Ruland Making Dreams Fit Into Reality

“I love this game. If I play it right, I can play it right up until I’m 32 or 33 years old, retire and never have to work again. NEVER.”

-- Jeff Ruland, 1983

Jeff Ruland still loves the game, but the rest of that youthful dream didn’t unfold precisely as planned. He is 32 years old, long since retired as a player and ready to go to work again.

“I missed basketball,” he said.

So it is that Ruland is on the verge of milestones in his circuitous educational and career paths. Fourteen years after leaving Long Island to put Iona on the basketball map, he is one day away from receiving a degree from the college. And four years after retiring from the NBA with persistent knee problems, he is returning to the sport as a coach at his soon-to-be alma mater.

“I know the game of basketball,” Ruland said, explaining his qualifications as a part-time assistant under new Coach Jerry Welsh. “I’ve been through everything a person could go through, basketball-wise.”

The idea for this latest adventure came to Ruland in the two years following his 1987 retirement, during which he “changed a lot of diapers” at his home near Philadelphia and “tried to find out what I wanted to do with my life.”

Money wasn’t a problem, thanks to six years of NBA paychecks, but Ruland wanted to be a college coach, and for that he would need the degree he never came close to earning at Iona. That he returned to the same school might seem logical, were it not for the circumstances under which he left in 1980. Instead, it is a grand irony.

“The man upstairs has a plan for us all,” he said.

Ruland emerged in the mid-1970s at Sachem High School in Lake Ronkonkoma, N.Y., from which he was coaxed to Iona by an aggressive young coach named Jim Valvano. By 1979-80, he was a 6-10, 245-pound junior All-America and had led the Gaels to prominence, highlighted by a 77-60 upset of eventual national champion Louisville at a sold-out Madison Square Garden.

Along the way, he developed a reputation for playing as hard off the court as he did on it.

“College, those are the best years of your life; you’ve got to have a good time, right?” said J.B. Buono, Iona’s long-time trainer. “Well, Jeff had a good time.”

Some teammates say Ruland’s partying was overstated because of his visibility, but no one disputes his lack of interest in academics. In three years, he totaled 57 credits.

“We don’t want to talk about that,” he said when asked his cumulative average. “I stayed eligible; that’s about it.”

Still, the team went 29-5 and everyone seemed happy until the season ended and it all went sour. First, Valvano announced he was leaving for North Carolina State before telling the players, a slap Ruland has yet to forgive. Ruland’s father died when he was a boy, and Valvano had emerged as something of a father figure.

“I wouldn’t say we have a flow of communications now,” Ruland said of the relationship.

Then, the school revealed Ruland had signed with an agent before his junior season, making him ineligible for NCAA competition. One day after announcing he would return to Iona for his senior season, he applied for the NBA draft.

Ruland was chosen in the second round by the Golden State Warriors, who traded his rights to the Washington Bullets. He couldn’t agree on contract terms and wound up playing one rocky season in Spain, during which he had run-ins with both hecklers and referees.

His reputation improved only slightly when he joined the Bullets a year later, as he and Rick Mahorn became known as “McFilthy and McNasty.” Eventually, Ruland emerged as one of the league’s most effective power players and was an All-Star in 1984. He was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers in 1986 but injuries limited him to six games in ‘86-87, after which he retired.

“It was tough, at 28, at the height of my prime, to have it taken away,” he said.

Ruland’s legendary competitiveness remains undiminished. He still is upset about a 17-month-old article in Newsday that implied Frank Brickowski of the Milwaukee Bucks, another of Long Island’s top high school players in 1977, had surpassed Ruland’s NBA success.

“He couldn’t carry my jock,” Ruland said.

Clearly, though, the blue-collar brute has mellowed. More than anything, he is a fiercely dedicated father to his three daughters, ages 7, 4 and 1, and husband to Maureen, his college sweetheart.

Former Iona teammate Tony Iati said that during Athletic Director Rich Petriccione’s recent wedding, Ruland called home three times to check in with his daughters.

“Has he gotten more serious? Yeah, he’s a father,” said Alex Middleton, another former teammate who has known Ruland since seventh grade.

Ruland said one of his motivations for returning to school was to provide an example for his daughters. And he did so with a passion, consistently pulling averages over 3.0 and earning 63 credits in 1 1/2 years while endlessly commuting up and down the Turnpike from New Jersey to New Rochelle.

“I’m so happy he’s graduating and he showed everyone he could do it,” Buono said. “To see him walking around campus is a delight. I say, ‘That’s Jeff Ruland. He played with the pros. Now he’s back in school.’ Wow!”

Ruland, the school’s tallest communications major, will receive his diploma Sunday and earn his place on the list of graduates in the Iona media guide that includes Iati, Middleton and former stars such as Steve Burtt and Glenn Vickers.

“It still hasn’t sunk in,” Ruland said. “It will when I go up and get that degree.”