This week in What the Hell Happened To, we remember the career of Steve Downing.  Steve played along side George McGinnis at Washington high School in Indianapolis and had an undefeated season, wining the State championship in 1969.  Both went on to IU the next year and could not play because Freshmen were not allowed to play back then.  Steve was always in George's shadow but was an excellent player in his own right and would prove that.  

Coach Bob Knight would be the IU coach their sophomore year, and few who saw Big Steve's monstrous 47 point, 25 rebound game against #7 Kentucky (in Adolph Rupp's last year) would forget it (IU won by a point too). And when McGinnis would leave school after his sophomore year to go pro, Steve stuck around and would continue to make a name for himself.  Steve had an illustrious career at Indiana University where he lead Bob Knight's Hoosiers to the Final Four in 1973.  He was named that season's Big Ten MVP with averages of 20 points and 10 rebounds.  And after all those years later, Steve still ranks #5 All-Time in Rebounds at IU.



The Celts would select Downing with the 17th overall pick in the 1973 draft. He'd appear in 24 games his first year with Boston (and one playoff game) en route to the 1974 Championship.  The following season he'd only appear in 3 games and that was the end of his career.  Was he injured?  Did he go over to Europe to play (rather unlikely during that era).  At a mere 6'8 & 225, Steve played center in the NBA.  Today he'd have no problem playing that position but back then I'd imagine it was a bit tougher.  Of course maybe he had a long wingspan, but we wouldn't know that since Jay Bilas wasn't doing the draft back in 1973.

Steve was before my time, and I didn't get to see him play, so it's tough guessing at exactly what the reason was.  Let's face it: Indiana has a tendency (like Duke) to produce guys that never amount to star-level players at the NBA level.  In fact in the last 35 years, if you throw out Isiah Thomas, the list of Hoosiers who played in the NBA is lengthy, but not particularly impressive.  Kent Benson, Steve Alford, Scott May, Randy Wittman, Mike Woodson, Quinn Buckner, Eric Anderson, Calbert Cheaney, Brian Evans, Alan Henderson, Uwe Blab, Dean Garrett, Keith Smart, and Jarred Jeffries come to mind.  I'm definitely missing some people but you get my drift.  The only one outside of Isiah who averaged more than 10.5 ppg for their career was Woodson and several of them (Benson & Cheaney) were very high draft picks.   Could this have been the case with Downing?  Was he just not able to cut it in the NBA?  Did he have some kind of major injury?  Why was his NBA career over so quick?

For the last 10 years Steve was the Associate Director of Athletics at Texas Tech, where he worked closely with Bob Knight.  But as of August 2011, Steve was named the Athletic Director for Marian University in Indiana.  Steve's wife, Doris, is a graduate of Marian University and retired principal of Indian Creek Elementary School, also in Indiana.

For a list of all the "What the Hell Happened To" Series please click here.  

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