Lynn Nance's Pivotal Year -- Blue-Collar Upbringing Paves Way For Husky Coach's Disciplined Style.

Granby, Mo., still proudly bills itself as the Oldest Mining Town in Southwest Missouri, even though virtually all the lead and zinc mines closed down 30 years ago.

Despite economic fluctuations, the population of Granby, located in the Ozarks 50 miles east of Oklahoma, 50 miles north of Arkansas and 50 miles southeast of Kansas, has held steady for decades. About 1,900 folks live there, depending on the latest check of the hospital or mortuary.

If Missouri is the "Show Me" state, Granby may be the last to see it. It's a backwater community, slow-paced, not yet cable-ready.

It's where neighbor helps neighbor unconditionally, and where children have been taught such old-fashioned virtues as honor, respect and discipline.

It's where Lynn Nance, head coach of the University of Washington men's basketball team, not only got his start but his values. To understand Granby is to understand Lynn Nance. A remote red-clay, blue-collar town is as much a part of him as his Missouri drawl.

"Any old Granbyite would know Lynn Nance and his wife Sally," said Jackie Cameron, secretary of Granby High School for the past 36 years.

He was the basketball star, scoring nearly 30 points a game with a textbook jump shot, recruited by UCLA legend John Wooden but eventually deciding on Washington. Sally Scholes was a year behind him, a cheerleader, and the couple was voted homecoming king and queen. They were married shortly after her high-school graduation.

Cameron has seen nearly four decades of Granby's children matriculate through the school system. She knows them all and their parents. She said the four Nance boys were special, especially Lynn.

"He was just one of those people who has done it against the odds," Cameron said. "He was a good worker. He liked to please. He had ambition and the desire to earn it. His goal was to be great."

She remembers in the summer of 1959, Nance, then 16, asked if he could bale hay on a small farm she and her husband owned. He didn't care what he was paid. He just wanted to build up his body for basketball.

Nance and his buddy, George Barrett, loaded an average of 1,000 bales a day and were so good at crisscross stacking that they never needed to stop the truck to tie down the bales. He also used to load and stack 95-pound bags of cement and, in the winter, shoveled coal out of 55-ton railroad boxcars to use for heating schools and community buildings.

Virtually none of his friends had a car, which cut down on much of the trouble they could get into. Mostly they hung out at the Dairy Queen.

It was a good place to grow up, but was not without its problems and characters.

"Both my neighbors died of miners' consumption," Nance said. "There was a lot of fierce pride in that community. It was a town of real rugged people, which for a kid, in a way, was scary. You'd go downtown on a Friday night and hide outside these beer joints and watch the miners fight. Occasionally, there'd be a knife fight, and I tell you they were real ugly. I think it was they worked so hard during the week that when they got paid they'd just get some drinks and unwind."

Nance's father worked at the Pet Milk plant in Neosho, about 10 miles away, while his mother's main responsibility was raising the boys. The family lived downtown and most mornings Lynn walked nearly a mile to school along the railroad tracks, dribbling a basketball on the thin, steel rail.

"He went seven years never missing a day touching a basketball," Sally Nance said. "Even when we went on cross-country trips, we'd stop every day so he could play basketball. It was his joy."

Cameron so admired Nance's dedication that she told him if she ever had a son, she would name him after Lynn. In 1960, Jackie Cameron gave birth to a boy, Lynn Cameron. Twenty-six years later, Jackie's daughter Janet gave birth to a girl and named her Katie Lynn.

"We all idolized him," Cameron said. "I'm not trying to be critical of kids today, but lots of them don't want to earn it. I hope he learned his values from Granby schools. Back then, those things were pretty important."

H.W. Smith underscored their importance. Smith, the superintendent of Granby schools for nearly a half century, dictated what every student would take and monitored their academic progress.

"He believed in right and wrong and taught it," Cameron said. "He was old school."

Sally Nance says Smith was a towering force and local legend. "You had some pretty hard-nosed people in Granby who would just as soon as slap you down as look at you," she said. "It took a real strong-willed principal to really maintain discipline."

Nance remembers friends who began school with him "but graduated two or three years behind me because he (Smith) determined that you would not graduate unless you were educated. He determined the outcome for a whole bunch of people's lives."

Another side of Nance's life was determined by his high school basketball coach, Bob Knight, a sovereign, unyielding, my-way-or-the-highway authority figure, not so different from the other Bob Knight at Indiana. Nance believes that Knight, who bore a scar on his chin where a World War II sniper's bullet exited, was just about the toughest individual he ever knew.

"I had a positive atmosphere and was strict," said Knight, in his 70s, retired and living in Republic, Mo. "Lynn was a very disciplined individual. All the players had the same outlook. Those kids worked hard and played ball hard. They influenced each other."

Nance remembers classes Knight taught where the only noise you heard during roll call was your own nervous breathing. And if you dared walk on the hardwood maple gym floor with your dress shoes, hell might be a more forgiving place than Knight's office. Even today Nance feels almost as if he's challenging fate when he crosses the floor at Washington's Edmundson Pavilion's to do his post-game radio program.

Knight's son, Sam, a former basketball teammate of Nance's and the principal and basketball coach at Saxcoxie (Mo.) High, argues that young players today are unwilling to make the sacrifices his generation made.

"Kids today are undisciplined," Knight said. "Parents bow down to their wishes. I deal with that here and I know Lynn does, too. They think they're always right. And if they aren't, their father is."

Lynn Nance's troubles started last spring with a letter from Andrew and Carol Woods, parents of two players, Andy and Maurice. The eight-page letter to University President William Gerberding charged Nance with unfair treatment of black players.

After intense introspection and an extraordinary press conference in which Nance brought in 11 former players and his former daughter-in-law, who is black, to defend him, a four-member panel found no evidence to support the allegations.

Still, five players, three of them African American, quit or were asked not to return. Nance's job was saved, but taking a hit were both his office window - a rock was tossed through it one evening last spring - and his reputation, perhaps irrevocably.

"What happened to me last spring was so totally unfair it's hard for me, and anyone who knows me, to believe, from black associates to white associates," Nance said. "I could see some of those white players making a pretty interesting case that I didn't play them, but you can't make a case the other way.

"It was a situation of the media jumping into it without checking and very possibly destroying my validity. I'm not going to know the damage for some time, all over a letter from a walk-on kid's dad."

However, the panel also concluded that some players believe Nance creates an atmosphere of "negative criticism, fear, mystery, rigidity and inexplicable severity." The 14-page report said some players perceive the shouted criticism as "a planned process of intimidation and humiliation" and that many of the people interviewed considered his disciplinary rules "to be extremely rigid and conformist beyond requirements for team control."

The panel recommended that Nance develop better lines of communication and become more sensitive.

Like his Granby childhood mentors, Nance, a former FBI agent and NCAA investigator, can be extremely tough on people, many times getting his point across through tart sarcasm and harsh criticism.

Eldridge Recasner, a holdover from the Andy Russo era who played from 1987 to 1990, believes Nance purposefully broke him down when Nance first arrived in 1989.

"I don't know what he had against me, but it was something," said Recasner, now playing in the Philippines. "Maybe he had to show the other players who was in charge."

After the Huskies lost in the preseason NIT to Texas last year, Nance put up an NIT banner in the locker room and had every player sign it. It hung there all season.

Tim Caviezel, who transferred to Long Beach State this season, was involved in what he believed was a minor incident last year on a trip to California. He missed a team dinner because his hotel clock malfunctioned. When he later boarded the bus to the game, Nance told him and Maurice Woods, who also missed the meal, that they weren't playing and were to remain at the hotel.

"All I know (is that) what's best for me is where I'm at now," said Caviezel, who said he didn't want to criticize his old program.

Another Russo recruit, Steve Hall, who transferred in 1990, has said Nance "takes the fun out of it. It's more like a job there."

Nance's response: "Is there any reason to justify what we're doing if it's not any fun for the athletes?"

Nance said his intention is not to demean or berate the players. He demands respect and discipline not only because he believes those qualities are what the players need, but also what they want.

"They're looking for structure," he said. "They may not know that, but they are. I think if I'm not in control, I'm not doing my job. That was the criticism of last year's staff, we weren't in control.

"We're dealing with people trying to get ready for life. You look around and see people who are successful in life and they are people who are disciplined."

He said his greatest pride is seeing his athletes graduate. He said one player didn't graduate in his four years at Iowa State, and all but two of his players graduated in his five years at Central Missouri State. He believes the one player who didn't graduate in his three years at St. Mary's finally has his degree and he named three UW players - all Russo recruits - whom he knows have yet to receive a diploma. All the others have graduated, he said.

"I don't think he would have left Granby and gone on to college if it hadn't been for basketball," Sally Nance said."That's why it's important to him. And you're talking about a generation and a town that sees no point in a college education. It's a blue-collar town."

Nance got out of Granby, but his Granby values are still clearly visible.

"You can ask Bobby Knight (Indiana) or Mike Krzyzewski (Duke). They're not trying to get in touch with the kids. They're making the kids get in touch with them," Nance said. "Leadership is not about acquiescing and getting in touch with them. I've been pressed into a situation here where I need to get in touch with kids. And that's a tragic situation.

"It's like the biology professor sitting 50 students down at the beginning of the year and asking each one what he should teach, how many tests do they want, and when to come to class. He'll get 25 different answers and pretty soon he's not leading anymore.

"I thought I was the one showing the way and my 15 athletes were trying to get along with me, not vice versa."

Nance appears almost fatalistic about this season. He knows it will take time before the stain of last spring fades, perhaps more time than the university is willing to give. He is on the final year of a four-year contract and another mediocre season may be all that is needed to let him go.

"This is an important year for me, but I'm feeling the wrong kind of pressure," Nance said. "Pressure at an institution like this should not be to win but to make sure the kids get to class, graduate and are motivated in the proper way.

"We talk about teaching these kids to be productive citizens, that's what we want, never mind the billion-dollar TV contract. I can't remember a single coach getting fired for failing to do that. But I can name a whole bunch of coaches fired for their records."