I caught up with UVA Basketball all-time great Sean Singletary recently, and learned that when a college coach gets fired, the grad assistants on the staff are left on the hook for their tuition.
Never would have guessed that.
Also learned that Singletary’s brief blip of a good run with a good Phoenix Suns team that featured the likes of Steve Nash, Amar’e Stoudemire, Shaquille O’Neal and Grant Hill came to an early end because Larry Brown, then the coach in Charlotte, insisted on Phoenix including Singletary in a trade.
Singletary could have been the backup point guard on those run-and-gun Suns teams that were battling Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobli and Kobe Bryant for Western Conference supremacy.
Alas.
What else: remember the first game in the new JPJ back in 2006, when our ‘Hoos came back from 19 down in the first half in a 93-90 win over Arizona?
He wasn’t sure if he’d play because he’d undergone minor hip surgery, and was supposed to be out into December.
“I wasn’t at my best, but I was able to compete, and I needed to be out there,” Singletary said.
I went back and looked at the box score:
Singletary had 25 points and six assists that night.
Not at his best.
Probably explains why we were down 19 in the first half.
Playing a big game with a bad hip was why they called him “The Bionic Man” behind the scenes.
The flip side of being “The Bionic Man” being, his willingness to play through the myriad injuries he suffered in his four years on Grounds, which saw him named to the All-ACC first team three times, in addition to being a third-team All-American in 2007 – oh, and yeah, his jersey is hanging in the rafters at JPJ – is why his pro career got cut short.
Singletary, a Philadelphia native, settled in the Crozet area after his playing days were over, and aside from moving back home to Philly for a year during his brief stint as a grad assistant at La Salle, he’s made Central Virginia his home.
“This is such a great town, great people, great alumni, great athletics. And it’s just, I just would like to be a part of what UVA is doing,” Singletary told me.
I’m probably the odd one to be taking up his case on this – the last thing you want, honestly, if you’re trying to get the folks at UVA to do anything, is to have me as your advocate.
But here I am, saying, let’s get Sean Singletary back into the fold.
I imagine that I know what the holdup is.
When you Google his name, a 2015 article from The Daily Progress pops up, with the headline: “Former UVa basketball player Sean Singletary charged with driving under the influence.”
You have to dig a little deeper to learn that Singletary was acquitted on the DUI charge, and to find out that the circumstances surrounding the arrest and the subsequent court case were a little sketchy – among other things, the police dashboard video disappeared, which, yeah, sure, it happens.
I did a background check on Singletary as I researched him for this article, and found two other minor traffic infractions from 2015, and a speeding ticket in Lower Merion, Pa., in 2017.
Other than that, nothing – certainly not anything to the level of a DUI charge that ended with an acquittal.
If it’s a 2015 newspaper headline touting something that ended up not being what the headline said it was that is giving the likes of Wally Walker and Carla Williams pause, it’s probably time to move on.
I’d think having a guy like a Sean Singletary around UVA Athletics would be a plus for all involved.
He’s still very much in the basketball business, as a youth coach, mentor and private trainer, for one.
On top of that, it wouldn’t hurt having a guy who stayed on Grounds for four years and got his degree influencing this new crop of kids who seem ready to bolt for greener pastures whenever the coach sends them to the bench for a quick breather.
I’ll take the guy that stared down Duke in OT any day of the week on my side.
Come on, Wally, Carla.
You want to build a basketball culture over there?
Give me a team of guys wired like Sean Singletary.
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Chris Graham
