One of the few stories I know personally, and I don't believe she will mind me sharing, is the funny story of Alan Taylor who played with Danny Ainge just as the Cougs were about to become good. If anybody remembers the Danny's freshman year, the Cougs weren't good and in fact had a losing record, IIRC. But the flashes of Danny's brilliance were observed in a close loss at Pauly Pavilion against UCLA. Almost immediately after that loss, BYU comes to play UNR in Reno.

On that team was the center Alan Taylor, who got into a scrap with the star of the UNR team, Edgar Jones from New Jersey. Edgar was a journeyman in the NBA, not exactly a scholar athlete and admitted only because UNR had a rare rule that allowed Fs in classes to be dropped when computing a grade point average. But I diverge....

In the scrap, it was alleged that Taylor bit Edgar Jones.

My friend was at the game and said to us, "gosh what a xxx". She attended BYU the next year, and became a cheerleader, met Alan and later married him. She always laughed about that first impression. Sadly, Alan passed away a few years ago.

It is rare that I don't meet a former player and am impressed about how normal and/or nice they actually are. That doesn't stop me from complaining about less than stellar performance in the moment.