St. Bonaventure last year spent an evening honoring Sam and Tom Stith, Ronald "Whitey"

Martin and some other members of the 1960 team, and showed video clips of Tom Stith, the

school's first consensus All-American, scoring at will.

Andrew Nicholson, the current team's star player, watched in awe and invited Stith to

practice the following morning to tap into his knowledge and understanding of low post

offense. Stith spent nearly 45 minutes with the players.

"He was advising them on how to get the ball in the low post," Martin said. "He used fake

shots and how to use the rim as protection when you go up to shoot. Sam and I were hanging

around but they didn't listen to anything we said, they wanted to hear what Tom had to say."

It wasn't long after that that Tom Stith, the unassuming prep star from Brooklyn who

followed his brother to St. Bonaventure, fell ill. He died Sunday at the age of 71.

The New York Post's Peter Vecsey reported that Stith had been hospitalized for a prolonged

period because of kidney problems and other issues. Sam Stith said one of them was cancer.

Martin said Stith had been hospitalized since New Year's Day.

"He always wanted to go home, but he was so weak and so debilitated that his family wasn't

able to manage him," Martin said. "Six months he fought a good fight."

Stith turned the Bonnies into a national powerhouse as soon as he was eligible to play

varsity as a sophomore.

"We all play but he was in that special category of player: Above and beyond," Freddy

Crawford, another member of that 1960 team, said. "Our team was No. 2 in the nation and he was

the man. I was privileged to watch the whole show from my vantage point. As far as the hoop

thing, he was a cool cat."

Stith operated primarily in the lane. Teammates remember him as a smooth, natural scorer

who could loft soft, floating left-handed jump shots around the basket.

"Today's guys are good, but they don't measure up to Tom," Crawford said. "Who would I

compare him to a player nowadays? There's no one I could really compare him to. They've got

two guards and one and three guards and all that but Tom could play all the positions: One,

two, three, four and center on an All-American level."

A confident offensive player, Stith was also good at making adjustments, Martin said.

During one game against rival Niagara University, the Purple Eagles had two men fronting Stith

and the first two times down the court, Stith's shots were rejected. The third time, he showed

them something new.

"He used a hook shot, which I had not seen him use in practice," Martin said. "He made five

or six of them and turned the game around."

Larry Weise, who coached the Bonnies from 1961 to '73, was a senior at Bona when Stith was

a freshman. At the time, freshmen were not allowed to play on the varsity so Stith was a

starter on the freshman team.

"We used to scrimmage against the freshmen and the kids on the varsity couldn't believe how

good he was," Weise said. "When he wanted to turn it on, he was unbeaten. Tom was a true

All-American. If he were playing today, he would be on the All-American first team just like

he was then."

With lineups that included Tom and Sam Sith, Martin, Orrie Jirele and Crawford, St.

Bonaventure put up a sizzling .835 winning percentage in the four seasons between 1957 and

'61. The school inducted Tom Stith into its first Hall of Fame class in 1969, and retired his

No. 42 jersey.

Four players from those teams — the Stiths, Martin and Crawford — would move on

to the NBA. Crawford was the only player to play more than one season, playing seven with five

different teams.

For his career, Stith scored 2,052 points and averaged 27.0 points a game. He graduated as

Bona's career leading scorer, but now sits fourth on the list and is one of two players to

score over 2,000 points over three seasons. Stith ranks 11th on the school's career rebounding

list with 691 rebounds and averaged a double-double over his first two years. Stith's 2,052

points came on 807 field goals and 438 free throws.

"He had a beautiful touch," Martin said. "Most of his points came inside 15 feet so he had

to work against single, double and triple teams. Somehow, some way, he would get the shot off.

He was a very smooth, finesse kind of player."

Stith was honored by 11 All-America teams as a senior and was selected by the New York

Knicks with the No. 2 pick overall in the 1961 NBA draft, behind Indiana's Walt Bellamy, who

eventually was honored by the Hall of Fame. Stith's NBA career, however, was short-lived.

After contracting tuberculosis in his senior year at Bona, he appeared in just 24 games and

averaged 3.2 points. Martin said back in the '60s patients with TB were often confined for

long periods of time and in Stith's case it lasted six months. He gained weight because of the

illness and was never the same player he was as a Bonnie.

"I think it bothered me and his brother more than it bothered him," Crawford said. "Tom

always had a sense how good he was and he was not a guy who was going to let it bother him."