n I was sorry to hear about the death of Steve Wright. I was the manager of the basketball team back then, and Steve treated me as if I was one of his teammates. He was a class act — very friendly and always making sure I felt I was part of the team.
I remember being on the bench for that 42-point game he had against the University of Connecticut. I think Coach Rick Pitino had high expectations of upsetting Connecticut, and we lost a close game. Coach Pitino expected a lot out of his top players, Wally West and Steve. After the game, coach ripped into his players one by one. He finally got to Steve and just ripped into him for being lazy and not doing anything in the game. As an example, coach yelled out, “How many points did Wright have tonight? Ten? Twelve?” The answer came back, “Coach, he had 42.” Coach Pitino said, “That can’t be right!” but he looked at the stats and then said, “Well, you still played lousy defense!” We all chuckled to ourselves because we knew that Steve was the reason we were in that game in the first place.
Steve was a hard worker on and off the court. I am sorry I lost touch with him over the years. He will be missed.
Joe Steindl COM ’81
The writer was a manager for the men’s basketball team during the 1978-1979 and 1979-1980 seasons.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
