Tates Locke hoped “Caught in the Net” would help others, himself

Tates Locke was much more than the mind-boggling story told in “Caught in the Net,” his 1982 book with Bob Ibach.

Nevertheless, its details loomed large in Locke’s life. The former Indiana State University coach and Batesville native died May 15 in Jacksonville, Florida. He was 87 years old.

Other notable events occurred during these 87 years. Locke’s X’s and O’s strategies became a model for coaches across the country.

“His box exercises were famous. A lot of coaches have told me that,” Ibach said in a May 17 telephone interview from his home in Huntley, Illinois. “He had a brilliant basketball mind, but he was strict.”

Ibach added: “He made a difference in so many ways. He was extremely loved by his former players. There was a good team in him that just got caught up in the pressure to win at all costs.

Locke served as head coach of the Army men’s basketball team, when Bobby Knight was his assistant. Locke coached Army to a 40-15 record over two seasons and then Miami (Ohio) to a 55-43 record in four seasons, including an NCAA Tournament berth. His Clemson teams outperformed the previous performances of the Tigers teams and finished 17-11 in his fifth and final season. After a three-season hiatus, Locke returned to head coaching and led Jacksonville University to 19 and 20 win seasons and an NCAA Tournament berth. He briefly served as an NBA head coach, guiding the Buffalo Braves for part of a season.

Finally, he coached Indiana State to a rapid turnaround from that program’s worst Division I season – a 4-24 record in 1988-89, the year before Locke arrived in Terre Haute. His five-year stay at ISU did not end as hoped. His 1993-94 team finished 4-22 and ISU replaced him at the end of the season. This difficult year ended his Sycamore coaching record at 50-88 overall.

But Locke has made progress for the program. In his second season at ISU, the Sycamores posted a 14-14 record. This change in trend earned Locke the Missouri Valley Conference Coach of the Year award, an honor only three other ISU coaches have received: Bill Hodges in 1979, Royce Waltman in 2000 and Josh Schertz in last March. Locke’s turnaround seemed to validate ISU’s bold decision to hire him in 1989 after serving as an assistant at UNLV under Jerry Tarkanian and at Indiana under Knight. The boldness of the ISU’s decision had to do with the content of “Caught in the Net.”

This 173-page book explained the NCAA violations and scandal that unfolded while Locke was coaching the Clemson Tigers. This included paying players, recruiting mistakes, drug abuse and even a fake black fraternity, created to persuade African-American recruits to play at a predominantly white university in rural South Carolina. Locke felt obligated to win and elevate Clemson from a lower-tier Atlantic Coast Conference program to contender status.

He resigned in 1975 after the NCAA investigation revealed multiple violations. The NCAA placed Clemson on three years’ probation. Locke spent two seasons on the staff of the NBA’s Buffalo Braves, then worked outside of basketball until landing the job in Jacksonville. After again feeling the pressure to “win at all costs” at that Florida university, according to Locke, he asked Ibach – a friend and longtime sports editor of the Baltimore Evening Sun – to help him tell the story. Clemson history.

“There was a point to be made,” Locke said of “Caught in the Net” in a Tribune-Star interview in 2002, when a film based on the book was under consideration. “That’s one of the reasons I wrote this book in the first place. But it fell on deaf ears and the timing was not right. And now I think it might be.

This film was never made, but the 1994 film “Blue Chips” has many parallels to “Caught in the Net.” Ibach said this month: “No one has ever contacted me about this. »

Still, Ibach added, “If you watch the movie, it follows a lot of these things” in “Caught in the Net.”

Regardless, the book’s message was important to other coaches, Ibach said. This also helped Locke ease Clemson’s traps.

Asking Ibach for help, Locke tells him, “It has destroyed me. It destroyed my family. It destroyed my health. I don’t like what it did to me. If I can help a high school coach or a college coach and keep them from going through the hell that I went through, that’s what I want to do.

Now 75 and retired from a long career in journalism and public relations that included nine years with the Chicago Cubs, Ibach believes many coaches have actually read the book and heeded its cautionary tale.

“I’ve had coaches read the book and say it’s one of the best books on basketball, and they have a copy in their office,” Ibach said.

“I think ultimately it helped some coaches,” Ibach continued, “but more importantly it helped Tates.”

Indeed, in Locke’s 2002 interview with the Tribune-Star, he was optimistic and energized about his coaching career as an NBA scout. “I scout all over the world and I love it,” he said. “I should have done this 15 years ago.”