THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 31, 1996 TAG: 9601310395
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE CARLSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 187 lines
North Carolina A&T was getting hammered on the boards in a close game, and coach Jeff Capel ripped into freshman Joe Bunn during a timeout.
``Your opponent is challenging your manhood! You're backing down!''
Bunn pounced on virtually every ball that came off the glass the rest of the game while bellowing: ``I will not be denied.''
Call it Bunn's life credo.
Bunn followed Capel to Old Dominion and, after sitting out one season, leads the team in scoring. Impressive, considering Capel was the only college coach who thought Bunn was a Division I player.
You want to see a Herculean effort? Tell Bunn he can't do something, and then stand back. Way back. Because Joe Bunn will not be denied.
``He's the most competitive athlete I've ever been around,'' Capel says. ``He knows that's the only way he can survive because of his limited size and the fact that he's not a great athlete.''
You can see by watching Bunn play that he has a big heart. What you can't see is that his competitive drive is rooted in a night almost five years ago when his heart broke as he looked upon the charred remains of his mother.
It was the night Joe Bunn became a man, a little earlier than he should have had to.
Bunn's mother was to pick up her son and two teammates at Northern Nash High School after basketball practice on Feb. 7, 1991. She never made it.
Diane Rogers, who had remarried after divorcing Bunn's father, failed to negotiate a curve on a two-lane rural road near Rocky Mount, N.C. The state trooper's accident report estimates that she slammed into a tree while traveling 55 mph on a rainy, foggy night. The vehicle caught fire, with Rogers pinned inside.
One of Bunn's friends called home for a ride. Upon being picked up, the boys were told of a bad accident nearby.
Bunn arrived at the scene and recognized his mother's mangled 1979 Pontiac Bonneville. He went to the local hospital, only to learn she had been airlifted to the burn unit at the University of North Carolina medical center.
Bunn's pastor drove him the 75 miles to Chapel Hill. By the time they arrived, Bunn's mother was dead at age 36.
Bunn, suddenly a 15-year-old orphan (his father had died several years earlier), was asked to identify the body, which was burned almost beyond recognition.
``That was the toughest thing of all,'' Bunn says. ``Not a pretty sight, but it was something I had to do.''
Then he assumed the glum task of calling family members and friends.
``Me and my mother were very close,'' Bunn says. ``It was like I lost a friend and my mother.
``I felt a little more on my own at this point. I had a feeling my adulthood was about to start.''
Bunn's maternal grandmother, Irene Lynch, moved to Rocky Mount from New York, where Bunn had lived until he was in high school, to care for Joe and his younger brother. Lynch says Bunn became more determined to achieve after his mother's death.
``A lot of people at that age, this would have more or less destroyed them if they were a weak person,'' Lynch says. ``Joe's been pretty strong.''
Bunn calls his mother's death ``my motivation to succeed and my excuse to fail.'' He had to choose how the tragedy would impact him.
``He had every reason in the world to throw his hands up and be a statistic,'' Capel says. ``He's chosen not to be. He wants to be something in life, and he will be.''
So what will he be?
Both Capel and Bunn's high school coach, Michael Mosley, think Bunn would make a great lawyer.
Bunn says law school is a possibility, but he also is interested in coaching.
Bunn was one of about 80 people who tested for his high school's quiz bowl team, which competes against other schools in a general-knowledge competition. Bunn qualified with one of the top seven scores, then declined to participate.
``He said, `I just did it because I wanted to see if I could do it,' '' Mosley says.
In the Old Dominion media guide, Bunn lists Napoleon as the person in history he'd most like to meet. But there's actually another figure he reveres.
``My hero away from basketball is Richard Milhous Nixon, probably our greatest president,'' says Bunn, whose major is history.
Bunn, 20, defends Nixon as staunchly as he defends the low post. He says Nixon guided America out of Vietnam, but all people remember is that he resigned under the threat of impeachment.
``Nobody talks about the great `Kitchen Debate' or our foreign policy with China; everyone wants to talk about Watergate,'' Bunn says. ``He got a raw deal.
``He did a great job for America, and I think it gets overlooked because of Watergate. I think it's one of the great tragedies of American history.
``I wish he would have been president when I was born. That would have meant a lot to me.''
Bunn is a registered Democrat, but the Republican Nixon just captured his fancy. When Oliver Stone's ``Nixon'' came out, Bunn couldn't get to the theater quick enough. He loved it, even if Hollywood played fast and loose with some facts.
One fact was inescapable when the lights came on after the movie.
``I was the only black person in there, and the only person under 40 in there,'' Bunn says.
Capel says he and Bunn rarely discuss basketball away from the court, choosing instead to kick around politics or strategies employed in famous battles.
``There's more to him than just a basketball player, that's what I enjoy about him,'' Capel says. ``He has a lot to offer.''
The first game of Bunn's freshman season at North Carolina A&T was against Georgia Tech. Capel wanted to start Bunn because he was his best player, but assistant Mark Cline thought that Bunn would be nervous and that it would be better to bring him in off the bench.
The coaches asked Bunn which he felt most comfortable with.
``He looked me straight in the eye and said, `Coach, that's a management decision, and I'm just personnel,' '' Capel says.
Bunn, a 6-foot-6 power forward, has handled a recent personnel move well, despite some initial discomfort.
Eleven games into his sophomore season, Bunn was removed from the starting lineup as the Monarchs changed to a substitution pattern featuring two separate groups. Bunn and center Odell Hodge, ODU's two best players, were getting in each other's way in the low post because of their similar styles. Capel wanted to pair each with a freshman post player.
``Not many teams bring their top scorer or second-leading scorer off the bench, and not a lot of teams get double-doubles off the bench,'' says Bunn, who has reached double figures in points and rebounds three times as a sub. ``It would have been different if things changed and I wasn't playing as much or getting the same opportunities.
``When it's winning time, me and the `Big O' have to be in there together.''
Bunn's numbers have dipped slightly since the change, but he still leads the team at 14.8 points per game and is second in rebounding at 6.7. The Monarchs, however, were 3-7 at the time and are 8-2 since.
Old Dominion fans should not take offense to this, but Bunn would prefer that tonight's UNC-Wilmington game was not at Scope.
``If you were to calculate my averages, there's no question I'm a much better player on the road,'' says Bunn, who averages 1.4 more points and shoots a higher field-goal percentage away from home.
Bunn's incentive on the road comes from an unusual source: hecklers.
He seeks them out during pregame warm-ups. When Bunn finds one - or better yet, a group - he will make eye contact, smile, posture, flaunt and pose for them throughout the game.
At Texas Tech, a courtside fan yelled early in the game, ``I'm in your head, No. 34.''
``I looked over and thought, `Ah, we've got one tonight,' '' Bunn says with a smile.
At James Madison, Bunn followed a free-throw attempt all the way to the basket and almost strutted straight into the student section behind the hoop. When Bunn returned to the line for his second shot, a smiling referee came up to him and said, ``Don't start anything.''
At UNC-Wilmington, a couple of older men abused Bunn all night, calling him, among other things, ``Honey-Bunn.'' Near the end of the game, ODU was in command and Bunn was on the bench. The hecklers came over and shook his hand on their way out.
``I respected that,'' Bunn says.
As long as Bunn treats opponents and fans with respect, Capel allows the antics.
``You've gotta let him do that; that's his edge,'' Capel says. ``I've learned to live with it.''
Learn to live with it. Make no excuses. Do not be denied.
Bunn elected to do all of those after his mother's accident.
He shed 40 pounds between his junior and senior years in high school because he wanted to be a college basketball player. Capel - who was at Division II Fayetteville State when he began recruiting Bunn - competed with only one other Division II school for the services of a post player who couldn't jump.
What Bunn has proved he can do, however, is score and rebound with a vast array of post moves, quick feet, physical strength and pure determination.
``I've had coaches call me and say, `Well, we missed the boat on him,' '' says Mosley, Bunn's high school coach. ``They missed the key ingredients: He's someone dedicated to being a basketball player and, when you look at the stat sheet, he gets it done.''
Five years after her death, the memory of his mother still provides that drive for Bunn. He calls the maturity he developed early in life ``the silver lining in the cloud'' of his mother's death.
``I could go almost a whole day without her being on my mind, and then I'll do or say something that would make her very mad or amuse her,'' Bunn says. ``It's impossible not to think about her every day.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot
Jeff Capel, right, was the only coach who saw Joe Bunn as a Division
I player. ``He's the most competitive athlete I've ever been
around,'' Capel says. Bunn, who followed Capel from North Carolina
A&T to ODU, leads the Monarchs in scoring - from the bench.
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