image-likeness financial opportunities.

“I always felt I had to have better relationships with the players,” he said. “If it’s only about winning and losing, hell, you can go anywhere. I had a responsibility to those players’ parents to be more than a coach. I felt I had to be a leader and a role model. I’m not trying to be self-serving with this, but I saw that as the responsibility of the position.”

•••

Given his retirement from coaching came 30 years ago, it’s worth retracing Raveling’s roots.

As a player, George Raveling was a sensational rebounder. He pulled down 29 in one game against Seton Hall in the 1960 season, and is still on some of Villanova’s top 10 lists more than 60 years after playing.

That should tell you a great deal about Raveling. Rebounding is a function of desire —aggressiveness directed by anticipation, fueled by a hunger for the ball. It’s an effort that takes a miss and turns it into a second chance – a theme in Raveling’s life.

Born in Washington, D.C., Raveling lost his father, a horse trainer, to a heart attack when George was 9. Soon after, his mother suffered what was labeled a “nervous breakdown” and was institutionalized. He was sent to St. Michael’s, a Catholic home for boys near Scranton, Penn.

Villanova offered Raveling a future. He responded by becoming a beast on the boards, averaging 16 per game as a junior.

In his 11 seasons as coach, George Raveling led Washington State basketball to a 167-136 record. He was named Pac-10 Conference coach of the year after the 1983 season. (The Spokesman-Review photo archive)

In a definitive Raveling story by Vince Devlin in the Spokesman-Review in 1983, Raveling recalled being the first Black basketball player to perform in West Virginia’s home gym. At one point, Raveling closed in on a Mountaineer guard breaking toward the basket with the ball.

His punishing foul at the rim laid out the opposing player. Realizing the player he had decked was All-American Jerry West, Raveling said he quickly hoped he hadn’t caused too much damage in such a hostile environment.

For him, the moment wasn’t about being a racial pioneer as much as just playing the game with the aggressiveness he felt it deserved. But it was an example of how Raveling would come to be connected with so many high-profile figures, and play a part of pivotal moments in history.

Several years later, as an assistant at Villanova, Raveling and a friend attended the 1963 March on Washington. They talked their way into duties providing security on the podium for speakers, leading Raveling to be positioned near Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during his “I Have a Dream” speech.

As the historic gathering cheered, King folded up his typed notes and walked toward Raveling, who asked if he could have it as a souvenir. King acceded, and Raveling held onto the historic document without mentioning it until an off-handed comment to a reporter in his first season coaching at Iowa led to its rediscovery.

Raveling turned down million-dollar offers for the three pages of the speech, and they are now displayed at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

•••

“So much of my adult life started in Pullman, Washington,” Raveling said. “Think about this, Washington State took a helluva chance when they hired me. I had no head-coaching experience.”

But as an assistant at Villanova, and then Maryland (under Lefty Driesell), Raveling had earned a reputation as a convincing recruiter. He had been the first Black assistant in the Atlantic Coast Conference. But his first two interviews for head coaching jobs ended without offers.

“I’m from the East. I’m an African-American. But Washington State took a gamble on me. Ray Nagel (athletic director) and Dr. (Glenn) Terrell (WSU president) were committed to me,” Raveling said. “My success was due to their loyalty.”

It was 1972, and Raveling was the first Black coach in the Pacific-8 Conference.

“At the time, it was the Pac-8, and of the eight coaches, 50 percent are in the Hall of Fame today,” Raveling said, adding himself to UCLA’s John Wooden, Washington’s Marv Harshman and Oregon State’s Ralph Miller.

“It was a powerhouse basketball conference in that historic framework,” Raveling said. “As good of a basketball conference as there was anywhere in the United States.”

George Raveling, who coached at both Washington State and USC, was inducted into the Pac-10 Basketball Men’s Hall of Honor in 2004. (The Spokesman-Review photo archive)

The Cougars, however, were considered one of the weaker programs. WSU had been to only one NCAA Tournament in its history, in 1941. And a scant total of three Black players had competed for the Cougars before Raveling’s arrival.

On the day he was hired, Raveling was asked about the challenges of recruiting to WSU by Spokane columnist Harry Missildine. “People who say you can’t recruit at WSU must be people who like to deal in negatives. I deal in positives,” Raveling said. “The test of a man is what he can do, not how many excuses he can give you why he can’t do it.”

Race, Raveling said, “was never, ever, an issue at Washington State.”

Raveling’s eventual success, leading the Cougars to two NCAA Tournaments, were part of his acceptance in the region, but his engaging personality was probably more important.

Guard Terry Kelly, a Gonzaga Prep product and part of Raveling’s first NCAA team in 1980, remembered his coach’s infectious personality.

“I felt Raveling’s energy, so did all the news reporters that came down. All those guys felt it; they were giddy when they were around Raveling,” Kelly said. He remembers walking with Raveling out of the gym after practice and his stopping to engage the custodian. “The way coach greeted him, he just lit up. I thought, wow, that’s the way you treat people. He was like that with everybody.”

Coach Jim Walden, in his 2005 book on Cougar football, recalled how Raveling used humor to charm boosters in the homogeneously Caucasian Palouse. Walden said Raveling told a gathering that he had heard some fans suggest they needed more “white guys” on the team, “so this year, I went out and recruited Roosevelt White and Willie White.”

Cheers and laughter. Raveling had them in his pocket.

•••

WSU and Spokane stories started coming back to Raveling, and one of his first was “the biggest mistake I ever made in coaching.”

Spokane Chevy dealer Jerry Camp, who supplied Raveling with his comp car, made only one request of the coach during his time in Pullman.

“He asked me to come up and take a look at (Gonzaga Prep’s) John Stockton,” Raveling recalled. Raveling had gotten Kelly out of G-Prep, but “for some reason, I didn’t think this (Stockton) kid from Spokane was good enough to play at the time. I wasn’t punctual about seeing him and it bothered Jerry, who called me another time. He said, ‘I never asked you to do anything before, but you’ve got to drive up and watch him’.”

About five minutes into the game, Raveling understood. He’d blown it. “I realized I made the biggest mistake of my career. I should have been up there and worked harder. He had even gone to the Cougar Cage Camp and wanted to go to Washington State. I tried to make up for it, but I think his dad thought, rightfully so, that if I really wanted him, I’d have been up there more aggressively.”

Stockton, of course, became a Hall of Fame professional player.

•••

As early as 1977, Raveling was giving off hints that college basketball might not be a broad enough environment for him.

He told Charlie Van Sickel of the Spokane Chronicle: “Many of the things that interest me the most are outside the walls of athletics. Athletics is strictly a vehicle that can move me along the road of life and help me expand as a person until I find that special area where I can make a special contribution.”

After leaving WSU, he coached three seasons at Iowa and eight more at USC. He assisted head coaches Bob Knight on the 1984 Olympic men’s team, and John Thompson on the 1988 Olympic team.

A long post-coaching career as an executive with Nike followed, as he helped build the shoe company’s basketball presence around the world.

Raveling was inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013 and the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015.

Over 22 seasons, his teams’ win percentage was a solid .533. They never won a conference title, and advanced to the NCAAs six times, with a 2-6 record. Hall of Fame-worthy? Raveling’s records short-sell his impact.

In a story on Raveling in the Sports Business Journal in 2017, Hall-of-Fame player Charles Barkley was quoted: “Coach Rav is like my grandfather. He’s the ‘Godfather’ for all the brothers playing basketball.”

And former USA basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo added: “If ever someone could be looked upon as a world ambassador for basketball, that’s George.”

Washington State coach George Raveling talks shooting with star big man Steve Puidokas in the mid-1970s. (The Spokesman-Review photo archive)

In his Hall of Fame speech in 2015, Raveling recalled the time when, at age 13, he held a basketball and felt empowered by it.

You can picture that moment, being lifted from what seemed like a Dickensian youth, living in an open dorm with 80 other hardscrabble boys in search of identities. His future could have gone in any direction, but no one could imagine the course of Raveling’s journey.

The game would take him around the world, and allow him to influence the lives of the famed and gifted. But he continued to treat the janitors and the night watchmen with an equal respect and deference. And he repaid his debt to the game many times over with the impact he made over decades across the globe.

Yes, basketball was his vehicle. But he was always the driver. And there hasn’t been another like him.