Ex-WSU star Edwards provides heart


BILL EDWARDS

At Wright State

2,303 career points – No. 1 all-time

907 rebounds – No. 1 all-time

757 points 1992-93 season – No. 1 all-time

45 points vs. Morehead State, Dec. 8, 1992 – No. 1 all-time

16 free throws vs. UIC, March 9, 1993 – tied No. 1 all-time

All Conference – 1st team – 1992 and 1993

Team MVP – 4 years in a row (1990, ‘91, ‘92, ‘93)

Pro career

13 seasons (CBA, Italy, Greece, France, Israel, Germany, Korea and 1994 with Philadelphia 76ers)

Before the catchy nickname, the impressive records and that long, storied hoops career, Bill Edwards hung back, reluctant, it seemed, to take his big shot.

During a stellar senior year of high school — starring in football at Batavia, then transferring to Carlisle and doing the same in basketball — Edwards attracted college recruiters for both sports.

“Most of my offers were in football,” he said. “I can remember sitting in my living room at home with an assistant coach from Georgia Tech, and he offered me a scholarship. But at the time I was a momma’s boy and I knew she wasn’t big on football. Plus, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go all the way to Atlanta.

“In basketball, I got a little interest, but the only two places I really visited were Bowling Green and Wright State. I never made up my mind though and finally it was getting late. It was like May or June and I remember coming in from the park one day and my mother asked me again, ‘What are you going to do about school?’

“I said, ‘I don’t know, Momma,’ and that’s when she had had enough. She just grabbed the letter of intent from Wright State and said ‘Hon, sign it.’ So I just scribbled on it. I’m surprised anyone could read my writing. You could barely make out my name.”

Once he got to Wright State, he got rid of any kind of identity crisis by putting his signature on the Raiders program in strokes bolder than anyone had done before or since.

When it comes to WSU basketball, Bill Edwards’ name is everywhere.

He’s No. 1 all-time in career points and career rebounds and a half dozen other categories in the WSU record book. He was the Raiders MVP four seasons straight and twice won first team all conference honors.

And with Morehead State playing the Nutter Center Saturday afternoon, there is a reminder of the Eagles game here almost 20 years ago to the day when Edwards set WSU’s all-time single game scoring mark.

That was the game where he proved his nickname — Dolla Bill — was a perfect fit.

“Chick Ludwig gave me that name,” he said with a chuckle as he recalled the former WSU beat writer for the Dayton Daily News. “He always said if you give me the ball, it was like money in the bank.’”

Against Morehead, Edwards made 20 of 30 shots — pulled down 13 rebounds too — and finished with 45 points in what would be a 102-74 WSU victory.

“Everything that went up went in that day,” he said. “I remember Ralph (head coach Ralph Underhill) took me out with five minutes to go and I wanted to play more.”

Saturday Edwards — even though he is now back at WSU as both an assistant strength and conditioning coach and a student — won’t be back at the Nutter Center for an anniversary appearance.

He had a big weekend lined up with his two oldest sons, and even though Bill Jr. — a 6-foot-6, 245-pound forward for the Miami RedHawks — just destroyed his left knee in a game last Saturday and will have surgery Monday, he might go through with some of the plans.

“Miami is playing in Fort Wayne (Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne) Saturday night, so we had planned to watch Junior play there and before that, Purdue — who’s recruiting my son Vincent (a 6-foot-6 junior star at Middletown High) — was having him over that afternoon to see its game with Xavier. We might still go do that.”

While he seems to be taking quite a bit more interest in his son’s recruitment than he did his own, Edwards said he has no regrets making a late decision to come to WSU: “Like they say, it was the best four years of my life.”

Close to home

“Wright State was good for me because of all the success I had and because I got to do it close to home,” he said. “The people who had watched me growing up were able to be part of it.”

Although he said he felt a special closeness with assistant coach Jim Brown, he said he liked playing for the late Underhill: “Ralph was a fun coach to play for. We got up and down the court and everybody likes that. And back then he wasn’t a Bobby Knight type coach. He was kind of laid back and cool.”

Edwards helped usher Raider basketball into a new era. After playing his freshman year in the old P.E. Building — that season the Raiders beat the Dayton Flyers in UD Arena — he led the move into the new Nutter Center. Soon after that came a Mid-Continent Conference title and the school’s first-ever berth as a Division I program in the NCAA Tournament.

In Edwards four years at WSU, the Raiders went 75-39.

Undrafted after that, he started out in the Continental Basketball Association and soon had a brief stint with the 76ers.

“We had guys like Clarence Weatherspoon, Jeff Malone and Moses Malone, but I remember we were terrible,” he said with a laugh. “We had the worst record in the NBA.”

He then went overseas and played a dozen years in Italy, Greece, Israel, Germany and briefly in Korea.

“I loved Europe,” he said. “A lot of players go over there and can’t make it because they’re not used to being away from home. They want to step out of their door and see the same people they’re used to seeing and places they are familiar with.

“I learned Italian and probably visited 30 or 40 countries during my career. I got to go to places like Rome, Barcelona, Athens, Istanbul — that people would love to see. I had a good experience.”

Now back home

Once he retired at the start of the 2007 season, he came back home and said he settled on two career paths:

“I either wanted to coach at Middletown High or be a part of something at Wright State,” he said. “The situation never really presented itself at either end for awhile, but I always stayed in contact with Bob Grant, even before he was the athletics director, and then I saw there was an opening and I contacted him and sent in my resume.”

Edwards was hired as an assistant to head strength and conditioning coach Jason Bradford, and he monitors the athletes’ weight room at the Mills Morgan Center. He’s also taking two classes and plans to finally get his undergrad degree.

“Coming back here, it felt like coming home,” he said. “Sometimes you don’t fully appreciate a place until you’ve been gone. Wright State was good when I was here and it’s even better now. I tell people all the time now, you’d never realize how nice the school is until you walk around the campus and see all the facilities they have.”

Billy Donlon, Wright State’s head coach, said having Edwards back around the program benefits current players:

“He has passion for the university. That’s the neat thing about this place, a lot of the guys who played here — especially from his era and before — they have a great amount of pride about the days when they wore a Wright State uniform.”

For Bill Edwards the only problem had been getting him into a Raiders’ uniform in the first place.

“As soon as my mother got me to sign that letter, I remember she took it straight to the mailbox and sent it in,” he laughed. “And the rest was history.”

And what a history it has become.

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