It is with a great deal of sadness that I report the death of former Slicer and Slicer assistant coach, Kelly Kubit. He passed away last week in Las Vegas where he had lived for the last decade. He was part of a group of La Porte junior high kids that I had at the Valparaiso University Basketball Camp three years in a row in the late 70s. That group included Tom Dermody, the Stesiak brothers, John Boyd, Bret Benefiel, Matt Heinen, Don Estep, and probably a couple guys I can’t remember.
I believe that this photograph is the 86-87 freshmen team and Kelly was Mike Luther’s assistant and is on the far right. I’m pretty sure that this was the first of six seasons he spent as an assistant.
He loved basketball and he was an excellent assistant. I have two stories that I’ve told before. After the 87-88 season, he worked Joe B. Hall’s camp at Kentucky, Dean Smith’s camp at North Carolina, and John Thompson’s at Georgetown. He did this in three consecutive weeks and all three coaches had won national championships. He came back with a bunch of drills and strategies he picked up. It’s really hard to get jobs at those camps unless you’re a very successful head coach, especially when you’re from out of state.
Years later he confessed that he called those places and told them that he was the head coach at La Porte and had three sophomores that were 6’6” or taller. At least the second part was true. In 1991, we were in our first semi-state in 47 years and playing in the ACC at Notre Dame. We had won a school-record 17 games in a row but found ourselves trailing by 13 in the fourth quarter. We were getting destroyed by Steve Nicodemus, who would finish with 35 and go to Michigan State. Kelly was sitting behind me and suggested that we put in Ryan Miller, a sophomore, who had only played in a couple varsity games all season.
He pointed out that Ryan gave our Michael Bush trouble when he guarded him in practice. I thought it was a stupid idea but 30 seconds later I put Ryan in the game. He promptly blocked Nicodemus’s shot and everything changed. Suddenly, we go on a run and with a couple minutes left, we’re down two. Bush gets called for his fourth fall on a blocking call and fouls out 30 seconds later. We came up short but we never quit. It was a real thinking-outside-the-box moment. We had a lot of basketball fun together.
God bless Kelly. He will be missed.