3/8 TC When Navy basketball captain Wes Cooper was an outstanding scholar-athlete at Woodbridge (Va.) High, he was recruited by three Ivy League schools, but restricted his interest to West Point and the Naval Academy.
His father Fred, an Army colonel, was biased toward West Point, but after visiting both campuses Cooper opted for Annapolis, preferring its proximity to home and the prospect of playing at newly built Alumni Hall.
"My father supported my decision, and he always rooted for Navy's basketball team, even when we played Army," Cooper said.
That could prove embarrassing at times for Col. Cooper.
"My sophomore year, I scored 16 points in one of our wins over Army," Wes Cooper said. "The next day, one of the generals at the Pentagon called my father into his office and made him stand at attention for 16 minutes."
There are a lot of people paying attention to Cooper this season. The overachieving, 6-foot-5 senior center leads the Midshipmen in rebounding (7.8) and is second in scoring (13.2), providing the glue on a team that has won eight straight and 10 of its past 11 games going into Friday's first round of the Patriot League tournament at West Point.
He gives away height in every game, but Cooper, who is called "my silent star" by Navy coach Don DeVoe, puts up impressive numbers with regularity. He has scored in double figures in 23 of the past 27 games.
Over the past 11 games, Cooper has shot a remarkable 67.7 percent (63-for-93) from the field.
Just as remarkable is his position as the Patriot League's second-leading rebounder behind Colgate freshman Adonal Foyle, who is 6-10. Cooper is the prime reason the Midshipmen lead the nation in rebounding margin, out-rebounding their rivals by 11.3 a game.
No one is more surprised by Cooper's development as a low-post player than DeVoe.
"I can't remember ever entrusting the low post to a player 6-5," said DeVoe, who has coached at Virginia Tech, Wyoming, Tennessee, Florida and Navy. "I coached two excellent forwards -- Allan Bristow and Dale Ellis, who went on to the NBA. But no player I coached the past 22 years got as much out of his size and talent as Wes Cooper."
DeVoe said he did not know what kind of player he had inherited from his predecessor, Pete Herrmann, when he took over the Navy basketball program in 1992.
"He'd always been a low-post player with very limited scoring range," said DeVoe after first seeing Cooper as a sophomore. "I ** felt he'd really struggle in college because of his size."
A toe injury suffered on a Naval summer exercise before his sophomore season forced Cooper to miss all the preseason workouts.
"When the [1992-93] season started, Coop wasn't really in our big man's rotation," DeVoe said. "I figured Brad Cougher and Robert Catten, a real athletic 6-foot-9 kid from our JV team, would be our post-up guys.
"Cooper spent the first few games on the bench, but I noticed how focused he was. He didn't miss a thing on the floor. When Catten fizzled and I started giving Cooper some playing time, he did all the small things right and kept on improving."
Cooper started 18 games as a sophomore, averaging 10.2 points and 5.7 rebounds. By his junior year, the muscular Virginian, who can bench-press 325 pounds, had firmly established himself in the low post.
"Wes doesn't care who he's playing against," said DeVoe. "He challenges everyone, and he took it right to Foyle the last time we played Colgate. He scored 13 and held Foyle to eight.
"He has terrific hands. You throw him the ball down low, and he takes one step and dunks it. On the boards, he positions himself well and he's a quick jumper. Even when he's having a relatively tough time, like he did against Army last week, he has a good game by other people's standards."
For Cooper, who has a 3.25 grade-point average as an economics major, his marked improvement this season is a matter of work ethic.
"A lot of it has to do with attitude, and never being satisfied with yourself," said Cooper, who used Julius Erving as his role model.
"That comes from my high school coach, Will Robinson. He really developed a desire in me to compete and be successful."
Cooper also has become a leader on a Navy team that has two plebes -- Michael Heary and Greg Stephens -- and a sophomore, Michael Green, playing substantial minutes.
"My first few years here, we had a lot of cliques on the team," Cooper said. "There was a lot of negativity. We were losing, and people stopped thinking in terms of what was good for the team. They started looking out for themselves.
"But last year, guys like [then-captain] Victor Mickel, Larry Green and myself really wanted to turn things around. We started winning, and the enthusiasm carried us all the way through the Patriot League championship.
"Now that I'm captain, I try to impress on our younger players that the service academy is not the kind of school that attracts a lot of super athletes. Our strength comes from guys knowing their role on the team. If we play hard every game, things will fall in place."
Everything is falling in place this year for Cooper. He seems on course for reaching his career goal as a Naval pilot, with assignment to flight training in Pensacola, Fla.
But Captain Cooper's first mission is to lead the Midshipmen to another Patriot League title.
A second straight trip to the NCAA tournament would get his post-graduate days off to a flying start.
COOPER'S STATS
Year ... ... G ... ... FG Pct. ... ... FT Pct. ... ... Reb. ... ... Pts.
'91-92 .. .. 20 .. ... .485 ... .. ... .533 ... .. ... 2.3 .. .. .. 4.2
'92-93 .. .. 23 ... .. .489 ... .. ... .560 ... .. ... 5.7 .. .. .. 10.2
'93-94 .. .. 30 ... .. .544 .. ... ... .495 ... .. ... 5.5 .. .. .. 9.6
'94-95 .. .. 26 ... .. .610 .. ... ... .550 ... .. ... 7.8 .. .. .. 13.2
Totals .. .. 99 ... .. .544 .. ... ... .531 ... .. ... 5.5 .. .. .. 9.6