Year graduated
1979
Major accomplishments
Competed in three consecutive state tournament finals; Received the Trester Award for mental attitude at the 1979 finals; Indiana All-Star
Hubie Brown might not remember the incident, but Cam Cameron certainly does. It occurred at a basketball camp in Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke University when Cameron was in the first grade. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention like I should’ve, nodding off in the front row, and the next thing you know a leather basketball hit me right in the head and knocked me over,” said Cameron, former Indiana University quarterback and ex-head football coach of the Hoosiers. Brown, NBA television analyst who then was on Duke’s coaching staff headed by Bucky Waters, threw the ball.
“He got my attention,” said Cameron, now offensive coordinator of the San Diego Chargers. “He said, ‘Cameron, listen up when I’m talking.’ That memory just kind of flashes back in my mind. I do a pretty good job, and have over the years, of staying awake even in the most boring meetings.”
Cameron was introduced to football in the third grade at Durham, and had success early. He helped his team, which played games in the outfield of the Durham Bulls’ baseball stadium; win a state title with a 13-0 record.
In the third grade, Cam’s parents divorced. Four years later he, his older sister Betsy, mother Barbara, and her boyfriend, Tom Harp, moved to Terre Haute, Indiana, where Harp became football coach at Indiana State University. Barbara and Tom were married a year later when Cameron was a student at Honey Creek Junior High School.
It didn’t take Cameron long to become an adopted Hoosier. “When you’re raised by a single mom, life can be a little hectic,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was getting into when I moved to Indiana. One thing everybody would say, It’s a basketball state.’ Boy, it didn’t take me long to figure out what they were talking about.”
Cameron went on to help Terre Haute South advance to the state high school basketball tournament finals three straight years, 1977 through 1979; win the Trester Award as a senior; earn a spot on the 1979 Indiana All-Star team; be offered a football scholarship at Indiana University; and became a member of Bob Knight’s basketball team for three years as a walk-on.
During Cam’s summers in Terre Haute he lived an Indiana boy’s dream. Early in the morning, he would either ride his bike or ride with his stepfather to the ISU arena. He would lift weights, shoot baskets, and throw a football.
“At about two o’clock, Larry Bird would come in from his summer job and start shooting around,” said Cameron. “I was kinda waiting for Larry to get in. I would have the opportunity to play H-O-R-S-E with him almost every day, which was really a treat. Then at about 3:30, all the Indiana State players would come from their summer jobs and meet at the arena. Usually Larry or one of the coaches would pick the teams. They always needed a 10th guy, so they let me play. We played from four to six Monday through Thursday. That’s where I developed as a player.”
Although he is one of the few Indiana basketball players ever to make it to the state finals three years in a row, Cameron never won a championship. South lost to East Chicago Washington, 66-45, in the first game of the 1977 tournament; to Muncie Central, 65-64, in overtime in the title game of the 1978; and to Muncie Central again, 60-55, in overtime in the second game of the 1979 tournament.
Of those three successive appearances in Market Square Arena at Indianapolis, Cameron said, “As I look at the success I was able to have personally, it was directly related to the kind of teammates I had. Richard Wilson and I were on all three of those teams. He’s not a guy who gets talked about a lot. He probably was one of the most talented guys to come out of Terre Haute. He started as a sophomore, and I came off the bench as the sixth man. We only had one senior on that ‘77 team, a guy named Mike Joyner, who led our team. He was killed a year later in the Evansville plane crash.”
Cameron recalls 1978 as a memorable year. “We played Washington and Steve Bouchie, who was Mr. Basketball in 1979, in the semistate at Evansville. It was probably the greatest game I’ve ever been associated with. They were 25-0, and No. 1 in state. We were down like 12 points with two or three minutes to go, and came back to win.”
In that year’s title game, Wilson had the fans on their feet. His field goal from the 10-second line sent the game into overtime, tied 62-62. He connected again from far out in the last two seconds of overtime, making the score 65-64. South called time out with one second left. The Bearcats threw the ball away, and South’s Tony Watson took a shot from midcourt with one second left that missed.
“You know what beat us [in the title game]?” said Cameron. “Merrillville beat the tar out of us in the first game. Wilson and Kevin Thompson both had to go to the hospital between games. A lot of people don’t know that. Kevin hurt his back and Richard had a rib injury. I think we played a courageous game at night, but we didn’t play as well as we could. And Jackie Moore just ran circles around us [scoring 27 points for his team].”
After South lost to the Bearcats again in the ‘79 state finals, Cameron thought the family might head home to Terre Haute before the title game the Bearcats won, 64-60, over Anderson, because the players were exhausted. Instead, he wound up accepting the Trester Award.
“That’s the only award you would see if you came to my house [in Coronado, California],” Cameron said with obvious pride.
After graduation from South, Cameron received an appointment to the Naval Academy to play football and basketball. He was also recruited by Nebraska and Michigan State for basketball, but opted to accept coach Lee Corso’s offer of a football scholarship to Indiana University.
The lure of playing basketball in Assembly Hall didn’t diminish, however, and after Cam’s sophomore football season he went to Corso and said he would like to see if Knight would let him try out for basketball.
“You want to be a coach, and what better person would there be to learn from,” were Corso’s encouraging words.
It took three trips to Knight’s office before the coach looked Cameron in the eye and said, “It’s just not gonna work. I’ve never brought a guy from the outside on the team during the season.”
Cameron told Knight he would be ready if the coach needed him. Knight told Cameron that if something did happen, “We’ll call you.”
Something did happen some 10 days later. One of the players, Rick Rowray, broke his arm in practice on a Sunday. Cameron waited anxiously for his phone to ring on Monday, and finally it did. Assistant coach Jim Crews invited Cameron to come out for the team. Cameron was at practice at 2:30 p.m., and even got to play about 12 minutes at Kentucky the following Thursday.
“We got killed, and that’s why I got to play,” laughed Cam. In his first two years with Knight, Cameron played in 30 games and scored 33 points, all significant totals to the native Tar Heel.
After Cameron’s junior season in football, Corso got fired and Sam Wyche replaced him. “It’s funny,” said Cam. “People mention I’m a football guy. Going into my fifth year, Coach Knight was going to put me on basketball scholarship, and I was not going to play football. When Wyche got hired, Coach Knight said, ‘You might be able to learn something from this guy’ Taking Knight’s advice was one of the best moves I ever made. Unfortunately I got hurt in the next-to-last game of the season.”
Because he had to wear a knee brace, Cameron could not play basketball his final season at IU, but he remained with the team. He treasures that season because he met Knight’s stipulation that fifth-year players had to have completed their undergraduate courses, and be working on their Master’s, and because Knight steered him to a doctor the coach said was the best in the world for knee surgery.
“Knight also said, ‘Just because you’re hurt, the expectations on you are no different,’” stated Cameron. “‘You’re to be at every meeting, every practice, you’ll make the trips, and we expect you, as a senior, to help lead this basketball team.’ It was a great feeling to still be able to contribute. Steve Alford was a freshman that year, and we beat North Carolina in the NCAA Mideast Regional at Atlanta when they had Michael Jordan.
“I had a phenomenal experience with Coach Knight. What he did for me in my personal life, the discipline to my life, and the things he taught me were just tremendous. It’s nice to still have that friendship to this day.”
Cameron is trying to instill the positive things he learned from all of his coaches in Hoosierland—Don McDonald, basketball at Honey Creek Junior High; Gordon Neff, South basketball; Bob Clements, South football; Corso, Wyche and Knight—-and in the four children that he and his wife, Missy, have: Tommy, 12; Danny, 10; Christopher, eight; and Elizabeth, five.
“I consider it a privilege to have been a part of Indiana high school basketball,” he said. “It’s unique. Everywhere I go people talk about the movie Hoosiers. I did live that movie other than we didn’t win the state championship like Milan did.”