OT-Chico Vaughn BU recruit

[capecod]

SIAP-another OLD Bradley recruiting story

I am sorry if this is bad timing to bring up another old BU story, a day after a very nice win vs Drake.

The reason for the timing of this post is that I just found out that Chico Vaughn died last October-I am afraid that word of Illinois basketball greats doesn't get to Cape Cod very fast.

I thought a few on this site would find the below SI article from 1963 interesting:

Vaughn was the leading scorer in Illinois HS basketball history from Cairo

Vaughn went on to be the leading scorer in Southern Illinois basketball history too, before a nice career in the NBA with the St Louis Hawks

Below is a link to the 1963 Sports Illustrated article that highlights Vaughn's very short stay at Bradley(Coach Orsborn initially won the recruiting battle for Chico) in the 'wild west' days of recruiting before Letters of Intent

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1075474/index.htm

Vaughn was on campus and set to register at Bradley and Orsborn had assigned a BU player to watch over him until registration. There was nothing 'innocent' about the concern that BU had regarding a recruit(even one already on campus) back in those wild west recruiting days.

Vaughn disappeared -spirited away to Dayton. But before Dayton could enroll him, Chico was again 'led' away-this time to Southern Illinois

The SI article states that BU's recruitment of Chet Walker was only initiated in response to losing Vaughn(but my understanding is the two weren't related).

BU was hoping(and planning) to have both Walker and Vaughn in their recruiting class.

http://thesouthern.com/news/local/charlie-chico-vaughn-siu-s-all-time-leading-scorer-dies/article_b083ee46-3db0-11e3-8a8a-0019bb2963f4.html

[Da Coach]

Cool. Thanks for the nostalgia!

[Chico]

Not to nit-pick, but I think Chico, no relation by the way, led the state in scoring while playing for Tamms high school.

[TNel]

I was a student at BU at the time of Vaughn's arrival/departure. In a PE class, the instructor (a non-basketball BU coach) told us his departure had something to do with an assignment he and some others had been given to paint the old wooden bleachers at the athletic field on the quad. Might have been apocryphal. Sound familiar to anyone?