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Jeff Mullins Brings 'Riif
By Mel Holbroo
Jeff Mullins will forever be remembered around Lexington as the big one that got away from the University of Kentucky basketball program.
The former Lexington Lafayette High School Ail-American spurned a scholarship offer from Coach Adolph Rupp to attend Duke University, where he was twice selected an All-American, and later enjoyed a successful 12-year professional basketball career with the St. Louis Hawks and the San Francisco (now Golden State) Warriors.
While in the pro ranks, Mullins was selected to the All-National Basketball Association (NBA) team five times. He also played on the 1975 World Championship Warriors' club that included Rick Barry.
Only recently, Mullins, 42, stunned the basketball world by taking over the precarious head coaching and athletic director's position at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He'd been away from the game for 10 years when Mullins returned to the game.
"I've always loved basketball," said Mullins in a telephone interview from Charlotte. "But when I retired (in 1976) I owed it to my family and myself to get away from it for a while. But I found that the business world wasn't as fulfilling as I would have liked it to be and about a year ago I decided I wanted to get into coaching."
Mullins was also "Mr. Basketball" in Kentucky his senior season at Lafayette under Ralph Carlisle and was a member of the 1964 Olympic gold-medal winning team. Besides that, Mullins was selected the Atlantic Coast Conference's Player of the Year in 1964.
Mullins returned to North Carolina when he retired and took a position as the associate athletic director at Duke. After a year in that capacity, Mullins took over a struggling car dealership in Cary, North Carolina, and built "Jeff Mullins Chevrolet" into one of the most profitable car dealerships in the state.
But Mullins still found time to do television commentary for the ACC basketball network for seven years prior to taking the UNCC job. That whetted his appetite to get even further involved with the game he loves.
"I started looking around for a new challenge," Mullins said. "I felt like I wanted to work with young people more closely and get involved in their affairs. I also got on the speaker's circuit. During those years, all I heard about was all the problems connected with the sport. So I decided to find out about it on a closer level and I was contacted about this job. It's an exciting challenge."
It's Mullins' challenge to reroute a program that has dropped 62 of 84 games over the last three years, including a worst-ever 5-23 finish in 1984-85 and two consecutive last-place finishes in the Sun Belt Conference. UNCC has played collegiate basketball for 20 years.
UNCC, of course, has a Kentucky flavor in that former Transylvania University head coach Lee Rose and former UK player Mike Pratt have both coached there. Rose guided the 49ers to their only National Collegiate Athletic Association Final Four appearance in 1977.
Rose left UNCC for Purdue University and later left West Lafayette, Indiana, for Tampa and the University of South Florida. Pratt was fired after four seasons.
"I was impressed with what Mike was trying to do," said Mullins. "He came in at a bad time because Lee had been so successful before him and then a new athletic director was brought in about a year after Mike started. And you know how that goes. That athletic director wanted his own man and Mike wasn't given a fair chance. If Mike had been given a fair chance, his leadership would have kept the program much higher than it was when I took over."
Coach And AD Jeff Mullins
"Ifs An Exciting Challenge," Said Jeff About New Post
Pratt's replacement, Hal Wissel, compiled the afore-mentioned record over three seasons and last March he and Athletic Director Clyde Walker were dismissed. That opened the door for Mullins.
"The job here at UNCC is multifacted," he said. "We first have to turn the program around by recruiting good athletes and good players. And, secondly, we want to get our community excited and involved with UNCC. Charlotte is a town of about 450,000 people. And there's about 500 to 600,000 if you include the area in a 50-mile radius. There's no question we have an exciting opportunity with all the potential here."
At press time, the 49ers were 3-2 so far this season, having lost to Wake Forest by only one point before only the second sellout crowd to ever see UNCC play at the Charlotte Arena.
"We have a small team that plays hard and has a good attitude," Mullins explained. "We're going to get out and recruit some size for next season."
Size is what Mullins certainly didn't need to play the guard position at Lafayette, Duke and in the pros. At 6-4 and 190 pounds, Mullins could dominate his opponents.
The Mullins' family  Jeff's father worked for International Business Machines  moved to Lexington from upper New York when he was in the 10th grade. It turned out to be one of the best moves Vince and Billie Mullins would ever make.
"He was catholic, but he went to a public school because he had heard good things about Coach Carlisle," said one of Mullins' prep teammates, John E. Harris of McAtee's Shoe Repair. "I met him at Lafayette through John Speaks, a fellow who was being heavily recruited by a number of colleges. Mullins was something else."
Mullins had a spectacular high school career, averaging 20 points per game as a junior and 26 as a senior, when he earned the prestigious "Mr. Basketball" honor in 1960. Although Mullins led the Generals to winning records, the farthest Lafayette ever advanced during his career was the regional finals.
But that didn't matter, because Mullins met and became good friends with Rupp, dcr Baron himself. And Rupp became a tremendous influence in Mullins' life.
"Nobody was nicer to me than Coach Rupp," Mullins said. "He was nice to me while I was in high school and thoughout my collegiate career. If it hadn't been for him, I probably wouldn't have been noticed by any colleges. My making the high school All-American team and gaining recognition as a player was from Coach Rupp's influence and from the respect Kentucky high school basketball had and still has. There weren't many of those scouting services you have today. The people in New York City just called him up and said they needed a guard to complete the team. Rupp said that I would easily qualify."
A number of colleges went after Mullins, and he eventually narrowed his shopping list to Kentucky, Maryland and Duke.
"I heard from a lot of people," said Mullins. "And I was very impressed with a lot of them. Vic Bubas of North Carolina State was recruiting Speaks and saw me play a lot. He was an assistant at State. And the next year after NC. State got Speaks he was named Duke's new head coach. First impressions are certainly the strongest. And I was very impressed with Bubas."
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