Cooper Land article
Nov 16, 2007 8:01:48 GMT -5
Post by Tipp City Raider on Nov 16, 2007 8:01:48 GMT -5
Tom Archdeacon: A tall Texan hopes to help Raiders
By Tom Archdeacon
the Dayton Daily News
Friday, November 16, 2007
Add some winning notes and a whole tune can change.
Cooper Land knows that first hand:
"It kinda got old down there whenever people asked me where I was going and I said, 'Wright State.'
"They'd always say, 'Wheeeeere?' "
He was talking about back home — at Marcus High School in Highland Village, Texas, just outside Dallas — in a state where football is king and a hoops team from the Horizon League isn't even on the horizon.
Truthfully, though, Land knew he couldn't get too riled about his friends' lack of recognition. When he got his first recruiting letter from the Raiders — actually, he said he initially got 40 Wright State letters all at once — he didn't have a clue about the school, the city or even the state it was in.
"Before they recruited me, I'd never heard of them," the Raiders' 6-foot-8 freshman forward admitted ever so candidly before a practice session for Monday's season opener against Coastal Carolina at the Nutter Center.
"I asked my dad about Wright State and at first he said, 'Aaah ... I think they're Division I, but I'm not sure.' And he's a guy who knows a lot about college basketball."
Dad's a resource
In fact, Bill Land and his son Cooper know more about a lot of sports than most fathers and sons.
Bill is the TV play-by-play voice, not only of San Antonio Spurs' broadcasts, but of several Big 12 Conference events — especially football and basketball — for Fox Sports Net.
And that's enabled Cooper — a ball boy at Oral Roberts University when the family initially lived in Tulsa — to sometimes tag along with his dad:
It's meant visiting the Spurs' dressing room after games, spending football Saturdays in places like Norman, Okla., and Lincoln, Neb., and Boulder, Colo., keeping stats for Bill in broadcast booths across the Big 12 and, last year, going to the NBA Finals and a few NCAA tournament games.
With all that as backdrop, Land had some basis which to compare Wright State and the other schools who were recruiting him.
"I ended up getting 12 Division offers from places like the Tulsa, Lafayette, Furman, Air Force, Bowling Green, SMU, TCU and Texas-San Antonio," he said.
"To find out a little more about Wright State, I Googled them. That's when I learned about the facilities — the Nutter Center and our practice pavilion are like some of the best you'd find in the Big 12.
"My dad also found out about the success Coach (Brad) Brownell and his staff have had everywhere."
And, of course, there were all those letters. "I'd never gotten anything from Wright State until after I got back from a Las Vegas tournament at the end of July before my senior year," Land said. "Then I get like 40 letters in one day. After that I might go a day with nothing, then the next day there'd be six or seven more from them. They just kept coming and a lot of them had little personal notes from Coach Brownell or the staff."
The clincher, he said, was his official visit in October 2006:
"I'd always said from day one I wanted to leave (Texas). Down there everything is football. I wanted to be somewhere where basketball was really important, where it was THE sport.
"When I visited here, I could see it was. This is a great basketball city, a great sports area. I walked around campus on the Monday of my visit and must have seen a couple of thousand Bengals jerseys. And Ohio State stuff always is everywhere.
"By the time I left, I knew I wanted to come here."
And the Raiders were similarly sold on him. Although he still needs to beef up from his 215 pounds and improve his defense to go with what Brownell calls "a tremendous shooting touch," Land had one thing the coach loved:
"Every time I talked to him, I was impressed at the way he handled himself and with the passion he had for basketball."
Land also has a sense of humor.
While he comes from a sports family — Dad's a former college basketball player, Gayle, his mom, was a girls' high school basketball and volleyball coach in Oklahoma, older brother Taylor is a basketball player and baseball pitcher for St. Edward's, a Division II school in Austin — no one has the kind of height he does.
"I don't know," Land laughed, "maybe it's because I was born under those power lines back home."
'I started dreaming'
As electrifying moments go, Land said some of the best have come when he's accompanied his dad:
"I think it's helped me a lot. I've been able to hang around and watch the big events and hear some of the stories first hand. I've gotten a chance to see guys who are the very best at what they do. I've seen how they carried themselves, how they worked."
Along the way he's developed a solid work ethic of his own.
Last spring, the Spurs' strength coach gave him a workout regimen to use until he got to college. Land followed it religiously, in part, because he couldn't wait to join the Raiders' program.
"After I took my visit here and met all the guys, it was fun to root for them as the season went along," he said. "I used the Internet and watched a couple of games on the Horizon League Network.
"I was kind of shocked when they just kept winning and winning. I started dreaming, a little crazy maybe, 'Yeah, that could be me next year.'
"Then came that game on national television — when they won the Horizon League tournament to get into the NCAA tournament. I was going nuts and I must have gotten a thousand text messages afterward.
"People all saying, 'Looks like you made a great decision.' "
www.daytondailynews.com/s/content/oh/story/sports/college/wsu/2007/11/16/ddn111607arch.html
By Tom Archdeacon
the Dayton Daily News
Friday, November 16, 2007
Add some winning notes and a whole tune can change.
Cooper Land knows that first hand:
"It kinda got old down there whenever people asked me where I was going and I said, 'Wright State.'
"They'd always say, 'Wheeeeere?' "
He was talking about back home — at Marcus High School in Highland Village, Texas, just outside Dallas — in a state where football is king and a hoops team from the Horizon League isn't even on the horizon.
Truthfully, though, Land knew he couldn't get too riled about his friends' lack of recognition. When he got his first recruiting letter from the Raiders — actually, he said he initially got 40 Wright State letters all at once — he didn't have a clue about the school, the city or even the state it was in.
"Before they recruited me, I'd never heard of them," the Raiders' 6-foot-8 freshman forward admitted ever so candidly before a practice session for Monday's season opener against Coastal Carolina at the Nutter Center.
"I asked my dad about Wright State and at first he said, 'Aaah ... I think they're Division I, but I'm not sure.' And he's a guy who knows a lot about college basketball."
Dad's a resource
In fact, Bill Land and his son Cooper know more about a lot of sports than most fathers and sons.
Bill is the TV play-by-play voice, not only of San Antonio Spurs' broadcasts, but of several Big 12 Conference events — especially football and basketball — for Fox Sports Net.
And that's enabled Cooper — a ball boy at Oral Roberts University when the family initially lived in Tulsa — to sometimes tag along with his dad:
It's meant visiting the Spurs' dressing room after games, spending football Saturdays in places like Norman, Okla., and Lincoln, Neb., and Boulder, Colo., keeping stats for Bill in broadcast booths across the Big 12 and, last year, going to the NBA Finals and a few NCAA tournament games.
With all that as backdrop, Land had some basis which to compare Wright State and the other schools who were recruiting him.
"I ended up getting 12 Division offers from places like the Tulsa, Lafayette, Furman, Air Force, Bowling Green, SMU, TCU and Texas-San Antonio," he said.
"To find out a little more about Wright State, I Googled them. That's when I learned about the facilities — the Nutter Center and our practice pavilion are like some of the best you'd find in the Big 12.
"My dad also found out about the success Coach (Brad) Brownell and his staff have had everywhere."
And, of course, there were all those letters. "I'd never gotten anything from Wright State until after I got back from a Las Vegas tournament at the end of July before my senior year," Land said. "Then I get like 40 letters in one day. After that I might go a day with nothing, then the next day there'd be six or seven more from them. They just kept coming and a lot of them had little personal notes from Coach Brownell or the staff."
The clincher, he said, was his official visit in October 2006:
"I'd always said from day one I wanted to leave (Texas). Down there everything is football. I wanted to be somewhere where basketball was really important, where it was THE sport.
"When I visited here, I could see it was. This is a great basketball city, a great sports area. I walked around campus on the Monday of my visit and must have seen a couple of thousand Bengals jerseys. And Ohio State stuff always is everywhere.
"By the time I left, I knew I wanted to come here."
And the Raiders were similarly sold on him. Although he still needs to beef up from his 215 pounds and improve his defense to go with what Brownell calls "a tremendous shooting touch," Land had one thing the coach loved:
"Every time I talked to him, I was impressed at the way he handled himself and with the passion he had for basketball."
Land also has a sense of humor.
While he comes from a sports family — Dad's a former college basketball player, Gayle, his mom, was a girls' high school basketball and volleyball coach in Oklahoma, older brother Taylor is a basketball player and baseball pitcher for St. Edward's, a Division II school in Austin — no one has the kind of height he does.
"I don't know," Land laughed, "maybe it's because I was born under those power lines back home."
'I started dreaming'
As electrifying moments go, Land said some of the best have come when he's accompanied his dad:
"I think it's helped me a lot. I've been able to hang around and watch the big events and hear some of the stories first hand. I've gotten a chance to see guys who are the very best at what they do. I've seen how they carried themselves, how they worked."
Along the way he's developed a solid work ethic of his own.
Last spring, the Spurs' strength coach gave him a workout regimen to use until he got to college. Land followed it religiously, in part, because he couldn't wait to join the Raiders' program.
"After I took my visit here and met all the guys, it was fun to root for them as the season went along," he said. "I used the Internet and watched a couple of games on the Horizon League Network.
"I was kind of shocked when they just kept winning and winning. I started dreaming, a little crazy maybe, 'Yeah, that could be me next year.'
"Then came that game on national television — when they won the Horizon League tournament to get into the NCAA tournament. I was going nuts and I must have gotten a thousand text messages afterward.
"People all saying, 'Looks like you made a great decision.' "
www.daytondailynews.com/s/content/oh/story/sports/college/wsu/2007/11/16/ddn111607arch.html
