LADY LIONS TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF FLINT, MICHIGAN, BASKETBALL TRADITION

By Jeremy Muck/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF

Over the years, the city of Flint, Mich. has produced some of the best basketball talent in the country.

Mateen Cleaves, Morris Peterson, Charlie Bell, and Antonio Smith helped lead Michigan State to the 2000 national championship under Tom Izzo. The four Michigan State players earned the moniker “Flintstones”, since they all called Flint home. Former NBA star Glen Rice hails from the Michigan city as well as 2006 WNBA Finals MVP Deanna Nolan, who currently plays for the Detroit Shock. Flint is also home to former NFL stars Mark Ingram and Andre Rison.

Now Pine Bluff can lay claim to Flint, at least on the basketball court.

Three Arkansas-Pine Bluff women’s basketball players, seniors Candace Ward and Delores Hughley and freshman Jonae Prince-Coleman, along with head coach Danny Evans, represent the Michigan city at UAPB.

Evans was born and raised in Flint and went on to play basketball at Oregon State in the early 1980s under legendary head coach Ralph Miller. While at Flint Northern High School, Evans played with future NBA player Trent Tucker and was coached by Grover Kirkland, who coached 291 Division I basketball players in his 30 years of coaching.

The third-year head coach at UAPB still has fond memories of Flint.

“I just have a great respect for the people there,” Evans said. “I know all the people there. I still have a lot of relatives living there. Most of our parents moved from the South and worked at General Motors. I was there and Candace’s dad is my uncle. Her father was one of the first black police officers in the city of Flint. People wouldn’t know that, but it was personable for me.”

Evans’ parents moved to Flint from Texarkana. He sees similarities between Flint and Pine Bluff, both predominantly African-American cities.

“Flint is a hard-working plant town. They’ve had a lot of industries move out of town, so it’s kind of dead right now,” Evans said. “In the 50’s and 60’s, it was a booming city. There were a lot of car industries there. People from the South moved up there and took those jobs. That had the city going. Now, it’s a little dead as far as the economic situation. But that’s the place where I grew up and I love it to death.

“Pine Bluff is similar to that because you have the paper mill. There’s a lot of industry working people here. I just think these people are the same (as Flint). You have a lot of people speaking to you. You go to Wal-Mart and everybody’s there. It feels like home because you go to Flint and it’s that type of atmosphere. I feel right at home.”

Ward and Hughley went to rival high schools in Flint. Ward went to Flint Northern while Hughley attended Carman-Ainsworth. But the childhood friends played at Mott Community College together and now, they’re playing Division I basketball in the Southwestern Athletic Conference.

“Candace is my best friend, so I just liked having her around,” Hughley said. “We’ve been playing together our whole lives. It’s nice.”

The three Flint natives agreed that in Flint, basketball was all you could do for fun. Prince-Coleman added that basketball was “all that you could do for fun, since you didn’t have any video games.”

Ward knew Cleaves and Bell while going to school in Flint. She is also proud of her hometown’s basketball tradition.

“I loved being in Flint to play basketball,” Ward said. “If you didn’t play basketball, then I don’t know what you were doing in Flint. Everybody in Flint knows how to play basketball, for the most part.”

Evans, who first saw Ward and Hughley play basketball when they were 13 years old, hopes to continue the recruiting pipeline from Michigan to Arkansas.

“We’ve had good success recruiting Michigan and we hope to continue that,” Evans said. “Hopefully they’ll continue to learn a lot here. Those two are seniors and Candace has a family at home as well. She’s given us an opportunity to have her here and play well for us. Hughley, we’re going to miss her a lot as well. Basically, they’ve grown together here these last two years and finishing out with a bang. That’s what we’re looking to do.”