3 URI stars set to be inducted into the Rhode Island basketball Ring of Honor
SOUTH KINGSTOWN — Archie Miller was a freshman guard at North Carolina State during a 1997-98 men’s college basketball season that wound up being rather noteworthy on his current campus.
Comprehensive cable sports packages and online streaming services were still years away. The NCAA Tournament was broadcast largely on a regional basis, with highlights from a buzzer-beater in a different part of the country just about all you could find.
One particular team elsewhere still found its way onto Miller’s radar — the University of Rhode Island. The brilliant eventual Elite Eight qualifiers with Tyson Wheeler, Cuttino Mobley and Antonio Reynolds Dean burst onto the national scene playing in a powerful Atlantic 10 and shocked Kansas in a Round-of-32 upset for the ages.
“At the time it wasn’t ESPN+, ESPN2, The Deuce — whatever it was,” Miller said. “When you caught an Atlantic 10 game, it was usually (Massachusetts) or Temple.
“But if you really think about it — that time, that era — Rhode Island was as good as any of them.”
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The Rams were a few missed free throws and a couple of disputed whistles from finishing Stanford and punching a storybook ticket to the Final Four. That painful night in St. Louis was the last time Wheeler, Mobley and Reynolds Dean shared the floor in the same uniform. They’ll all come home together again Wednesday night at the Ryan Center, set for induction into the program’s Ring of Honor at halftime of an in-state matchup with Brown.
“All have done tremendous things — not only with the game, but personally and professionally and with their families,” Miller said. “All three really, really worthy guys to go into the honoring process.”
Wheeler is early in his second season as an assistant coach with the Bears, his third stop after previous time with Fairfield and the Minutemen. The left-hander from just over the Connecticut border remains first at URI in career assists, second in scoring and 3-pointers made and third in steals. Wheeler still owns single-game highs with 13 assists in a December 1997 win over Penn and nine 3-pointers in a January 1998 win at Saint Joseph’s.
“Tyson was always a guy who was spectacular,” Miller said. “He was super-fast. He had that pull-up — that lefty pull-up — on a dime. He had a phenomenal career.”
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Mobley enjoyed the most NBA success of the group, playing in parts of 12 seasons with four different teams. His last year with the Rams saw sharp improvements in scoring and 3-point shooting, a breakout that earned the Philadelphia left-hander league Player of the Year honors. Mobley grounded the Jayhawks with a game-high 27 points, five assists and a pair of steals in that 80-75 classic.
“His decade’s worth of NBA experience just puts him on a different platform in terms of how you look at him,” Miller said. “I remember being in college and everybody talking about The Cat.”
Reynolds Dean has cut down nets with URI as both player and coach. He was an integral part of the 1998-99 team that captured a first conference tournament championship and an assistant coach with the 2016-17 group that brought home a second. Reynolds Dean is the only player in program history with at least 1,500 points, 1,000 rebounds and 200 blocked shots — the Atlanta native sits 14th, third and third, respectively.
“His career speaks for itself production-wise — phenomenal,” Miller said. “He was that traditional, typical Atlantic 10 deluxe guy. Maybe a little small for the big boys, but when he played against them, he was better.”
Wheeler, Mobley and Reynolds Dean all had that in common as recruits — they were notably flawed in at least one obvious way. Wheeler and Reynolds Dean — at 5-foot-10 and a listed 6-foot-7 — were too small to draw more than token attention from local powers like UConn and Georgia Tech. Mobley prepped at Maine Central Institute before taking an academic redshirt, allowed to escape his home city before returning to torment the Owls and Hawks.
“Each program has had its own blips of guys where you say, ‘Where did they come from? How did they get there? Where did these guys come from?’ ” Miller said. “Basketball is a unique game. There are so many good players out there.
“Really, what you need is opportunity.”
The first three-man class inducted helped power a Sweet 16 run a decade earlier. Silk Owens, Tommy Garrick and Kenny Green took their rightful place in history during a home game against UMass last year. Those two teams from 1987-88 and 1997-98 have been enshrined as collectives, but these special few players were selected to stand out alone.
“I hope our fan base is really, really jacked up and ready to go and see these guys and put them up,” Miller said. “It’s something we continue to want to be a part of from our standpoint.”
On X: @BillKoch25
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: URI stars Tyson Wheeler, Cuttino Mobley, Antonio Reynolds to be honored
