Long-time Carson coach Bud Hurin remembered

Today, only memories remain from the many basketball games played at old Stewart Indian School.

And last Sunday, one of the legends of Stewart basketball from the 1960s and '70s, James "Bud" Hurin, passed away at his home in Carson City, where he had lived for the past 38 years. Hurin, who had been battling cancer, was 75.

Hurin will be remembered as one of the legends of Nevada high school basketball - he won 511 games as a coach at both Mineral County High School in Hawthorne and at Stewart. He won Class-A state championships at both schools, in 1964 at Mineral County and in 1966 at Stewart.

So too will Hurin be remembered as a basketball innovator, a colorful character who always had a good story to tell, and as a teacher.

Hurin, the teacher, had a significant impact on many young men who passed through Stewart before the federal Indian school was closed in 1980.

"He taught the basics. Nothing fancy, he just believed basic fundamentals won games," said Max Neuneker, who coached with Hurin at both Mineral County and Stewart.

Hurin wasn't afraid to improvise. Anyone who watched Stewart teams of the '60s and '70s will remember how the Braves would go down to the floor and roll passes to each other.

"He did it at Stewart because the kids were so short and they had a hard time seeing and getting the ball over the taller kids on the other teams," Neuneker said. "He conducted studies and found you could roll a ball across the floor as fast if not faster than you could throw a regular pass. That, and a little guy doesn't have as hard a time going down to pick up the ball.

"When you're small, you have to use your head, and that was Bud. He was a little guy who would look for things that would make him as effective as the next guy."

Tom Andreasen, who coached at Carson and Virginia City high schools during that era, well remembers the many wrinkles Hurin's teams could show.

"He had quite the teams out there," Andreasen said. "He did lots of things out there you've never seen before or since. But they were very effective."

Hurin's son, Alex, was a student manager for Andreasen at Carson High.

"I got to know Bud pretty well then," Andreasen said. "We'd draw plays on handkerchiefs and napkins. He loved to talk basketball. That and being in the Marines in World War II."

There was no mistaking the Marine influence in Hurin's coaching. To give basketball fans of today a reference point, think of Bobby Knight.

"You could see the Marine side of him with the discipline, and with what he expected out of his athletes," said Robey Willis, who taught and coached boxing at Stewart and now serves as Justice of the Peace in Carson City. "I think he always felt the discipline got him through World War II, so that was always something he wanted to pass on because his teams were always well disciplined."

Hurin may have been the first coach to use a trapping press defense in Nevada.

"He played an old press that was the same one John Wooden used at UCLA, only he used it five years before Wooden made it popular," Neuneker said. "They were both from the Midwest, it wasn't new back there, but it was out here."

Hurin left Hawthorne to coach at Stewart in 1963. Two years later, the Braves from tiny Stewart fielded one of the best teams in Northern Nevada regardless of classification.

"Not one of the big schools from Reno and Sparks won at Stewart that year," Andreasen recalled.

Then in 1966, Stewart reigned as the small schools state champion in Nevada.

"Bud was quite a colorful character. I'm going to miss him," Andreasen said. "Every year for darn near 25 years, he would call me at home when the NCAA tournament was being played. I always knew the call was coming, either during the championship game or the semifinals."

Coaching at Stewart wasn't the easiest of assignments. The boarding school brought together Native Americans from Nevada as well as Arizona, Utah and California.

"At one time, I believe they had 26 different tribes from at least five different states out there," Neuneker said. "To make those kids melt into one team was certainly a challenge, because they came from so many varying places. You were trying to put together kids from tribes that had been rivals for hundreds of years, and that wasn't easy."

Above all, Hurin can be remembered as a teacher.

"He was a teacher and he taught those kids how to play basketball," Neuneker said. "He brought them some new ways, but they loved to learn from him."