Year graduated
1971
Major accomplishments
Sank all 24 of his free throws in the sectional; Indiana All-Star; Indiana Basketball Hall of Famer
Monte Towe remembers vividly the night he and his late father, Corwin, walked out of the Oak Hill High School gym after watching the Golden Eagles play a basketball game. Towe wasn’t more than 4-foot-6 at the time.
“My father was always my greatest fan,” said Towe, who returned to his alma mater, North Carolina State, as associate coach in the summer of 2006 after five years as the coach at the University of New Orleans. “He also was my biggest critic. I had just watched Earl Brown play for Oak Hill. He was 6-foot-7 and really good. He played at Purdue in the ‘60s. I said, £Dad, am I ever going to be as tall as Earl Brown?’ He said, ‘No, but you can be as good.’” Towe never came close to equaling Brown in height, but he may have accomplished more at a mere 5-foot-7 in football, basketball, and baseball than any other Indiana athlete. Indianapolis Lawrence North High School coach Jack Keefer, Towe’s freshman coach at Oak Hill, was not surprised by Towe’s feats.
“He’s one mighty person,” said Keefer. “Monte was kind of a Michael Jordan-type, a very competitive person. I remember a JV basketball game at Wabash when Monte was probably about 5-foot-4. You didn’t win very often there, and we were behind. Monte started crying, and every time he crossed the 10-second line, he’d just shoot it and the ball would go in. We ended up winning. Soon afterward he went to the varsity.”
Towe grew up in Converse, Indiana, the youngest of four children of Corwin and Frances Towe. “Converse was, and remains, a town of about 1,000 people,” he said. “The excitement in Converse always seemed like it revolved around the fish fries, the church camps, and basketball—sports in general. If we weren’t playing football, we were playing basketball; and if we weren’t playing basketball, we were playing home run derby. I have a great brother and two great sisters who steered me in the right direction. It was a real positive environment to grow up in.”
Knowing that you are going to be small can be a huge motivational tool, especially if you love sports the way Towe, who became known as “The Flea” in high school, does.
“I was always challenged,” he said. “If you’re standing around the playground as a young kid, the big guys usually get chosen first and the little guys last. It certainly made me aware that I was going to have to do something a little bit special to catch the attention of my coaches and the people I was going to have to impress.”
One of the best pieces of advice Towe ever received came from one of his first coaches, Dave Huffman. He told Towe that he had to learn to get his shot off quickly because of his height; he also suggested shooting over a ladder during the summer. The ladder was almost 7 feet tall, and Towe was around four foot.
“All I did that summer was go home and shoot up over that ladder,” Towe said. “I give credit to the guys who encouraged me to play, and who tried to help me. When I give clinics and talks, I always mention the name of my high school football coach, Jim Law, as being one of the greatest influences on me as far as a person, and as far as being an athlete.” Law went into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame in 2005.
In Towe’s sophomore and junior seasons, the Golden Eagles lost to Marion in the sectional. “We played against what has to be one of the best high school teams in Indiana never to win the state championship, that Marion team of 1969,” he said. “It had Joe Sutter, Cutty Townsend, and Jovon Price. They lost to Indianapolis Washington in the afternoon of the state finals.
“We beat the Giants in Marion in front of about 6,000 people in one of the best wins ever for Oak Hill. We were a Milan-esque team from a really small town. We got beat by Elkhart in the semistate. What an exciting time for me and my teammates and the whole Oak Hill community, because both our football and basketball teams were outstanding.”
Towe scored 96 points in three sectional games in 1971, and sank all 24 of his free throws. Dick Dickey, a Hoosier native who was one of coach Everett Case’s first recruits at N.C. State in the 1940s, touted Towe to coach Norm Sloan of the Wolfpack. Dickey had found Towe when he went to scout Steve Ahlfeld of Northfield. It didn’t take long to switch his attention to one of Northfield’s opponents. Sloan, a teammate of Dickey’s at State as well as a Hoosier native, became sold on Towe.
How did David Thompson, 6-foot-4, and Tom Burleson, 7-foot-4, react to seeing the 5-foot-7 Towe for the first time?
“They thought I was somebody’s little brother,” said Towe. “They’d heard that Coach Sloan had signed a little guy from Indiana. Nobody knew who I was. I don’t think anybody expected me to do anything. But it seemed like from the day we first met we really meshed.”
In Towe’s sophomore season, the Wolfpack was on probation and couldn’t play in the NCAA tournament. The team went 27-0. “I think the sanctions were way too harsh for whatever was out there,” he said. “The only thing we could do was win every game we played.”
The next season State went 30-1, its only loss being 84-66 early to UCLA and Bill Walton in St. Louis. “I think it motivated us to go on and have a great rest of the year,” said Towe.
State was undefeated in the ACC regular season in Towe’s sophomore and junior seasons, but had to win the 1974 ACC tournament to qualify for the NCAA tournament; at the time, only the conference champion made it to the tournament. State beat Maryland, 103-100, in overtime in what many observers believe was one of the best college games ever played.
“The pressure in that game was incredible,” said Towe. “Now when you go to the ACC or Big Ten tournament there’s five or six teams making the NCAA tournament. Maryland had a great team—John Lucas, Lenny Elmore, Tom McMillen; Lefty Driesell was their coach. It was probably the best individual game I’ve ever seen a guy play. Tommy Burleson was dominant with 38 points.”
The Wolfpack defeated Providence, 92-78, and Pittsburgh, 100-72, to win the Eastern Regional at Raleigh, North Carolina, and earn a rematch with UCLA in the Final Four at Greensboro, North Carolina. State ended
UCLA’s string of seven consecutive NCAA championships in the semifinal round, 80-77, in two overtimes.
“Being in Greensboro definitely had a positive effect on us,” said Towe. “But we were motivated to win no matter where we played. UCLA was still good, and they were seven points ahead in the second overtime, but we were able to overcome that in the last two minutes. Obviously, John Wooden, their coach and a great champion, and Bill Walton, Keith Wilkes, and David Meyers made them a formidable opponent; but we were able to get a great win for the Wolfpack.”
Sloan didn’t allow the Wolfpack to have a letdown in the championship game, and State defeated Marquette, 76-64, to earn the school its first NCAA title. Towe had 16 points in that game, and was named all-tourney.
“After the game I just sat on the bench and soaked up the moment,” he said. “I enjoyed the pinnacle of a college basketball player’s career, winning a national championship.”
A few months later the Wolfpack baseball team won the ACC tournament, and Towe and another Hoosier, Tim Stoddard, went to Omaha, Nebraska, for the College World Series. State was eliminated in two games.
“Tim and I were major players in basketball and baseball,” said Towe. “Tim was a power forward in basketball, and he pitched 10 years in the major leagues. He has a World Series championship ring. Tim’s also a great winner.”
The NBA Atlanta Hawks drafted Towe, but coach Larry Brown of the Denver Nuggets in the ABA offered him a no-cut contract. Towe played the last year of the ABA and one year in the NBA. Denver lost to the New York Nets in the ABA championship series, and to eventual NBA champion Portland in the playoffs the following year.
“Even though maybe I wasn’t nearly as important when I played in Denver as I was when I played at N.C. State, I still was very proud of the fact I was on a team that won a lot,” said Towe.
The 2005-2006 college season was difficult for Towe and his team after Hurricane Katrina forced them to move to the University of Texas at Tyler. Of the disaster, he said, “I feel fortunate that we made it through Katrina without any deaths or other tragedies. I wish the storm had never hit, but the important thing is we were together as a team, and I’m together with my wife. I tell my players it’s a matter of opportunity. I wouldn’t have been able to be an NCAA champion without Dick Dickey and Norm Sloan. Even though he’s dead, Norm still remains my favorite guy of all-time.”