Central Washington University Athletics

2018 CWU HALL OF FAME BANQUET AND INDUCTION CEREMONY | May. 19 | 5:00 P.M. | CWU SURC BALL ROOM | TICKETS
 

Dave Oliver had one of the best two-year careers of any player in Central Washington University men's basketball history.  He is one of just three players in the history of CWU basketball to average 15 or more points and eight or more rebounds for their career.
 
His exact career averages are 15.7 points, 8.3 rebounds per game, and was a two-time National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) All-American (1975-77).  He helped lead the Wildcats to back-to-back NAIA national tournament appearances including a spot in the Elite Eight in his senior season.  In his two years, the Wildcats carried a 47-15 record that included a 19-4 record at home in Nicholson Pavilion.
 
After CWU, Oliver spent some time playing basketball all over the globe in places such as: Argentina, Brazil, Finland, and Venezuela, and eventually started coaching in the Seattle area. 
 
Oliver still lives in Seattle and has spent over 30 years working for the King County Metro Transit System.
 
Below is a Q&A between Oliver and CWU Athletics.
 
CWU Athletics:  The CWU Hall of Fame wasn't established until 1983, did you ever think about being inducted?
 
Dave Oliver:  To be honest with you, I was never really into receiving awards. Even when I was at Tacoma Community College, I always thought there were at least three players on that team who were better than me. The next year when all of those guys left, it was weird because that was the first time I ever got an award. We played in the Bellevue Tournament and won it and my sophomore year they named me MVP. When I went to Central, we played in several tournaments where I played well. I made the all-tournament team and might have gotten MVP, but I'm not really sure. To be honest, I can't really remember. I never received any individual awards while I was at Central from the team, so I never imagined I would be inducted into the Hall of Fame. I wasn't expecting to receive anything, I thought my days of being recognized at Central were over with.
 
CWU Athletics:  You played for a legend in Dean Nicholson.  What was your relationship like?
 
DO:  I had a good relationship with him. He would always send clippings to my mom and send out letters and stuff. I stayed on campus, so I would always see him riding his bike while I was walking. When he saw me, he would get off his bike and we would just talk. He also knew some guys from New Orleans that played for the Supersonics, and at one time he was one of the people the Sonics were interested in making an assistant coach. I wasn't a very talkative guy. I would just go to class, practice, and that was pretty much it.
 
 CWU Athletics:  You were fortunate enough to play in two NAIA National Tournaments.  In your senior season the team advanced to the Elite Eight.  What was that experience like?
 
DO:   That was fun. I thought we were going to win that last year, but I kind of got into some foul trouble that last game. It was really exciting. The first time I ever flew on a plane was when I flew from New Orleans to Seattle and the next time I ever flew was from Seattle to Kansas City for the national tournament.
 
The stadium was packed every day. The weird thing for me was that I never really noticed it. Even when we played at Central, we would have a bunch of fans. Every game we played they always had to open up the top bleachers. It was always exciting and the fans would get me pumped up. A lot of fans never really bothered me because I went to a pretty big high school, which was an all-boys school.  The fans were definitely different than what we had at Tacoma Community College, where we would only have like 100 fans. It was exciting to play with all of those fans. 
 
CWU Athletics:  You spent two years at Tacoma Community College before coming to Ellensburg.  How heavily were you recruited, and how did CWU become your choice?
 
CO:  My uncle and his wife, who went to school in Louisiana, was recruited up here to Tacoma to teach. He told me that there may be better opportunities for me if I came up to the Northwest. Once I finished high school, I went to Southern University in Baton Rouge for a year but didn't go to play basketball. I was going to try out for the team, but I wasn't on scholarship. It didn't cost very much to go to school back then so I was able to save enough from my summer job. There were some protests going on while I was there and two students I knew from the dorms were actually killed. That's when my uncle told me that I needed to come to Washington, so I came up and I lived with him in Tacoma. I used to go to the downtown Tacoma boy's club and play ball there. Some of the guys I played with told the coach at Tacoma Community College about me. TTC ended up having an open gym and after that the coach said he wanted me to come to the school in the fall. I signed a letter of intent and then went to school. My freshman year at Tacoma we won the community college championship.
 
Central was relatively close to the Tacoma area. I wasn't familiar with the Northwest at all and when I first moved to Tacoma it was months before I even went to Seattle. After I had some success in Tacoma, I thought that I should stay in Washington because I started off in the state of Washington.
 
On my visit to Central, I stayed on the campus, met the players and got to play with them. I also visited Eastern Washington and, on my trip, I met only one player, and it just didn't feel right.  Central felt like a good community for me, they were very welcoming and I felt appreciated.
 
CWU Athletics:  You played basketball in high school during integration in the south.  What was that like to go from an all-black school to an integrated school while playing sports?
 
DO:  My very first year of high school was the first year of integration in our area, and there was a lot of tension. To be honest with you, I just wanted to play basketball. Simple things like trying to find out when and where tryouts were was difficult because nobody would tell us anything. I was going to school and playing on the football team, which meant I would go to school in the morning and get out of school at 12 o'clock. The basketball team couldn't practice until after six, when the afternoon classes were over with. It was like three days before I actually knew they were having tryouts. I had to go talk to one of my junior high school coaches who had moved over to the school to teach art. He was able to go talk to the principal and ask them to let me tryout. Everything went okay after the first game because we played the number one team in the state and they beat us by like 30. I got to play in the fourth quarter and got more points and more rebounds than anybody else on the team. From then on, I was starting.
 
I was the only black player my first year. The next year, I talked a bunch of guys into playing.
 
I think that experience made me work harder and taught me to stay focused on what I really wanted.  I know it made me a better basketball player.  I was not a jump shooter, but the new kids were, and to compete, I had to elevate my game.  So, I did.
 
I love basketball, and at that time I would have traveled to the moon to play basketball if that is what it took.
 
CWU Athletics:  It's been just over 40 years since you played here.  Catch us up on your life since you left CWU.
 
DO:  After leaving Central, I ended up in New Orleans for a while working at a middle school. From there I came back to Seattle and for the last thirty-two years I have been working for the King County Metro Transit.
 
I also spent some time as an assistant coach at Rainer Beach High School and met some incredible people like Francis Williams and Mike Bethea.  Mike Bethea is still the head coach there, and he was a Central guy for a little bit too.  I spent many years coaching in the area and met a lot of great people.