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    Sunday, April 28, 2024

    Bias, Penders head college hoops Hall class

    Kansas City, Mo. — Maryland basketball star Len Bias, who was chosen No. 2 by the Boston Celtics in the 1986 NBA Draft before dying days later of a drug overdose, was chosen for induction into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame on Sunday. 

    Bias leads a group of six players and two coaches that will be enshrined in Kansas City next November.

    The other players to make up the class are Hersey Hawkins, who scored more than 3,000 points during his career at Bradley; UCLA's David Greenwood, the No. 2 pick of the Chicago Bulls in the 1979 draft; Jim Jackson, the two-time Big Ten player of the year at Ohio State; Antawn Jameson, who led North Carolina to back-to-back Final Fours; and Kansas star Paul Pierce, who went on to play 19 years in the NBA, mostly with the Celtics.

    The two coaches selected for the Hall of Fame were Rick Byrd, who won 805 games at Maryville, Lincoln Memorial and Belmont, and Tom Penders, who took four different schools to the NCAA Tournament.

    Penders, who played at UConn from 1964-67, coached at Tufts, Columbia, Fordham, Rhode Island, Texas, George Washington and Houston.

    His career record was 649-437 and Penders was named the Atlantic 10 Conference Coach of the Year while coaching at Rhode Island in 1987.

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