Little known factoids about BU's new assistant Jim Platt

Hey - there is yet another Jim Platt - ISU connection.... back in 1991 when Jim Platt was the head coach of Arkansas-Little Rock, one of his assistants at UALR was Dwayne Tyus...who played his college ball at Illinois State thru 1983. Anyway, Tyus was a bad boy.... he misappropriated (actually he STOLE) money from the meager recruiting fund at UALR and disappeared on a long joy ride.

He was arrested after he vanished for 3 weeks - using the $$ for dope and booze (and a few other fun things)...
He didn't go very far - he was found in a Little Rock flop house and arrested....effectively ending his college coaching career after gigs as an assistant at DePaul & UALR.

But a little suspicion fell on the head coach for how this could happen.... Here's an old article about Tyus at ISU...
www.bit.ly/bv2BR0

And here's a little bit about the arrest...
http://bit.ly/95pudI

- "felony theft of property".....Tyus pretty much disappeared and was never heard from again in the college scene -- Platt is still around.. Tyus was a Donewald player...... but Tyus did appear at least ONE MORE TIME in the Chicago headlines...

"Retail theft

Dwayne E. Tyus, 41, of the 5500 block of West Rice Avenue, Chicago, was arrested on the Marion Street Green Line CTA platform after he allegedly took two DVDs from Borders, 1144 Lake St., and fled without paying. Tyus was also allegedly in possession of drug paraphernalia and was wanted on a Lake County arrest warrant."
http://www.wednesdayjournalonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=12&ArticleID=6620&TM=83081.44
Well........so much for the ISU section of the police blotter............


Jim Platt played high school ball at Aurora East.. One teammate was Tom Boatright, father of current Aurora standout Ryan Boatright..
Another high school teammate was Tom Kivisto - now a member of Illinois Basketball HOF, who went to Kansas and was a star there - 2 Final Fours!
Platt's Aurora East team in 1969 lost in the State semifinal at U of I's Assembly Hall -to Peoria Spalding, 3/22/69, Spalding's Alvin O'Neal starred in that game..
Aurora then finished 4th in 1969, and Spalding lost the Championship game to Proviso East & Jim Brewer..

Another tidbit -- Brian Lavin's dad, Rich Lavin, was also on that Spalding team...

Jim Platt went on to coach at Chicago Luther North from 1973-1978, running up a 5-year record of 55-75.
One last little known tidbit - in 1989 when Northern Illinois University was hiring a new coach, Jim Platt was one of the finalists... but he was beaten out by his cohort Jim Molinari.
At the time, BOTH were assistants at DePaul. The very next year, Platt got his turn, and took the top spot at Arkansas-Little Rock...and then hired ex-Redbird Dwayne Tyus as one of his assistants.

Other famous people from Aurora, IL include ex-BU HOF'er Chick Hearn and the guy who put Northern Illinois University (a few years before Jim Molinari) on the map, Kenny Battle, and ex-BU great and NBA player, Bob Carney.
(btw- WGN weatherman Tom Skilling is also an ex-HS mate at Aurora of Jim Platt)



BTW - one guy who is an expert in ISU history tells me there was a "Legends" game held at Illinois State back in 2001...inviting all their "greats" back for an exhibition All Star game.
Ex-Redbirds like Dwayne Tyus, Chad Altadonna, Rickie Johnson, Jamar Smiley (driving a nice new car ;)), Matt Taphorn, all-time flop star Mike VandeGarde were all there, but conspicuously absent were Doug Collins and Jeff Wilkins.
I am told that Collins simply couldn't make it due to other obligations (he had just been hired as head coach of the NBA Wizards). But Wilkins was apparently left off the invite list by design...and nobody really knows what all the truth is in this matter...but there clearly appears to have been some significant falling out between Wilkins and FF and the folks at ISU.
You can talk to people from ISU of that era...and they will tell you that Wilkins' accomplishments during his time at ISU were discounted and ignored, and the name simply never got mentioned.

Flash has helped keep the history from being purged....but he's about the only one...
http://www.flashshoops.com/isu.htm
Apparently the entire Gene Smithson era is something the ISU people don't want to talk about - as it is pretty common knowledge that a lot of cheating was going on, with Smithson finally getting caught and penalized while at Wichita State.



Rumors out of Saluki-land seem to grow by the day....
still no solid confirmation of Dillard & Booker leaving but it is apparently pretty widely accepted that's going to happen, and that's why Chris Lowery is restocking big time with jucos...
but now there's rumors of several other players leaving...Gene Teague, Jack Crowder, John Freeman....what the heck is going on??
There's even talk among Saluki fans that after his one year banishment at junior college, Ryan Hare will be recruited back and even welcomed back at SIU by Chris Lowery --can you imagine!!
TWO guys on the team at one time with felony arrests!!
I guess we'll have to wait & see it all unfold!