BleedGopher
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per Pat:
There are Minnesotans absorbed with every sport. You can see them at frigid, bare-bone hockey rinks and small-town baseball fields, not because they have a rooting interest but for the simple reason that there is a game to be seen.
I’ve always felt there was something special about the basketball nut, the addict who needs a gym like an activist needs a cause.
You can sit right on top of a basketball game — take in every movement, analyze a key possession as if you were Hubie Brown. Basketball does more than clutter your mind; the sweat of a small gym can get into your pores, just from watching.
There are basketball aficionados in Minnesota. And then there is Terry Kunze.
Dennis Fitzpatrick, godfather of the daily game “Noonball” in St. Paul, pal of the late Rick Majerus and a thousand more basketball guys, was asked about Kunze’s standing among Minnesota’s basketball nuts.
“The best,” Fitzpatrick responded. “Full of it, but he knows his ball.”
Kunze was the 6-4 star guard on Duluth Central’s 1961 state championship team. He played for the Gophers, and later for Minnesota Muskies in the one season (1967-68) that they existed as an ABA entry.
He played and coached in Europe, was an assistant for Jim Dutcher with the Gophers, coached the Minnesota Fillies in the Women’s Professional Basketball League, coached at Mora High School and Anoka-Ramsey Community College … and now, 75, his basketball addiction remains in full force.
http://www.startribune.com/an-ode-to-basketball-nuts-and-terry-kunze-the-king-of-em/507979712/
Go Gophers!!
There are Minnesotans absorbed with every sport. You can see them at frigid, bare-bone hockey rinks and small-town baseball fields, not because they have a rooting interest but for the simple reason that there is a game to be seen.
I’ve always felt there was something special about the basketball nut, the addict who needs a gym like an activist needs a cause.
You can sit right on top of a basketball game — take in every movement, analyze a key possession as if you were Hubie Brown. Basketball does more than clutter your mind; the sweat of a small gym can get into your pores, just from watching.
There are basketball aficionados in Minnesota. And then there is Terry Kunze.
Dennis Fitzpatrick, godfather of the daily game “Noonball” in St. Paul, pal of the late Rick Majerus and a thousand more basketball guys, was asked about Kunze’s standing among Minnesota’s basketball nuts.
“The best,” Fitzpatrick responded. “Full of it, but he knows his ball.”
Kunze was the 6-4 star guard on Duluth Central’s 1961 state championship team. He played for the Gophers, and later for Minnesota Muskies in the one season (1967-68) that they existed as an ABA entry.
He played and coached in Europe, was an assistant for Jim Dutcher with the Gophers, coached the Minnesota Fillies in the Women’s Professional Basketball League, coached at Mora High School and Anoka-Ramsey Community College … and now, 75, his basketball addiction remains in full force.
http://www.startribune.com/an-ode-to-basketball-nuts-and-terry-kunze-the-king-of-em/507979712/
Go Gophers!!