By Dave Boling The Spokesman-Review
Craig Ehlo can attest to the superior powers of George Raveling as a recruiter.
Not luring him so much, but winning over Ehlo’s very reluctant mother, who hated the idea of her son leaving Odessa, Texas, for some place called Pullman, Washington, an outpost neither of them had ever heard of.
Raveling was well into his career at Washington State when he went to a junior-college game in Texas to scout a prospect. When Ehlo out-dueled the player Raveling had come to see, he shifted his target to the 6-6 guard.
“From that point on, I was getting a letter from him every Friday,” Ehlo said. But his mother firmly wanted him to attend Baylor, in Waco. “But after he talked to her, he was giving her a letter every Friday, too.”
Raveling’s attentiveness was not as important as his message.
“He promised he would make me a man, and help me do whatever I wanted to do in life.”
Ehlo was happy to chat about Raveling on Tuesday, the day word got out that his coach had passed from cancer at age 88.
Ehlo visited Pullman for a UCLA-Cougar game at Beasley Coliseum, when 12,000 fans packed the place. The Cougars lost, but Raveling told Ehlo that if he came to WSU, they would beat UCLA and they would win the conference.
“By God we came just one game short my senior year.”
Asked of Raveling’s lessons, Ehlo claimed they were endless, and instilled in daily doses before every practice, when he would pull out inspirational stories from any of the 15 newspaper subscriptions Raveling took.
“It was 15 minutes of life skills, stories that could shape you, not just about basketball,” Ehlo said.
The fans, he said, were in love with Raveling, and dutiful in their responses.
“He would stand up and raise his arms, and the whole student section responded by standing up. He orchestrated it. He was like a conductor. And my senior year, we didn’t lose a game at home. 14-0. Because he knew if he got the students involved, that was going to give us the energy we needed.”
Ehlo, who does WSU radio broadcasts, played 14 seasons in the NBA, and said he owed all of it Raveling.
“I had never dreamed of playing after college,” Ehlo said. “It was all him.”