Bread City Basketball

Between 1967 and 1970, in a swampy dream of rural Louisiana, Greg Procell set the national high school scoring record: 6,702 points. It’s a stat that puts the unknown Procell into the company of names like Chamberlain and DiMaggio. His senior year at Ebarb High, he lit it up for 46.7 a game. Procell was Choctaw-Apache, and stood at only 5-11. Legend has it that as a kid, he learned how to shoot by throwing his dad’s empty beer cans into an empty foot tub. Procell grew, and his father built him a scrap-wood hoop and backboard. The backyard, perched at the edge of the woods, became Procell’s home court. At night he soaked pine knots with kerosene and lit them on fire, so that he could practice in the dark.

I attended Panola Jr. College while Greg was there. I saw his first game there and couldn’t help but come away impressed. Having grown up in a small town in northeast Texas, I first heard about him when he had 100 points against Elizabeth High. I never got to meet him but am glad he had a measure of success after leaving Panola. Far too many small town guys wasted too much of the talent they had by giving up too soon.

Comment by Danny yarbrough August 24, 2010 @ 3:57 pm

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