[J. R. VanHoose]

I mean this with repect if you are truly J.R. Vanhoose I think you would do just fine.
You were rock solid in the way you played on the court .(There was no reason for you not being at UK,but you did quite well for yourself.)And the way you carried yourself of the court.

I do appreciate that, and yes it is really me. I think polls/posts like this are very funny. In my opinion, it is very hard to compare players from different decades with each other, the game changes (style, rules, competition, etc) but yet it stays very much the same. I have great respect for Todd, I know him quite well, but to compare me to him is ridiculous. We played against different competition, had different teammates, played in different eras, etc. I think the one thing we do have in common is that we played for the same coach, Greg White (Todd at Pikeville College, me at Marshall) so I guess he would be the only one qualified to give an answer on this subject.

In my case, I was not out to be an "individual" star, I was always brought up to be a team player and playing under Coach Runyon, that was the way things were done. People seem to forget, yes I did have over 3,000 pts., and 2,000 rbs., but I also played with great teammates that were good in their own right. Bryan Lyon - 2,000 pt scorer; Craig Ratliff - 2,000 pt scorer, All-State player; Josh McKenzie - 1,500 pt scorer, All-State player; and Todd Tackett - 2,500 pt scorer, All-State player. Playing with players like that, I didn't have to go out and score 40 or grab 20 rebounds every night. We were concerned about winning and I am proud to say that we did a lot of that and that is something that no one can take from us. The individual things, I could live without, people tend to forget things like that anyway, but in my older years, I now appreciate the things we won as a team more than I did at the time. Those are the special things I remember!