I'm only 23 so I've only heard stories about him, but from what I hear he was a true badass with a tragic freak injury that ended his career. I was wondering if any of you older guys remembers him and could tell me about him. Thanks.
Hell yea, We were something like 14-0 and ranked #5 (unheard of in that day) and had just pasted Houston when Hakeem was a frosh. I actually took a piss in the middle of a busy intersection as I had been drinking all the way down to Houston for the game and the traffic was so bad there was no where to go. We won 2 games the rest of the year. LaSalle Thompson was our center and Wacker took all the weak side help away. Gave us 2 big men where one could shoot and one could rebound and block shots. Once Wacker went down team collapsed on Thompson and we lost our desire. It was sad to watch the rest of the way.
It took two years, but Wacker came back and played 1 more year, the 1984-1985 season. Incidentally, his dad is Jim Wacker who was the TCU head football coach around that time.
I was at UT then. Best team we had had in a very long time. Had just crushed a very good South Carolina team at home and I recall had also hammered perennial power Arkansas [hope i got the year right] Came down wrong and actually dislocated kneecap on that stupid rubber court at Baylor. Thats one reason they dont have that **** anymore. Terrible leg injuries. Texas went from 15-0 to 16-14 of something. That was it for Abe and ushered in the Kaiser Bob Weltich era.
Yea, we had gone through the first half of conference play having beaten everyone in the conference and looking like we would be undefeated in conference, then Waker got hurt.
That team got a write-up in Sports Illustrated, and that was really unheard of back in the day. Though it was not a cover story, the SI jinx still applied and a few days or a week or two later he went down in a heap...as did the rest of the team.
Some would contend that Wacker's injury indirectly started the demise of Abe Lemons' tenure as Texas' basketball coach. That was also a huge setback. Lemons was Texas' best b-ball coach in ages, and he was replaced by the toy general, Bob Weltlich, who might have been Texas' worst coach in a long time.
I tend to agree with Cool. Had Mike stayed healthy, that team had great potential. Would have been much harder to chase Abe off after a stellar year, at that program in those days. Deloss alleged there were serious academic issues with the program under Abe. It would have been quite a showdown if we had made the Final Four or better. Who knows, but the course of history for the entire atheltic program may have been altered by that one injury. Certainly went downhill fast after that. The Weltlich era was a disaster. Such a bummer too. Abe was fun. Bob was a wet fart. I saw Wacker's first home game. He was very active, and had great upper body stregth. I convinced my gf his first name was Tally. We got some looks.
Mike Wacker was the closest thing to Larry Bird I have ever seen in a Longhorn basketball uniform. He was 6-9, 235, could shoot from the top of the free throw circle, was an excellent passer as well as a tenacious defender, and and a top-flight rebounder. He had the mentality of a football coach's son -- smart, tough, willing to do all the dirty little jobs that were needed to be a winner. Like his dad (Jim Wacker) he was the most positive player I have ever been around, I mean nothing could get him down for more than just a little while -- not even an injury that ruined what would have been a long, and profitable NBA career. That 1981-82 team had two superstars -- Wacker and LaSalle Thompson -- and then several role players who fit around them. Two JC transfers, Virdell Howland and Denard Holmes, were classic swing men who could hit for 20 points or more if left unguarded, and who also played good defense. Ray Harper was a sophomore point guard backed up by Jack Worthington (yes that Jack Worthington, who recently claimed to be the illegitimate son of JFK). Carlton Cooper and Ken Montgomery were other players that helped that team race out to a 14-0 record. Texas was coming off a 500 season, and so didn't get much national attention while racing out to 10 straight wins. But a two-game stretch in the SWC took care of that. First Texas (then ranked 19th) went to Houston to face the #10 Coogs. A Houston team led by Clyde Drexler and a freshman Center by the name of Akeem Olajuwon. Wacker was sensational, ending up with 32 points in a 95-83 Texas win. The next game was against #9 Arkansas in a sold out Frank Erwin Center. Texas jumped out to a 10-0 lead, and never looked back. This time LaSalle Thompson got 32 points in a 88-73 UT win. Those two victories got Texas into the Top 10. A nationally televised win over South Carolina boosted Texas to 14-0 and a #5 national ranking. And then the roof caved in. Texas played Baylor in the cow palace known as the Heart of Texas Coliseum. It had a tartan floor that made a dull thud when you dribbled a basketball on it, and it was the place where the dream ended. Abe Lemons was not at the game (he was visiting his ill brother in Oklahoma City). In the coach's tape you can see Wacker jump for a rebound, and it appears that he is not touched by another player. But he tore cartilidge and ligaments on the jump, and cracked the kneecap as well. I was told that if he had taken a sledge hammer to his knee he could not have done more damage. This was the days before laser surgery, so Wacker was out, not only for the rest of the year, but two more years of rehabilitation. Lemons was driving back to the game from Oklahoma City to Waco, and when he picked up the radio broadcast of the game, heard that Wacker was injured, he just kept driving on to Austin. He of course was fired at the end of the year after Texas lost 13 of its last 15 games. Again, the kind of person that Mike Wacker is became crystal clear when he came back. Here was a player who was going to be a very rich man. That was lost. He needed two and a half years of rehabilitation, just to come back and play for a coach who was taking the program into the toilet. But Mike just wanted to play the game a little longer. Let me give you an idea of what Mike Wacker went through just to play. He had to get to the arena 45 minutes earlier than the other players, because it took that long to get treatment and then get taped from hip to foot. He couldn't not practice for a day or two after games. I remember one trip back from a late night game against Rice in Houston. It was past midnight, and just about everyone on the bus was asleep, when there was a blood-curdling scream from the back. There was Mike, in the aisle, with his leg straight out -- locked in pain. As the trainer passed by he mentioned that it happened after almost every game. Thorugh all this -- all the pain, the work and the realization that the pro dream was gone -- I never heard one word of public complaint out of Mike, Not one. The team was again a 500 club, and the coach was (to say the least) difficult to play for, but again Mike was just enjoying the moment. He ended up being All-SWC. He is now the basketball coach at Converse-Judson, and I can't think of anyone else who is better suited to be coaching young players than Mike Wacker. As an aside, Ray Harper has gone on to do great things as a coach. Harper, from Bremen, Kentucky, left Texas and transferred to Kentucky Wesleyan where he led them to two NCAA Division II Final Fours. Harper eventually became the head coach at Kentucky Weslyan, where he won two NCAA Division II National Championships, and was named the NCAA Div. II coach of the year 7 times. Harper then moved to OKlahoma City University (where Abe Lemons made his reputation) and he went to the NAIA Championshp Game three straight years, and won two NAIA titles. He resigned in April, and Harper recently joined Ken McDonald's staff as an assistant coach at Western Kentucky. Talk about a small world.
As has been mentioned Mike was Jim Wacker's son who was winning a national title in DII football at SWTSU in San Marcos as the head coach. It was later on before he became the head coach at TCU.
Jim Wacker was one of the best coaches, and one of the funniest ones ever. I was part of the play by play broadcast team for Wacker's second national title run at SWT. The Bobcats were undefeated going into a game against then East Texas State in Commerce. East Texas State jumped all over SWT, and had a big lead at the half. SWT started coming back in the second half. The most crucial play was a 4th and one, deep in SWT territory at the 11 yard line, in the fourth quarter. Wacker surprised everyone and went for it, and got the first down with about a half inch to spare. The Bobcats went on to score and eventually pulled out a close win. I asked Wacker in the post-game interview about the controversial call. His response? " You mean that ball was on the eleven yard line? Whew...if it had been on the ten, I'd have never gone for it!" He was one of a kind...and as he proved at TCU, he was also one of the most honorable and honest coaches at a time when there weren't a lot of those in these parts coaching college football.
great post srr50. You mentioned that you could think of no one better suited to coach young men. As I'm sure you're aware but for anyone who isn't, Wacker is one of the most highly respected HS coaches in the state. ( I am a HS basketball coach). I have always wondered why he did not go to the college level. He is that good.
Thanks for the memories srr. I was 14 at the time of Mike Wacker's injury and it was devastating. It was so sad to see Abe Lemons leave as well, especially after seeing Kaiser Bob sitting on the bench with his chin on his palm. I can't remember how many games I attended as a freshman in 85 with about 3000 other diehards. Great post as many have said.
I was at UT when Wacker played, and I remember his first basket (at least at home in the Erwin Center which was called The Drum in those days). It was a very athletic dunk. It was easy to tell that he was a special talent.
That Arkansas game in The Drum was one of my first UT games to attend and it was probably the loudest, wildest crowds I've ever seen at a Texas game. It was packed and extremely loud. My buddies somehow snuck me in and we sat on the very top row in the aisle since we didn't have a seat. Awesome atmosphere.
I, too, was at that game. I remember LaSalle Thompson blocking a shot into the floor and it must have bounced 20 feet up into the air. What a roar that brought!
