Menu
Cloverdale to Butler, again: Cooper Neese will have big footsteps to follow as a Bulldog
When Cloverdale’s Cooper Neese signs his national letter-of-intent on Wednesday to join the Butler University men’s basketball program next fall, it won’t be the first such letter to be sent from his high school to the Indianapolis college.
In a scenario more coincidental in nature than anything, Neese will follow in the footsteps of Clover legend Chad Tucker when he eventually suits up for the Bulldogs.
The 6-foot-6 Tucker led the Clovers to sectional titles for three straight seasons in the early 1980s, and was selected to the 1983 Indiana All-Star team.
While the all-star selection committee recognized Tucker’s abilities and accomplishments, college coaches weren’t as impressed.
“Chad was offered one Division I scholarship early in his senior year,” his father, Al, recalled last week. “That was to Murray State. [Terre Haute natives] Steve Newton and Ron Greene [the head coach] were down there as coaches, and I was a friend of Steve’s at ISU when we were there. We went down for a visit, and it was a nice campus.”
That spring, Newton called Tucker — also Chad’s coach and said he had to talk to him in person.
“He stopped by the house and retracted the offer, saying that coach Greene does not think that your son can play basketball for Murray State,” Tucker said.
The biggest knock on Chad’s game?
“They said he was too slow, and he couldn’t play Division I basketball,” Al said. “That was the extent of Chad’s recruiting. The only one that really wanted him was Mike Steele at DePauw. Mike had seen him play two or three times a year for three years.
“He had just come to DePauw from being an assistant at Butler, and he convinced Butler to come and take a look at him,” Al said. “They did not see him until the last game of the regular season against Mooresville. Then they followed him throughout the tournament [three games in the sectional, two in the regional and one in the semistate].”
Joe Sexson, Butler’s coach, called coach Tucker two days after the semistate and wanted to set up a meeting.
“He said he really wanted to be with Chad and I that night,” he said. “They visited, and offered him a scholarship. They had done all their recruiting, but had one scholarship left. It was a good fit, and the rest is history.”
Had Butler not gotten into the picture, Al said Chad was set to go to DePauw.
“He was going to go there and play, and they could get him in for the same amount it would cost him to pay his way to Indiana State or one of the state schools,” he said. “That would have been fine, too.”
For Neese, the recruiting process was entirely different.
He was playing for a nationally-ranked summer traveling team in Indianapolis, a feature nonexistent in Chad Tucker’s era.
“Butler first contacted me in the summer between my sophomore and junior years,” Neese said. “It’s a big honor to get to go to the same school as Chad did. Not just for me, but for his family too, that I get to go there from Cloverdale.”
Head coach Chris Holtmann and assistant Michael Lewis were the coaches who Neese dealt with the most, and Neese made a verbal commitment to Butler last December early in his junior season.
Neese agrees the Cloverdale-to-Butler connection is mere coincidence.
“They knew who Chad was,” he said. “The Butler coaches had mentioned [the Cloverdale connection] to me, but I’m not sure they really knew about it until my mom told them about it.”
Butler program then was a shell of today’s
Since Tucker’s days in blue and white, Butler has made the huge jump from the Horizon League into the new Big East Conference and is now considered as one of the nation’s premier men’s college basketball programs.
It wasn’t quite that way when Tucker joined the Bulldogs.
“Sadly to say, the four years that Chad was there, they struggled to be above .500,” Al Tucker said. “They never did win a conference tournament game in four years. The best achievement they had was that they did get into the NIT Chad’s sophomore year and played against Indiana.”
Tucker said the fact that Chad became the school’s career scoring leader — a status he still holds today — after being basically shunned by every other Division I program was rewarding.
“Without a doubt,” he said. “It’s one of those situations where he was being overlooked, but being the father of your player is kind of hard to promote my own son. He had been down to Bobby Knight’s camp every year from fifth grade through when he graduated, and they never one time offered to even talk to me about him.”
The Cloverdale years
Tucker recalls that Chad both grew and developed slowly, which may have been a part of his lack of recruitment.
“He didn’t play varsity as a freshman,” Al said. “He played strictly freshman ball.”
In Chad’s sophomore year, he and teammate Jerry Neese [Cooper’s dad] began their progression into the Clover lineup. Al Tucker had projected December as the date for their starting roles, but it didn’t take that long.
“In the first game against Cascade, it went into overtime and Chad and Jerry scored all 14 points in the overtime,” Al said. “They became starters the next week and both of them never got out of the lineup. They blended in and by the end of the year they were legitimate varsity players. They both had varsity careers.”
Al Tucker noted that Chad and Jerry Neese were the best of friends, and if they weren’t both at the Tucker household they were at the Neese’s house.
Jerry Neese played two seasons at Vincennes before transferring to Indiana Central (now the University of Indianapolis), where he played for former Purdue standout Billy Keller.
Jimmy Price was a year ahead of Tucker and Neese, attended Rend Lake Junior College in Illinois before joining Neese at Indiana Central.
Another teammate of Tucker and Neese was Roger Shrum, a junior on the 1983 regional championship team. His daughter, Sammie, is now a promising freshman player for the Clover girls’ team.
What would Chad think?
Chad Tucker passed away in 1996, before Cooper Neese was born.
If he were still alive today, his father knows he would be thrilled that another Clover will be wearing Butler blue and white.
“Chad would be Cooper’s biggest booster,” Al said. “He would think this is really cool.”
Al Tucker hasn’t gotten to see Cooper play much over the past two seasons, so that fact limits his ability to forecast Cooper’s success probabilities at Butler.
Tucker, 77, has had knee replacements the past two years and was unable to see the end of last season due to his recovery. He did attend the regional tournament two years ago.
“I try to go as often as I can,” he said. “Not only for Cooper, but for other kids whose fathers played for me.”
Al thinks Cooper can play well for Butler, but with a few adjustments.
“Cooper can help,” he said. “He’s going to be fun to watch there.
“He reminds me of that [Kellen] Dunham boy who just graduated,” Tucker added. “He just has to get stronger and he has to play better defense — but that’s something you can be taught.”
Neese has added eight pounds of muscle since his summer season ended in July, now standing 6-foot-5 and weighing 188 pounds.
“I saw him play in the Junior All-Star Game in Bloomington in June,” he said. “That’s the only time I got to see him play this summer. I sure hope he can stay healthy and get in there, because the competition level that they have now at Butler is certainly a step up from what Chad had at Butler.”
If Neese and his teammates can win a sectional title next spring, it would also be their third straight — equaling the mark from the Tucker-Neese era.
“I hope they can win it,” Al said. “The [Jalen] Moore boy can make things happen. It’s going to be very similar to when Chad and Jerry were seniors. Everybody tried to stop those two players. They were most of our scoring; Patrick will have a lot of the same issues this year as I did during Chad’s senior year. I’m looking forward to the season starting, and I wish them well.”
Tucker notes some similarities between Jerry and Cooper Neese, with one big exception.
“Cooper has about four or five inches on his dad,” he said. “Jerry was an excellent shooter and he was an excellent high school athlete.
“We didn’t have the three-pointer back then,” Al noted. “Thank God for that.”
Example of closeness
One of the most memorable events in the careers of Jerry Neese and Chad Tucker, which showed their closeness, came in their senior year.
“They both reached 1,000 points in the same game [against Owen Valley],” Al noted. “Jerry scored his 1,000th point first. That was a significant achievement on the part of those two young men, and that’s unlikely that’s happened too much in any program high school or college.
“They were that close as friends, as well.”
Chad Tucker career highlights
Helped Cloverdale to a 67-11 record and three sectional championships over three varsity seasons… scored 1,338 points and had 600 career rebounds… averaged 24.5 points and 10.0 rebounds as a senior, was all-sectional and all-regional three consecutive years and all-state… 1983 Indiana All-Star… set all-time scoring record at Butler with 2,321 points, graduated as 4th all-time leading rebounder (689), and 8th in career assists (206)… three-time team MVP, three-time 1st team all-conference, 1985 honorable mention All-American, named to Butler’s 1997 all-time team, 1980s all-decade team, sesquicentennial team and 2007 Butler Athletic Hall of Fame… played professionally for seven seasons overseas… chosen for 2008 Silver Anniversary Team.