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Former Salisbury High basketball star Leonard Owens’ mom has already had the satellite dish installed. She’s subscribed to all the channels that promise to deliver Western college hoops. And the big-screen television stands ready to show hordes of friends and family the pictures.
Owens, who will play for the University of Texas at El Paso in 2000-01, smiles and says he’s more than ready to be part of the show. After two years of relative obscurity at Western Nebraska Junior College, Owens won’t mind logging a little camera time as a junior swingman for Jason Rabedeaux’s Miners.
“All my friends say they’re ready to see me on TV,” says a laughing Owens.
He’ll be there. UTEP will visit fun, high-profile places this winter like “The Pit” in Albuquerque, N.M. And he’ll be playing in the Western Athletic Conference, which means he’ll enjoy home-and-home encounters with people like national power Tulsa and Hawaii.
Hawaii?
“Yeah, Hawaii,” says Owens cheerfully.
UTEP is the big-time. It’s in a legendary league where the hoops fans are absolutely insane. Average attendance is better than 10,000 per game in the wacky WAC, where partisans have been known to paint their faces and throw things.
There’s also a truckload of tradition. Back in 1966, when UTEP was known as Texas Western, the school won the national championship, emerging from a Final Four that included Kentucky, Duke and Utah to win the big prize.
But the 6-foot-6 Owens, who figures to see most of his minutes as a shooting guard, isn’t concerned so much about the past as the future.
His looks bright.
He left Salisbury two years ago weighing a scrawny 165 pounds. He’ll carry a relatively robust 190 into the Division I wars and hopes to hit 205 in another two years.
“There’s two big differences between me now and when I was at Salisbury High,” says Owens. “I play a lot more physical and I play harder.”
Not that Owens was a slouch at Salisbury. He was the Christmas Tournament MVPfor the champion Hornets in ‘97 and a two-time all-county player for former Hornets coach Sam Gealy. Owens stands eighth in career scoring at the school with 915 points.
One of Gealy’s last acts as Hornets coach was to see that Owens got on the plane for Western Nebraska, the same junior college that served as a midway point on Bobby Jackson’s journey from Salisbury to the University of Minnesota. Western’s coach, “Soupy”Campbell, is a Catawba grad and a long-time friend of Gealy.
Owens says it was no picnic on the Great Plains, but he survived in a venue where there’s nothing much to do but study, shoot hoops and gaze out the window at the Platte River and Highway 26. When people in North Carolina think of Nebraska they usually think of the middle of the country. But Owens was way out west. Wyoming was right down the street.
“There’s two small towns (Scottsbluff and Gering) where I was,” says Owens. “Close together like Salisbury and East Spencer. And really it was good that there wasn’t much going on. That helped me work on my GPA (grade point average). I got it up to a 2.8. I grew up quick out there, so I think things worked out fine.”
Western made the national JUCO tourney Owens’ first season before missing out on a buzzer-beater this past season. But Owens had a nice sophomore year. He averaged 13.4 points, 5.6 rebounds and 3.3 assists in a solid all-round performance. He shot 49 percent from the field and 37 percent on 3s, attracting the attention of a number of D-I powers.
Owens says he heard from N.C. State, Texas A&M, Colorado and Kansas State, but it was UTEP that contacted him earliest and was the most persistent.
“I took a visit to UTEP and liked the school,” says Owens. “They’ve got a program with a good coach (35-year-old former Oklahoma assistant Jason Rabedeaux) and a lot of good young players. They’ve also got a good business program and that’s what I want to study.”
Owens has been staying in shape this summer playing ball in Salisbury and Charlotte. That’s given him a chance to see old friends and teammates as well as his mentors at Salisbury High, Gealy and current coach Drew Mathews.
“They’re all proud of me,” says Owens. “Especially Mrs. Gealy.”
In a couple of weeks, Owens, his hoop dreams still intact, will leave for El Paso to get started in school. He’s confident that he’s ready for anything and everything.
“I know I’m more prepared than I would have been two years ago,” he says. “Coach Campbell really taught me a lot and going in as a junior I’ll be older and stronger than the freshmen.”
Sounds like satellite time is just around the corner.
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