Working-Class Hero
By Howie Stalwick, Coeur d'Alene Press

January 20, 2000

David Farrar, the rough, tough and gruff Idaho men's basketball coach, offers idle praise with the same frequency that he writes poetry, sips cappuccino and listens to PBS. For Farrar, to praise without considerable merit would be a grave disservice to all parties involved.

So, when Farrar labels Clifford Gray "perhaps the smartest basketball player we've ever had at Idaho;" and says Gray has "a high threshold for pain;" and describes Gray as "just a great young man" ... well, YOU tell Farrar he's lyin'.

Gray, Idaho's undersized power forward-post-center-whatever-is-best-for-the-team, is the feel-good story of this or any other year. Gray was the youngest of four children raised, for the most part, without a father in a federal housing project in the North Carolina mill town of Kannapolis.

Gray has only casual contact with his father, who struggled with drugs. Plenty of folks in Gray's old neighborhood struggle with drugs and life in general, but Gray steered clear of trouble and is on target to graduate in May - the first college graduate, to his knowledge, in his immediate or extended family.

"Every now and then, a kid comes along that you truly would take home as a son - Clifford and I had that type of relationship," said Ricky Holt, Gray's coach at A.L. Brown High School.

"He's a great person, a great athlete. I love the guy," said Chad Hintz, Gray's junior college coach. "There's no quit in him."

In this day and age of the in-your-face dunk, ceaseless trash talking and the perpetual bad 'tude, Gray might as well carry a lunch bucket onto the court. There is little flash, but much substance, to his game.

"That kind of relates to my background a little bit," Gray said in his soft-spoken manner. "I take it from my mom. She had to raise four kids by herself, and we weren't that wealthy.

"To see where we're at, my brothers and my sister - I just want to pay her back."

Gray ranks just fourth on the Vandals with 10.0 points per game, but he's first in rebounds at 7.2 and has just 18 turnovers in 13 games. He would lead the Big West Conference in field goal shooting percentage at 63.4, but he doesn't shoot enough - just 71 times - to officially qualify. He's a fine defender, though he plays on bad feet and routinely gives up at least 3 inches and 30 pounds to opponents.

"He's what I refer to as a warrior on a basketball team," said Hintz, who has moved on from Dodge City (Kan.) Community College to NCAA Division II Fort Hays (Kan.) State. "He's one of those guys, every time the ball was thrown up, he was ready to play."

"He's always been that way," said Holt, who now coaches in Winston-Salem, N.C. "He leads by example. He's a super kid. He's just happy to have the opportunity to play."

Gray wasn't a red-hot recruit out of high school or junior college due to his lack of size for an inside player. Idaho lists Gray at 6-foot-6 and 220 pounds, but he literally laughs out loud at the mere mention of those numbers.

"If they're saying 6-6, I'd be happy," he said with a cat-that-ate-the-goldfish grin. "Why don't you get it up a notch and give me 6-7?"

Not a chance, Cliff. And what about that 220?

"There must be something wrong with the scale downstairs," he said, all sweet and innocent, "because it keeps saying 205."

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