Rick Barry is the greatest player to ever play for the Miami Hurricanes.

His No. 24 jersey has been retired and he is the school’s all-time leading scorer despite only playing three seasons.

Barry, who attended the Miami-FAU game in Coral Gables during this past season, went on to be an eight-time NBA All-Star, an NBA Finals MVP, was named one of the NBA’s 50 greatest players, and has been inducted in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

So how did the highly-regarded Roselle Park (N.J.) product end up at Miami, when the program had just one NCAA Tournament appearance to its credit at the time of his arrival in 1961?

“If you live in New Jersey it’s an easy question to answer,” Barry said in an interview with JockBio.com. “You don’t want to go through winters with galoshes and overcoats and earmuffs. I wanted to get away and go some place where it was going to be nice and warm. Plus I wanted to go some place where I thought I’d have a chance to play as a sophomore. Miami was a school where they didn’t bring in a ton of recruits. It wasn’t a basketball machine. They had an independent schedule, so I knew I’d be traveling around the country playing in a lot of different places I’d never seen before—from that standpoint, I thought it would be a good education. There was no other school I even considered and I never even visited the campus. I saw some pictures and heard good things about the school and that was it.”

Playing for head coach Bruce Hale, a former NBA player who had a coaching record of 220-112 in his 13 seasons (1954-67) at Miami, was an important factor for Barry.

“The number one selling point was that I would have a coach I really enjoyed playing for,” Barry said. “The coach I had in high school I couldn’t stand. There were times that I considered quitting and if it weren’t for my father and brother talking me into staying, I was going to leave the team in my senior year. Bruce Hale, the Miami coach, was different.”

Barry played on the freshman team his first year at Miami, averaging 28.8 points a game, before averaging 19.9 points as a sophomore, helping the Hurricanes to a 23-5 season and an appearance in the NIT because they were on probation and could not play in the NCAA Tournament.

He averaged 32.1 points as a junior and Miami went 20-7 before averaging 37.1 points as a senior in 1964-65 with the Hurricanes going 22-4.

Miami played its home games at the Miami Beach Convention Hall or the auditorium with practices held at the campus armory.

“We practiced in an armory on campus, had to travel to play our home games and there wasn’t great fan support from the student body,” Barry said. “Looking back I might have liked to go to a school like North Carolina or Kentucky, where basketball was the big sport, but for me Miami was perfect. Bruce Hale taught me so many things about basketball. It was like being in the minor leagues of the NBA. We learned a fast-break, up-tempo style from a man who had been one of the top five players in pro basketball at one time. He prepared me for the NBA in so many ways and was, without question, the reason I became an All-NBA player as a rookie. Back then people who were 21 just didn’t go into the NBA and have that kind of impact.

“When I was a sophomore we had a seven-foot center by the name of Mike McCoy. Lou Mose, the general manager of the Lakers, came down to scout him. There was an article in the local newspaper and he was asked what he thought about Mike. Mose said, “I’m not to sure what Mike McCoy’s going to do in the NBA, but you have a sophomore right here named Rick Barry who’s going to be a great pro basketball player.” That really pumped me up.”

Barry, 76, was selected second overall in the 1965 NBA Draft by the San Francisco Warriors, making him still the highest Miami player ever drafted. He played two seasons for the Warriors before leaving for the ABA for four seasons. He returned to the NBA to play for the Warriors where he helped lead them to the 1975 championship.

Barry scored over 25,000 points in his NBA and ABA career over his 15-year career (1965-80) with six different clubs.

He scored 2,298 points at Miami and owns the Hurricanes’ top eight single-game scoring performances with a career-high of 59.

Christopher Stock has covered the Miami Hurricanes since 2003 and can be reached by e-mail at stock@insidetheu.com and on Twitter @InsideTheU.