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June 3, 2009

Orr, Estelle trying to track down ‘78-79 Navarro basketball team photo

Anonymous The Corsicana Daily Sun Wed Jun 03, 2009, 07:05 PM CDT

The goal, Navarro basketball coach Johnny Estelle said, is to honor history.

As someone with a history degree, I can appreciate that.

So it only took a nudge from our publisher, Raymond Linex II to use this space to help out Estelle and his mentor and former Navarro coach, Lewis Orr.

Here’s the skinny — Estelle and Orr stopped by the venerable Daily Sun offices to track down a team photo of the 1978-79 Navarro Bulldogs basketball team. That team, if you don’t know, was ranked as the No. 1 team in the nation that season.

Raymond, the great local sports fan he is, started rattling off names that I had never heard of, guys like David Burns, an athletic guard. “He might be the best player to ever put on a Navarro uniform,” Raymond said.

There were 6-6 twin towers Willie Whittenburg and Michael Taylor — remember this was a few years before the real “Twin Towers,” Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson at Houston. There was point guard Rudy Williams, the team’s most vocal leader, and also Greg Low.

The bench included freshman Hiram Harrison, a 6-5 swingman who jumped center as a sophomore and was also a Denzel Washington look-a-like. And there was Nicky Snell, a hard-nosed guard that Raymond compared to former Utah Jazz guard Jeff Hornacek.

Raymond even went back and went through our archives searching for the photo. But in this day and age of digital cameras and computers, I’m afraid the chances of finding old photos at any newspaper are a long shot.

So here’s the idea — if anyone has the ‘78-79 team photo, drop it off at the Daily Sun. Better yet, run it over to Estelle at Navarro. You’ll be making a friend for life.

You might even score some free tickets out of it (Editor’s note: I didn’t run this by Estelle, so if he can’t do it because of some NJCAA rule, I’ll personally cover the cost).

Remembering the past is something close to my heart. And Estelle’s too.

“I was digging back in the archives and the history,” Estelle said. “They were a pretty good team. I wanted to get them up on the web site and hang a picture in the gym.

“Coach Orr did a great job with that team.”

A quick refresher course — the ‘78-79 Bulldogs team stands as the best in school history, with apologies to DeAndre Brown, Matt Pressey and the rest of this year’s Navarro team that advanced to the NJCAA Division III national tournament for the first time in school history.

The ‘78-79 team was ranked No. 1 in the nation for much of that season, winning 25 consecutive games before falling to eventual national champion Western Texas College coached by Nolan Richardson, who went on to win a NCAA national title at Arkansas in 1994.

In the ironies of ironies, Paul Pressey, Matt’s father, was the star of that Western Texas team and went on to a solid NBA career with the Milwaukee Bucks and several other teams.

The loss to Western Texas does nothing to diminish the accomplishments of the ‘78-79 Bulldogs.

“It was a special team,” Orr said. “We had several leaders on that team. We were a small team.”

Navarro was 25-0 when it lost at Paris by “two or three,” Orr said, that after the Bulldogs “beat them by 40 at home.”

The Bulldogs still gathered steam heading into the East vs. West showdown with Western Texas, and if not for a missed block out on a rebound, Navarro would have moved on in the playoffs, Orr said.

“They beat us at the right time of year,” Orr said.

This being the 30th anniversary of that great Navarro team, Orr said, Estelle has talked about honoring the team before a game this coming season. Estelle said the players on that ‘78-79 team deserve a tribute, a big tribute.

“That was a great group of guys,” Estelle said. “I know a lot of those guys. They come back for cookouts. They’re very loyal to Navarro College and I want to do something for them.”

—————

Todd Wills may be reached via e-mail at twills@corsicanadailysun.com

Want to "Sound Off" on this story? E-mail: soundoff@corsicanadailysun.com

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