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ESPN's Jay Bilas could have played ball at 81st and Lewis
Published: 10/22/2011 4:32 PM
Last Modified: 10/22/2011 4:32 PM

In Sunday's Tulsa World, ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas tackles five topics regarding the 2011-2012 Big 12 basketball campaign.

Bilas, during an interview Wednesday night in Kansas City, also 'fessed up that he once considered playing college ball in Tulsa.

In the fall of 1981, when Bilas was a senior at Rolling Hills High School in California, he visited the city because he was an Oral Roberts University basketball recruit.

Details?

“Mark Acres went to Oral Roberts,” Bilas said. “His mother was a very faith-based person, a religious person, and she really hammered my mom that I should go, that God wanted me to go to Oral Roberts to play with Mark and Jeff (Acres).”

Bilas’ parents were swayed. They told him he needed to visit ORU, so he did.

“Ken Hayes recruited me,” Bilas said. “I loved him. Great guy. His plan was -- and he told me this -- he was going to get me, Wayman Tisdale, Mark Price and Steve Hale and we were going to win the national championship. So when I landed at Tulsa, he picked me up at the airport and he drove me to Jenks High School to meet Steve Hale. Joe Holladay (now a North Carolina assistant) was the coach there.”

Then Hayes drove Bilas to ORU’s campus and they met Oral Roberts, the evangelist and university founder. Roberts prayed Bilas would come to ORU and help the school win a championship, according to Bilas.

Bilas chose the devil -- actually, the Blue Devils -- instead. He signed with Duke and was a four-year starter.

But Bilas said he had a great time here.

“It was the first time I had been out of the state of California,” he said. “Tulsa was great. I loved it.”


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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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