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June 19, 2006


They were virtually impossible to stop during their college basketball careers.

And they occasionally proved nearly as difficult to track down afterward.

The international nature of basketball can make it hard to find some of the elite college stars and familiar names of the last generation. If they didn't go on to long NBA careers, they often left the United States in order to continue playing overseas.

But the Rivals.com staff still managed to find several notable players of the past whose names remained in their school's record books long after they left campus.

Many of the stars are former conference players of the year who delivered big performances in the regular season. Others had their brightest moments in the NCAA Tournament.

Now they're ready to relive their college memories while illuminating us on what they're doing now.

Gabe Lewullis, Princeton
Name: Gabe Lewullis
Age: 29
Residence: Philadelphia
Claim to fame: The freshman forward helped No. 14 seed Princeton send No. 3 seed UCLA, the defending champion, home from the NCAA Tournament in the first round on March 14, 1996. With the score tied at 41, Steve Goodrich passed to Lewullis, who snuck behind UCLA's Ed O'Bannon to score on a backdoor layup.

How often he's reminded about that game: "Quite often, especially during March. People call wanting to know about my memories and what I'm doing now. At the time I didn't realize how much it would affect my life. Looking back, you can see why it was so special.

There's certainly name recognition (in public) and people ask me about what I did. Through the basketball world they remember more."

What he remembers about the UCLA game: "From the game I remember getting down 7-0 or 9-0. I thought it was going to be a long night and we were going to embarrass ourselves. But we made a couple of 3-pointers and got back into it.

The culmination of our confidence was when we made the backdoor layup before halftime. We had a lot of momentum.

(At halftime) I remember a long run to the locker room in the Hoosier Dome. There was a lot of excitement. I don't remember what was said.

(At the end) we called a timeout with about 30 seconds left. The actual play we ran was the same as the end of the first half. We needed to run that play again. We ran a set and ran the clock down a little bit to set up the misdirection. Everything went to the left so we could throw it to the right. I was supposed to make two cuts (in the center). I made the layup on the first cut in the first half. In the second, I got it on the second cut.

(The play) wasn't necessarily set for me, it was either me or the other forward. Everything was going away from me, so I was going to be the guy.

The play wasn't perfectly executed. Everyone else didn't really do what they were supposed to do for our first option. I was lucky I was there.

(After the layup) if you look at the tape, I ran back saying, 'Oh my God!' I don't remember doing that, but my friends have been making fun of me since then. I knew there were a couple of seconds left, I thought about getting back on defense. You see so many times people get the layup and don't go back and the other team scores.

There was a huge pause to see how much time was on the clock. That felt like an eternity.

After they missed the shot, it was ecstatic joy I guess.

I don't think I realized (the magnitude of the win) until once I got back on campus. I knew we upset a big team. A lot of my friends said it was the best night ever for Princeton. Some older people said they'd never seen anything like it with the celebration. When you play you get caught up in everything and you don't really think about (the impact)."

Pro career: Lewullis did not play professionally.

What he's doing now: "I'm a doctor in my orthopedic surgery residency at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia. My major (at Princeton) was ecology and evolutionary biology. I always had an inkling that this is what I wanted to do. I had a path going toward that. I went to Drexel University College of Medicine."




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