|
A
two-time All-America selection and the 1964 and 1965 Southland Conference MVP,
Rook played at Arkansas State from 1961 to 1965 and led ASU in scoring all four
seasons. He
still holds the school records for scoring (2,153 points), points per game (22.9
average) and field goals made (816).
Rook is also in the record books in several other categories, including
rebounding and free throw percentage.
Click here to see Video: Good Shot Form 50 years Later
Another Rook student learning the Famous Jump Shot
Jerry Rook inducted into Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame- Little Rock-02/13/09 Below Article PUBLISHED BY: Arkansas Gazette - Arkansas Online This article was published Sunday, February 1, 2009. ASU’s top scorer still northeast Arkansas kind of guy
LITTLE ROCK — Third in a series of articles profiling individuals who will be induct ed into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame this year. The hall of fame banquet will be held Feb. 13 at Alltel Arena in North Little Rock. Jerry Rook never wanted to stray too far for too long from his comfort zone in northeast Arkansas. So Rook put together a record-breaking career while playing practically in his back yard. Rook, born in Turrell and a Nettleton High School graduate, scored a school-record 2,153 points while playing at Arkansas State from 1961-1965. It is a feat good enough to make him a member of this year’s induction class for the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. “It’s just unbelievable,” said Rook, 65. “I kind of keep up with all that stuff from year to year. I keep thinking I should be on the outside looking in on this thing and not be going in. I sure am going to enjoy it.” Rook amassed his points before the introduction of the three-point line and despite playing two positions for two coaches with two styles. And his scoring record only is the pinnacle of Rook’s accomplishments. He was already a standout for Nettleton, averaging 30.5 points a game his senior year to help the Raiders to a 40-3 record and a victory in the 1961 state championship game against Manila, in which Rook scored 52 points. Rook, a Scholastic Coach All-American at Nettleton, remembers when the elementary, junior and senior high schools were contained to a floor each in an old, three-story building. Rook’s patio at his home near Jonesboro is made of bricks from the old Nettleton gym. Rook said he was considered a “giant” at 6-5, a guard’s size these days, and Nettleton Coach John Hill teamed Rook with 6-4 Jimmy Turman in Nettleton’s double-post offense. “We’d screen away, screen down,” Rook said. “It was similar now to what I think they call a motion offense these days. We could shoot outside also. We had some guards who were very good players, too. We were well balanced.” But Rook was not allowed to attempt the big man’s signature play. “In high school, we couldn’t dunk. It was against the rules,” Rook said. “Of course, we’d sneak some in the warm-ups before the refs got out there.” Legendary coaches Babe Mc-Carthy, at Mississippi State, Glen Rose, at Arkansas, and Adolph Rupp, at Kentucky, tried to coax Rook away from the family poultry farm in Jonesboro run by his father, Aaron “A.L.” Rook. But Jerry couldn’t handle the idea of leaving and opted for Arkansas State. “I’m basically a homebody anyway,” Rook said. Rook would likely have had to sit on the bench with Rupp, at least during his freshman year, and while he regrets missing the chance to study at Rupp’s feet, his career numbers might not be as robust if Rook had gone toKentucky. Instead, Rook opened his Arkansas State career by scoring 416 points in 1961-1962 and averaged 19.8 a game. He was well on his way to his scoring record and finished as Arkansas State’s career field goals leader with 816. Rook is also the all-time leader in free throws and attempts (521 of 657) and has the school’s best career scoring average with 22.9 points a game. Rook was a first-team All-American and the Southland Conference MVP his senior year and helped Arkansas State to consecutive appearances in a smaller-school version of the NCAA Tournament in 1962 and 1963. In Rook’s four seasons, Arkansas State was 61-36, prompting him to utter what are considered fighting words these days. “I think at that particular time we could have played with the University of Arkansas,” Rook said. Rook played two years each for John Rauth - ArkansasState’s longest-tenured coach at 14 seasons - and Marvin Speight, and each saw Rook differently. The jovial Rauth took a conservative approach on the court and used the 6-5 Rook primarily as a post player. As the school’s fourth-leading rebounder with 896, Rook got plenty of secondchance points. Speight, who replaced Rauth in 1963, was less outgoing, but more of an innovator on the court. He moved Rook to the perimeter after Arkansas State signed 6-9 John Dickson, of Jonesboro, and put him in Rook’s spot at the post. From then on, the majority of Rook’s points came from behind where the three-point line would eventually be drawn. Rook led Arkansas State with 633 and 508 points, respectively, his final two years and led the team and the Southland Conference with an average of 25.3 points a game as a junior. “That’s my main weapon, was the jump shot,” Rook said. Rock was drafted by the NBA’s Washington Bullets in 1965, the same year the team took Jerry Sloan as its No. 1 pick. After a one-week camp in Fort Meade, Md., Sloan was the only pick the Bullets kept, and the club urged Rook to get his seasoning on a farm team in Spain. Rook refused. The pull of his home state was too strong. “I was ready to come back to Arkansas,” he said. “If I had it to do over again, I probably would have went to Barcelona, Spain, and played over there.” Instead, Rook sold insurance and coached his alma mater Nettleton for a year while his weight ballooned to 275 pounds. Then the fledgling American Basketball Association came calling, and McCarthy, who had tried to recruit Rook to Mississippi State and now coached the New Orleans Buccaneers, invited Rook to try out as a free agent. Rook slimmed down to 219 pounds, his best playing shape ever, and made the team. He thought he would rejoin Dickson, but Dickson quit New Orleans before Rook showed up. Rook played for the Buccaneers in 1966-1967, then the franchise folded and moved to Memphis and Rook was facing another round of tryouts with what was essentially a new club. He decided he didn’t want to go through the process again, especially after a year of travel in a league where $65,000 was considered top money. Rook recalled a 10-day trip with seven games in a circuit that included Dallas, Pittsburgh and Miami. “The third time around you’d wake up and wonder, ‘Where am I at today?’ ” he said. Rook wanted to wake up each day knowing he was in Arkansas, and he threw himself into what became a 39-year career in education, spending 26 as a coach. He took Nettleton to a state tournament as well as Stuttgart, and spent eight years at Pine Bluff, winning two state championships and an overall title while the Zebras finished as the state runners-up once. While at Pine Bluff, Rook coached Razorbacks star U.S. Reed, who would go on to fame for his 49-foot buzzer-beater that lifted the Hogs past Louisville in the 1981 NCAA Tournament. “We had some great teams and some great fun and good memories there,” Rook said of Pine Bluff. Rook also coached private school teams and ran a restaurant in Pine Bluff before northeast Arkansas called him home and he took a job at Brookland. He recently retired after serving as Brookland’s athletic director, and Rook still drives a bus for the school system mornings and evenings. “I enjoy being around the kids still,” Rook said. “It’s kind of hard to break away from it. You stop and think, I did that for 39 years.” But then, Rook’s heart was always with his home state and its schools. It’s why Jonesboro was more appealing than Kentucky, why Nettleton was more attractive than Barcelona and why places like Stuttgart, Pine Bluff and Brookland had more to offer than any major city on a pro basketball circuit. It’s why Rook is proudest not of his Arkansas State scoring records but the school’s transition from a teacher’s college to a full fledged university not long after he graduated. And it’s why Rook has that patio made of bricks from the old Nettleton gym in which he used to play. After all, he has always liked things better in his back yard. “I was born and raised in Arkansas, and that’s just where I wanted to stay,” Rook said. “That’s where I wanted to be, and that’s where I’ve been.” This article was published Sunday, February 1, 2009.Arkansas Democrat Gazette Sports, Pages 27 on 02/01/2009
Below Article PUBLISHED BY: JONESBORO SUN This article was published February 2009.
ASU’s
all-time leading scorer, Jerry Rook, set to join Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame Sun staff writer JONESBORO — A persistent rain fell outside Raider Gym on Tuesday as Jerry Rook talked about the jump shot that made him a legend among Northeast Arkansas basketball fans. Such conditions would deter most players from practicing outdoors. When Rook was honing his remarkable skills in the 1950s and 1960s, he didn’t mind shooting on rainy or even snowy days. “I would work two hours on my shooting regardless of weather,” Rook said. “I’ve shot many a day in the rain outside when it was just me. I’d wait, and then I’d just go ahead and shoot. I had a good outdoor basketball and I’d shoot two hours every day. “I’d never leave a spot with a miss. If I shot the basketball from 12 feet on the right side and I missed it, I would go back to the same spot and I would make it.” Hour after hour Rook fired jumpers at the goal his father put on an oak tree outside the family home, developing accuracy and range that would stand out in any era. Rook graduated from Nettleton High School in 1961 as an All-American. He left Arkansas State University in 1965 as a 2-time All-American. He later played in the American Basketball Association before returning to his home state to become a successful high school coach. And Friday night in North Little Rock, he will be recognized as one of the state’s sports legends with his induction into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, an honor that caught Rook by surprise when Hall of Fame director Ray Tucker called to break the news. “He said, ‘Congratulations on being selected for the Hall of Fame.’ I said, ‘Say that one more time, Ray, please. Slow,’” Rook said. “I proceeded to tell him that I felt like that was a great place and I admired everyone who was there, but I felt like I would always be on the outside looking in. It’s a tremendous honor.” Others wonder why Rook had to wait so long to be inducted. “He should have been in a long time ago,” said Mike Dungan, who played against Rook in high school and was one of his teammates at ASU. “There’s nobody who came out of Arkansas State that did more for their team.” No one else has scored as many points for ASU as Rook did from 1961-65. Rook remains the school’s career leader in points scored (2,153), field goals (816), free throws made (521), free throws attempted (657) and scoring average (22.9 points per game). He was a second-team All-America selection in 1964, a first-team All-American in 1965. At 6-foot-5 and 225 pounds, Rook had the physique to mix it up inside. He grabbed 896 rebounds in four seasons at ASU, a total that still ranks fourth on the school’s career list. “In many ways he was ahead of his time in his ability to play inside and outside,” said John Dickson, a 6-foot-9 Jonesboro product who played center for ASU during Rook’s junior and senior seasons. “The thing I remember most is those jump shots he took from long range. They were some of the prettiest and most picturesque shots I’ve seen, and I’ve been around basketball for a long time. “His release, his quickness and just watching the flight of the ball with its perfect trajectory, it was a thing of beauty, it really was.” Rook started playing basketball at Nettleton with his buddies, most of whom were still on the team as seniors when the Raiders finished a 40-3 season with a state championship game victory over Manila. He scored 52 points in the state final and 144 points in the state tournament that year. Scholastic Magazine named Rook a first-team All-American after he averaged 30.2 points as a senior, lifting his career high school total to 3,103 points. Such accomplishments didn’t go unnoticed by college coaches, but the only visit Rook made was to Mississippi State. “I went down there to watch them play at Mississippi State, and liked Mississippi State,” Rook recalled. “But I remembered how far it was to drive down there and I started looking over there at who was driving, my dad and my mom. They would have to drive to Mississippi State when we played at home.” Rook wasn’t interested in going too far from the family farm and his parents’ strong support. ASU, then coached by John Rauth, was the obvious option. Still, Rook wishes he had visited Kentucky, if only to see the arena and meet legendary Wildcats coach Adolph Rupp. “I would have loved to shake his hand, but I had pretty well made my mind up,” Rook said. “Coach Rauth had come to see me over and over and over. He was on the end of the bench when we played Jonesboro at Berl Smith Gym. I wanted to stay at home and I knew that was what I was going to do.” Rook quickly became the centerpiece of Rauth’s program, averaging 19.8 points as a freshman and 22 as a sophomore. Playing under Marvin Speight, who took over in the 1963-64 season, Rook averaged 25 points as a junior and 23 as a senior. During Rook’s career ASU moved into the Southland Conference, giving him the opportunity to earn league MVP honors twice. ASU advanced to NCAA regional play twice during his career. “The fondest memories that I have is basically when we played at home in the old fieldhouse, man that thing was packed and there would be people standing around, and they were just right there,” Rook said. “It was amazing to be able to go into that type of atmosphere, the electricity and the feeling that you had with that type of crowd.” Rook’s most prolific game at ASU came during his sophomore season when he scored 43 points against Louisiana College. He scored 35 or more points in 11 other games, including a 39-point outburst against Lamar during his senior season. And he put up those numbers more than 20 years before there was a 3-point line in college basketball. Rook estimated that a third or more of his 816 field goals at ASU would have been 3-pointers. “Based on his accomplishments and where he shot the ball from, it’s easy for me to say that for Jerry Rook, shooting the 3-point shot back then would have been like some of us shooting layups,” said Dickson, ASU’s No. 2 career scorer with 1,891 points. Dungan said Rook was probably the best shooter he ever saw, and he faced plenty of competition. Before transferring to ASU, Dungan spent two seasons at Itawamba (Miss.) Junior College, where he played against the freshman teams from Kentucky, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Memphis State and Western Kentucky, among others. “Of all those people I played against, nobody shot like him. Nobody could put that ball up there like that,” said Dungan, a former Trumann standout who played point guard for ASU. “He was just an unreal player. I was privileged to get to play with him. It made everything a lot easier when you had somebody who could score like he did.” Rook was drafted by the NBA’s Baltimore Bullets in 1965 and spent a week in camp before being told that top pick Jerry Sloan would be the only player they kept. The team wanted Rook to go to Barcelona, Spain, for a year, but that didn’t interest him. After coming home to coach at Nettleton for three years, Rook decided to take a shot in the ABA with the New Orleans Buccaneers in the 1969-70 season. He worked himself back into playing shape at 219 pounds and made the team, seeing action as a reserve. “It was a unique experience. I wanted to go and prove to myself that I could play, because I think I cut my other deal a little too short with the NBA,” Rook said. “I let the homebody thing kind of overpower me, being just an old country boy from Nettleton. I think if I had gone out and really wanted to stay in that league, I could have, and I wanted to go back and prove to myself that I could.” The travel for professional basketball was tough, Rook said, and he didn’t want to go through the process of making the team again when it moved to Memphis. Rook came back to Arkansas and launched a successful coaching career that included stops at Stuttgart and Pine Bluff, among others. He led Pine Bluff to two state championships, including an Overall title, and coached in the All-Star Game a couple of times. Rook later coached at Brookland and retired from the district last year at the end of his 39th year in education. He still drives a bus for the district, but spends most of his time at home, where the patio is made of bricks from the old Nettleton gym. Going into the Hall of Fame is the final reward for his playing days, Rook said, and he said a lot of people helped him get there. “You see these guys when they run off the court down the sideline, they’re touching all these hands as they go,” Rook said. “That’s kind of how I feel going through my life. All these people have helped me — coaches, family, friends, teammates — I visualize myself touching all their hands as I get to where I want to go, and all the strength and encouragement and things they did for me to help me, because I couldn’t have done anything without everybody who has helped me throughout my Life".
On February 24, 2009, between the Boys and Girls Basketball Games, the members of the 1961 State Championship Basketball Team and cheerleaders were recognized. Also Number 33 Jerry Rook's Number was retired, as well as a Banner listing some of his accomplishments was unveiled, which will permanently hang on the railing of the Gymnasium's Balcony. Plus, Both the Nettleton Men and Women Teams scored a combined 106 points to win each of their games, 53-43 and 53-48 respectively, in celebration of senior night and all the festivities.
|
NEA
FOOSBALL
Jerry Rook
Nettleton Retires Number 33
