THE NEBRASKA 100

Tom Brosnihan, the late Creighton University assistant basketball coach, showed up for an Omaha North High practice to check out a prospect in the winter of 1975. "The guy you want to look at is over there," said Viking coach Bob Murray, pointing to another player, sophomore Mike McGee, who had just been called up from the junior varsity.

"You could tell that he was something special. He improved so fast that year and had so much talent," Murray said. McGee was 6-foot-3 at the time and grew to 6-5 by his senior year. As a junior, he averaged 25 points in the Metro holiday tournament with a badly cut hand. "He played one-handed," Murray said.

By the time he was finished at North, the explosive McGee owned 10 Metro scoring records, including an average of 38.1 points per game that drew recruiters from coast to coast. Michigan won, and McGee started for four years and is still the No. 2 scorer in Wolverine history with a 21.4 career average.

McGee took his incredible shooter's touch to the National Basketball Association for a nine-year career with five teams that included two NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers. He currently lives in Los Angeles and coaches part of the year in China.

"I've seen them all in the last 50 or 60 years," said Murray, who retired in 1991. "Mike is the best I've ever seen, and he was the most pleasurable. Not many coaches are blessed with a player like that. How lucky can you be?"

There was a bad rap on McGee that he was just a shooter and didn't play defense, Murray said. "The heck he didn't. We couldn't afford to lose him, though. The only games we lost in two years were when Mike fouled out. He was a great team player, quiet, no showboating, all business.

"He was a once-in-a-lifetime player. Too bad we didn't have the 3-point shot back then. His numbers would have been phenomenal."

-- Tom Ash