Black History Month: Calbert Cheaney became a college basketball superstar

Editor's note: The Courier & Press and The Gleaner are marking Black History Month with a collection of stories about people, places and events from local Black history.

More than 30 years after he finished playing at Indiana University, Evansville native Calbert Cheaney remains the all-time scoring leader in the Big Ten Conference.

But those four years in Bloomington were just the tip of the iceberg for a life spent in basketball for the Harrison High School graduate, who became the next great Evansville sports figure to follow in the footsteps of Bob Griese and Don Mattingly.

His 2,613 career collegiate points made him an IU legend, and his senior year he was the consensus National Player of the Year. He was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019 and drafted sixth overall by the then-Washington Bullets (now Wizards) of the NBA.

Cheaney retired from the NBA after playing for five teams in 13 seasons. He joined the Golden State Warriors in 2009-10 season as a front office special assistant before joining the team's coaching staff as an assistant in 2010-11. He returned to IU as the director of basketball operations in 2013. He went on to spend three years as an assistant coach under Jim Crews for Saint Louis University, before returning to the pro ranks as an assistant coach for player development with the Indiana Pacers.

He's now back in Bloomington as director of player development at IU.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Calbert Cheaney went from Evansville to the bright lights of college hoops