Perhaps it was growing up with a father who played on one of the more famous teams in college basketball, but Georgia State’s Josh Micheaux is tough.
So tough he beat his father, a starter on Houston’s famed Phi Slama Jama team, in a game of one-on-one when he was just 15 years old.
“There’s not a lot of bullying you can do to me,” he said.
Coach Ron Hunter said his Panthers, off to a 13-4 start and one of the bigger surprises in the Colonial Athletic Association this season, need that toughness if they hope to keep winning. The Panthers begin a two-game road swing at Northeastern on Wednesday.
“He’s probably the most underappreciated player in the CAA,” Hunter said. “No one wants to talk about him; no wants to deal with him. You don’t win games if he’s not there.”
At 6-foot-6, 220 pounds, Micheaux looks more like a linebacker than a guard/forward. On offense, where he averages 5.5 points, he’s such a tough matchup that Hunter said he wouldn’t know what to put on a scouting report if he were the opposing coach. On defense, where he averages a team-leading 7.1 rebounds, he has the strength to defend power forwards in the post and the speed to move to the top of the Panthers’ matchup zone and harass guards.
“I love a challenge each night,” he said.
He’s tough because of his father, but not because he put pressure on him. Though nicknamed “Mr. Mean” while playing alongside Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon and advancing to three consecutive Final Fours, Larry Micheaux always has stressed the positives of sports with his son.
The toughness is just genetic. Larry Micheaux’s daughter, La Toya, earned the nickname “Ms. Mean” as a player at Texas A&M.
“He’s learned things from me,” Micheaux said. “But I’ve tried not to stand in his way. I like him to be that tough player, that positive player.”
Though they played hundreds of games of one-on-one, which Larry Micheaux usually would win, the father wanted to make sure that his son knew that basketball can be rough. So Larry Micheaux would take his son to a cousin’s neighborhood, where “no blood, no foul” was enforced on the asphalt courts. He described it as learning how to “handle his business.”
Josh Micheaux said he realized by fifth grade that his dad was someone special. People would stop his father and ask for autographs. And both father and son keep in touch with dad’s former Houston teammates Drexler, Olajuwon and Michael Young. Josh Micheaux has watched film of his dad, saying they have similarities: They both like to dunk, and they both like to guard the other team’s best player.
“You have to have a player on a team like that,” Larry Micheaux said. “Otherwise, when it comes down to the last two to three minutes, the other team will take advantage. I could have been a 20-point player, but you only have one ball and five players on the floor. If you want to have a championship team, everybody has to have different roles.”
The son beating the father for the first time in a game of “15” is something both men will remember, though Larry Micheaux good-naturedly points out that was 45 years old at the time.
“I think I did pretty well,” he said. “We haven’t played in a while. I got this willpower. I still want to win games and play.”
Hunter said the Panthers will need that genetic toughness and defense if they hope to make it to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2001. Led by Micheaux, the Panthers have one of the better defenses in the nation, allowing 56.9 points per game.
“If you don’t have a toughness you don’t win championships, mental and physical toughness,” Hunter said. “His defense comes down to toughness. That’s what he brings to this basketball team. Some guys can be tough because they know he’s got their back side.”
About the Author
