Kelly Lyell

kellylyell@coloradoan.com

Fred Richardson’s body was breaking down from years of abuse on the basketball court.

He wasn’t a star anymore, like he was in high school, where he set a career scoring record and was named the most valuable player in his 5A district in suburban Houston.

He wasn’t the hotshot new recruit, like he had been at the University of Oregon in 2012-13 after choosing the Pacific-12 Conference school over a list of suitors that included Baylor, Marquette, Kansas State, Georgia Tech and Vanderbilt.

He was a senior, playing a bit role for a CSU men’s basketball team that was off to a 5-0 start on the heels of a school-record 27-7 season.

“At that point in time, my body was really hurting,” Richardson said after a practice earlier this week.

A 6-foot-7, 212-pound forward, had played just 11 minutes a game as a junior, averaging 3.0 points and 1.7 rebounds.

The Rams had two new junior-college transfers playing forward ahead of him this season, Emmanuel Omogbo and Kimani Jackson. So Richardson figured it would be best if he stopped suiting up for games.

“I was going through some things, and I just told (coach Larry Eustachy) maybe me playing right now isn’t the best thing for the team, because I don’t know how much I can provide in that state that I was in.”

There was no reason, he said, for Eustachy to find playing time for him at the expense of others who were going to be more significant contributors to the program.

Richardson, who hopes to go into coaching, was still giving everything he had in practice every day to make his teammates better. He just stopped playing in games, missing eight.

But when the Rams found themselves down by 16 points midway through the first half Saturday night at Boise State, he stepped up and provided the spark they needed. He made a diving steal, calling a timeout in the process to avoid a traveling violation, in his first minute of action in five weeks. He made 4 of 5 shots from the floor, including 2 of 3 from 3-point range, pulled down four rebounds and fueled a second-half comeback by the Rams that got them within two points five times in the final seven minutes of an 84-80 loss. He played 24 minutes.

Eustachy and Richardson had several long conversations over the past six weeks that changed the player’s outlook.

The veteran coach, now in his 25th season, understood what Richardson was going through. Eustachy had been a star on his high school team and both a role player and eventually a starter in junior college. When he transferred to Chico State to complete his career, he was cut from the team.

So when leading scorer Gian Clavell was lost for the season to a broken hand and shoulder injury that will require surgery, Eustachy convinced Richardson to start suiting up again for games. His team would need him at some point, maybe for as many 10 minutes a game or as few as 10 minutes the rest of the season.

Either way, Eustachy said, Richardson needed to fight through what he was feeling to learn how to help a player he might coach someday battle through a similar situation. A lot of great players struggle when they try to get into coaching, Eustachy said, because they don’t understand what it’s like to be one of the last guys off the bench.

Eustachy has already agreed to add Richardson to his coaching staff next season as a graduate assistant.

“I said, ‘Fred, you’re going to run into this situation when one day you become a head coach, and I think you’d want somebody to deal with it better than the answer we came up, so I think you should suit up.’

“… I told him to rethink it and really realize it’s something you’re going to regret five, 10 years from now. He’s a logical guy, and it made sense to him.

“… He’s decided to fight through it. Instead of being a bench coach, maybe a part-time contributor.”

It’s not the role he expected to have his senior season. But it’s still an important one.

“I just wanted to go play hard, try to provide my team with energy, with effort, with passion and with the desire to play, and obviously it fed on to the other guys,” Richardson said. “… It was good to be in there with the guys I worked hard all summer with and be able to finally go out there and be in the battle with them. It was just cool.”

And not just for Richardson.

It meant a lot to his teammates.

“As a team, he made us better,” senior guard Joe De Ciman said. “… He was a big reason we were even in that game. He came out and made monstrous plays for us and gave everyone else confidence and more energy because of how he played.”

“… He will help us win games.”

Richardson played 16 minutes Wednesday night in a 66-65 win over UNLV, making the only shot he took, pulling down two rebounds, making two steals and providing some important defense in the paint.

“I feel like there was this misconception that I quit on my team, that all of a sudden I just woke up one morning and said I didn’t have the desire to play basketball. … That’s not it. I’ll never give up on these guys. Anything I can do to help them win, I’m always down for, whether that be two minutes, 20 minutes, 40 minutes. I’m always down for the cause.

“… I thought at first I was doing a very selfless act, but it was kind of selfish of me not to go out there and be ready to play when I knew my team could really depend on me.”

Follow reporter Kelly Lyell at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.

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