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Celtics' Sullinger old acquaintances with Framingham's Clouse
By Scott Souza/Daily News staff
The MetroWest Daily News
Posted Jul 08, 2012
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Mike Clouse coached Jared Sullinger in AAU and was an assistant on the high school team of the Celtics' first-round pick.
BOSTON ?
Mike Clouse remembers the day he first met this kid named Jared Sullinger.
It was seven years ago in a gymnasium outside Columbus, Ohio. Clouse, a Framingham North Class of ?72 alumnus, had been around the world playing and coaching basketball and found himself in the Midwest for an extended visit with his wife?s family. While there, he got a call from someone he knew from his days running the Heart of Texas Hoops Academy asking him to lend a hand with this AAU team of eighth-graders.
It was a guard-oriented squad. The best player from the year before had left to play for the more celebrated All-Ohio Red program, and what was left was a mishmash of undersized frontcourt players with one big ? many would have thought too big ? exception.
?Here was this 6-foot-3, 280-pound, fat little kid no one wanted,? Clouse said.
Clouse worked with Sullinger that day, watched him lumber up and down the court and listened to him talk about how other players made fun of his weight. Clouse said he walked away convinced there was one hell of a basketball player hiding in that chubby body.
?I couldn?t believe no one else could see what I could see,? Clouse said. ?The hands, the footwork, that butt down there in the post. I told him that if he worked at it, and we worked together, he could do great things in this game.?
Clouse was asked to stay as the team?s coach. A year later, when Sullinger?s father and high school coach, Satch Sullinger, asked Clouse to join his staff at Northland High School, Clouse again agreed to extend his Ohio stay.
It was around that time Clouse made a prediction he said the younger Sullinger laughed off immediately.
?I told him one day you?re going to be playing for the Boston Celtics,? Clouse said, ?and I?m going to be sitting in the Garden watching you.?
As Clouse made the drive from Ohio to Framingham this week to visit his mother, he couldn?t have been prouder that the wildest of predictions is only a few months from becoming reality.
LASTING BOND
Clouse?s connection with Sullinger may have been borne out of his own humble beginnings in the game. He never played for Framingham North. He was 5-foot-10 entering his senior year and didn?t hit the growth spurt that eventually put him at 6-foot-5 until his diploma was nearly in hand.
cont...
Read more: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/n...ntances-with-Framinghams-Clouse#ixzz202JJIv2J
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