McCollough to lead Indiana All-Stars

Dave McCollough couldn't believe what he was hearing when he received a call from Pat Aikman.

The Indiana-Kentucky All-Star Game director was phoning McCollough to inform the Noblesville coach that he had been selected to coach this year's Indiana All-Star Team. A baffled McCollough accepted the offer.

"I was quite surprised when I got a phone call from Mr. Aikman," McCollough said. "I really never Indianahought about it much."

Now, McCollough, along with Aikman and assistant coaches Dan Gunn of NorthWood and Will Wyman of Evansville Harrison, are faced with the challenge of selecting the state's best 13 or 14 seniors for this year's All-Star Games, which will be June 17 in Frankfort, Ky. and June 24 at Conseco Fieldhouse.

McCollough has known Gunn, who has also coached at Lafayette Harrison, Penn and Marion, and spoke with him during Saturday's State Finals at Conseco. He has not met Wyman, who led Vincennes to the 1981 state title.

"There are two guys that are helping out that should probably be in the driver's seat," McCollough said. "I'm looking forward to seeing those coaches and seeing who we can get. We're going to have some pretty good players. We'll see if we can pool our resources and see if we can have a fun couple of weeks."

Aikman said McCollough's name has been mentioned on several All-Star ballots he has received from coaches and media members over the last 10 days. He said All-Star coaches need to meet certain criteria, including respect within the profession, gentlemanly character and a solid track record. Expectations include not only coaching the team successfully, but working with players from a variety of backgrounds and being willing to help market the All-Star game.

"I think Dave easily has the capacity to work with Will and with Dan Gunn," Aikman said. "They're very fine gentlemen and coaches. I don't know Dave intimately, but my experiences with him have always been very positive and he seems like an energetic guy with a good sense of humor. We spend two weeks together in very close quarters and interact and I find it very helpful to work with someone I enjoy being around."

McCollough, who coached at North Judson for 11 years before taking over the Noblesville program in 1994, has some experience coaching All-Star
talent. He has coached two Indiana All-Stars - Kirk Manns at North Judson in 1986 and Mr. Basketball Tom Coverdale at Noblesville in 1998.

In the last three years, McCollough has been an assistant for Bloomington North coach Tom McKinney with the Junior All-Stars and for LaPorte coach Joe Otis, last year's Indiana All-Star coach, in the Wendy's Classic, which pitted players from Indiana against All-Stars from Ohio, Michigan and Illinois.

"The whole thing is bigger than any of us," McCollough said. "Hopefully, we can make them realize this can be an awfully good experience for them and that we're all just pieces of the puzzle. There are going to be some awfully big egos involved and hopefully, they'll set those up on the shelf for at least a couple of weeks and do what's best for the state of Indiana.

"Somebody is going to have to set the screen and somebody is going to have to pass the ball and somebody is going to have to rebound the basketball and do those kind of things," he said.

"In the course of the two or three weeks we'll have them, we can't go in there and do a lot of
things with them. We're going to try to organize them a little bit and get them in spots and get a little bit of cohesiveness together. If we can do that, we'll be all right."

McCollough becomes the first Noblesville coach to be the head coach for the Indiana Boys All-Stars and the first from Hamilton County since former Carmel coach Eric Clark guided the squad in 1978.

Former Noblesville coach Dave Nicholson was an assistant in 1986, as was former Carmel coach Bob Heady in 1996.

The current Miller coach realizes he will have a tough task not only selecting the players, but keeping them happy once they make the squad.

"That's going to be tough - when you're rotating 12 or 13 kids in," McCollough said. "None of them are going to get enough playing time. Hopefully, everybody can be a contributor in some ways that they can look back on it as being a part of Indiana heritage. It should be a really fun, exciting two weeks."

(Reprinted with permission from The Daily Ledger.)