Every Rebound Was Mine: Mark "Rufus" Rucinski

Nobody in Juniata College history has done what Mark Rucinski did. A thousand points and a thousand rebounds. Four straight team MVP awards. Career and single season rebounding leader, and forty one years later nobody has caught him.

He got there by accident. Rucinski grew up in Olean, New York, in the shadow of St. Bonaventure. He was the tenth man on his high school team as a freshman and again as a sophomore, played JV as a junior, and got one varsity season as a senior with no idea how college recruiting worked. He enrolled at Mercyhurst, tried to walk on, and didn't make the team. Then Juniata head coach Dan Helm called his dorm phone out of the blue, because a recruit had mentioned a tall kid who wasn't playing anywhere. A brother-in-law drove him three and a half hours from Oil City. One pickup game later he was an Eagle.

What followed: nearly 10 rebounds a game as a freshman, 14.2 as a junior and second in the nation behind Hakeem Olajuwon, an alley-oop play lifted straight from Ed Pinckney and Villanova, a dunk that silenced King's College on homecoming night, and three shattered backboards on two continents. All of it before the three point line and before the shot clock existed in Division III basketball.

After Juniata he played three years of pro ball in France and Luxembourg, averaged better than 30 points and 10 rebounds against seven footers, got laser therapy in 1987 that wasn't approved in the States until the 2000s, and watched 10 of the 12 imports in his division get sent home by season's end. Then thirty years in the insurance industry, three adoptions in three and a half years, and a Juniata Hall of Fame induction back in Huntingdon.

Tom Frank, Drew "Biz" Besket and head coach Greg Curley get all of it, plus his all-time Juniata starting five, the night in Belgium that cost him the captaincy, and the Pitt-Johnstown game he spent running from his own opponents. Before Rufus joins, Curley checks in from a campus that's full again, sets the October 1 mile test, and takes a listener question that turns out to be the perfect handoff.

Got a question for the guys? Submit it now and join the conversation on Instagram @JuniataBasketballShow