Rick Calloway may be one of the most forgotten great players in KU history since he only played at KU one season (1989-90) after transferring from Indiana and head coach Bob Knight, where he played three years and won a national title in 1987.
I had a very revealing Where are they now? interview with Rick in January 2001, where he talked about what led him to pick KU, his decision to transfer from IU and his great memories of being a Jayhawk.
Calloway had a very distinguished career at Indiana, where he scored 1,073 points in 84 games (12.8 ppg) while averaging 4.5 rebounds per game. The 6-6 quick small forward was named 1986 Big Ten Freshman of the Year and freshman All-American by the Sporting News, averaging career-highs 13.9 points and 4.9 rebounds per game. He was selected Honorable Mention All-Big 10 as a freshman and sophomore, while named second-team All-Big Conference his junior season. Calloway, who scored a career-high 26 points versus Idaho his freshman year, shot 52.3 percent from the field and 69.4 percent from the charity stripe for his career while averaging 29.7 minutes per game.
He scored the winning basket in a 77-76 win over LSU in the 1987 Midwest Regional Championship, and recorded career-highs with 13 rebounds and Minnesota and Auburn in that NCAA Tournament.
Unfortunately, he broke his wrist in the ‘87 national final game against Syracuse.
Calloway, who scored in double digits 19 games as as sophomore, arrived at IU after a sensational career at Winthrow High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, averaging 29.5 points and 13.5 boards per game his senior year, earning Ohio class 3A Player of the year and named a McDonald’s and Parade All-American. Calloway was co-MVP of the Capital Classic All-Star game, scoring 24 points. He also lettered in football and track in high school.
He then competed for KU coach Larry Brown at the National Sports Festival in Houston with KU players Danny Manning and Sean Alvarado, winning the gold medal while named to the All-Tournament team averaging 15.2 points per game.
Calloway also traveled to Taiwan in 1986 as a member of the USA team in the Jones Cup.
After redshirting the 1988-89 season upon transferring, there were high expectations for this former Indiana star and McDonald’s All-American. Before the 1989-90 season, KU coach Roy Williams tried to temper the hype.
“I’m glad Rick Calloway is here,” Williams said. “I hope people don’t make him out to be a savior. Rick is a fine basketball player, but he can’t pick it up on his shoulders and take this team to the so-called promised land by himself. He knows that he has been out of competitive game-like situations for over a year and a half. He’s a hard worker, and that’s what I like about him.”
Calloway prepared for his last college season by playing for the Big Eight Conference select team in the summer of 1989 in Australia. He was the team’s second-leading scorer (13.1 ppg) while scoring 23 points versus Hobart, the highest single-game mark for any Big Eight player.
He then made an instant impact at KU during the 1989-90 season (KU went 30-5 and bounced in and out of the No. 1 and No. 2 spots in America most of the year), starting all 35 games and averaging 13.1 points, 4.3 rebounds, 2.97 steals, 1.4 steals (No. 9 in Big Eight) in 23.9 minutes per game, while shooting an impressive 54.4 percent from the field (No. 9 in Big 8 with 55.7 effective field goal percentage) and 73.4 percent at the charity stripe. He scored a season-high 22 points (9-10 FG) against Robert Morris in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Calloway told me he transferred from IU since coach Bob Knight reduced his playing time and benched him in the Hoosiers’ first-round NCAA Tournament loss against Richmond in 1988.
“He yelled and screamed all the time, which wasn’t a problem,” Calloway said. “As long as I played and got my minutes, I didn't have a problem with that. The problems came when he started benching me and taking away my minutes. I just thought that where I wanted to go as a player, I needed to go somewhere where I could be on the floor.”
Calloway, though, candidly admitted he wasn’t crazy about Knight’s verbal abuse.
“It’s not that I was unhappy, I just felt he had mistreated so many people, although he did a lot of good for a lot of people, too,” Calloway said. “(The) game passed him by. ... When you look at 18, 19, 20-year old kids and you’re verbally abusing them on a consistent basis, that has to leave some type of mental scars on you later on in life. Just like a parent that mentally abuses a kid, that has to stick with them. If you got somebody telling you every day, ‘You’re no good, you won’t ever be any good, worse player I’ve ever coached,’ just stuff like that, after that, you might start to believe it.”
During Calloway’s senior year at KU in February 1990, NBA Director of Scouting commented on Calloway and teammate Kevin Pritchard.
“I think they’ll both be drafted,” Blake said. “Calloway has been outstanding. I like ‘em both, especially Calloway.”
Calloway ended up going undrafted, but played one year in the NBA for Sacramento under head coach Dick Motta in 1990-91. He averaged 3.2 points, 1.2 rebounds and 1.0 assists in 64 games (10.6 minutes per contest), while shooting 39.1 percent from the field and 69.6 at the free throw line.
Here is my 2001 Where are they Now? story on Rick Calloway, one of the best transfers in KU history. He should never be forgotten by Jayhawk fans.
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Rick Calloway’s journey to KU began during the summer of 1985 at the National Sports Festival in Houston, Texas. Calloway, a high school McDonald’s All-American and incoming freshman at Indiana, teamed with KU coach Larry Brown and Danny Manning to win the gold medal.
“He (Brown) told me if things didn’t work out (at Indiana), to give him a call,” Calloway recalled recently from his home in Houston.
Actually, Calloway’s first two seasons at IU under Bobby Knight were pretty successful. He was Big 10 freshman of the year and then started on Indiana’s national championship team in 1987. However, Calloway suddenly found himself in Knight’s doghouse the following season and was benched in IU’s first round loss in the 1988 NCAA Tournament.
“I just thought that where I wanted to go as a player, I needed to go somewhere where I could be on the floor,” Calloway said.
And that place was Kansas.
He took Brown up on his offer three years earlier and called the KU mentor. Just one month after KU had won the national championship in April, 1988, Calloway arrived in Lawrence with high expectations of beginning a new career. Little did he know at the time that Brown would quickly take the head-coaching position with the San Antonio Spurs.
“I was definitely disappointed because I came there to play for coach Brown,” Calloway said. “But I also came to play for the program, because I did want to go to a top-notch program. They had just won the national championship, so it doesn’t get any better than that.”
After Roy Williams became the new KU coach in July, he soon had a meeting with the star transfer.
“I told him I was not interested in leaving,” Calloway said. "We hit off pretty well and I decided to stay. ... I kind of felt like I was at home already.”
Calloway, who sat out the 1988-89 season under the NCAA four-year school transfer rule, immediately found his home in the starting lineup the following year. An athletic, slashing 6-foot-6 forward, he’ll never forget beginning the season knocking off the top two ranked teams in the country (UNLV and LSU) and winning 19 consecutive games.
However, Calloway’s senior season (13.1 ppg) and college career ended on a bitter note, when his 15-foot baseline jumper in the final seconds came up just short in KU’s second-round loss to UCLA in the NCAA Tournament.
“I was very disappointed because I’ve made that shot in my sleep,” Calloway said. “Nine times out of 10, I make that shot. But unfortunately, it didn’t fall for me. ... I thought we could have made it to the Final Four.”
Despite losing the game, Calloway cherishes his memories of playing for Williams at Kansas.
“The experience was great. Coach Williams yelling — I don’t even call that yelling after being at Indiana for three years,” Calloway said, laughing. “He was tough but fair, and that’s all you want. And when you did something wrong, he told you what you did wrong so you could fix it. Coach Knight would pull you out of the game, and he wouldn’t tell you why so you wouldn’t know what you did wrong to try to correct it in practice or the next game. Coach Williams, he was honest. Physically, practice was a lot harder than at Indiana. But it was a lot easier mentally.”
Calloway added that he felt like part of the “family” at KU, unlike his days at IU.
“At Indiana, it felt like it was more of a business,” he said. “Things were so tense and so tight all the time because of coach Knight. At KU, we were relaxed. All the guys hung out together. I just thought we were more of a family. That was a big change for me.”
After leaving “home” in 1990, Calloway went undrafted but eventually signed with the Sacramento Kings. He played the entire year in Sacramento, and scored a career-high 22 points vs. Seattle.
“Of course, my dream was to play (NBA) and I did,” Calloway said. “I played very well.”
Calloway, who spent the next season with Albany (Ga.) in a newly formed professional basketball league, took his skills overseas for six years playing in Argentina, Turkey, Israel, France and Poland.
“Every year, I played in a different country,” Calloway said. “I loved it, because I love to travel. A lot of people can’t deal with being overseas, but it didn’t bother me. ... My wife would come over and we would do a lot of sightseeing and things like that. When I played in Israel, we went to Egypt and saw where Jesus walked. It was nice.”
Calloway decided to take a year off after 1997 and returned home to Houston (he moved there in 1993) with his wife. He eventually started his own swimming pool business (REDC Pools), which builds pools, repairs them, and does regular maintenance. He loves being his own boss, despite the long 65-to-70 hour work weeks.
“It’s wonderful, especially in Houston because it doesn’t get cold, so people use their pools year round,” he said. “Business is really good.”
And life couldn’t be better for the former KU standout. Living in Houston, Calloway has come full circle since he first made his Jayhawk connections with Brown almost 16 years ago in the National Sports Festival in Texas. Asked if he’d trade his NCAA title and three seasons at IU for four years at Kansas, Calloway doesn’t hesitate.
“Yeah, if I would have played there four years with the guys, I definitely think we would have won the championship,” he replied. “If I could have done it all over again...I definitely wish I could have played at KU a lot longer. I’m a Jayhawk.”
A Closer Look at Rick Calloway:
Years at KU: 1988-’90 (sat out the 88-89 season after transferring from Indiana)
Career Notables: 1990 UPI All-Transfer team...Co-UPI Newcomer of the Year...scored season-high 22 points (9-10 FG) vs. Robert Morris in first round of NCAA Tournament...1986 Big 10 Freshman of the Year at Indiana and freshman All-American by the Sporting News...Member of IU’s ‘87 national championship team.
Family: Calloway has a wife, Nancy (she has a 14-year-old daughter, April, from a previous marriage).
Education: Calloway will receive a communications degree this summer after completing two correspondence courses.
Since Leaving KU: Calloway played a year with the Sacramento Kings and one season with Albany (Ga.) in a newly formed professional league. He then spent six years playing overseas before returning home to Houston in 1997.
Currently: Calloway owns a swimming pool company (REDC Pools).
Hobbies: golf, coaching JV boys high school basketball team.
Favorite Memories: “Family atmosphere.” ...“Midnight Madness”... Crushing Kentucky 150-95: “That’s probably as good as we played. That game was awesome.” The fan support: “The students were real important. At Indiana, it was more of an alumni crowd. But at KU, the students were right down on the floor behind the basket. It felt more like a college town.”
On the Jayhawks Today: “I try to catch as many games as I can. ... I look for them to do great things in the (NCAA) Tournament this year. Coach Williams deserves a championship.”
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