By Timothy R. Olsen ’09, MBA ’18 & Taylor Emerson ’18

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It’s not the Delta Center. And it’s certainly not Madison Square Garden. However, the Nelson Fieldhouse serves this group just fine. After all, this isn’t the NBA — at least as you know it — this is the Noon Basketball Association.

For roughly five decades, a hodgepodge group of faculty and staff have spent their Monday, Wednesday, and Friday lunch breaks reliving the glory days, rolling ankles, and ribbing their rivals.

Despite the satirical name, this isn’t an official group — it’s an organic community.

There are no uniforms, only lights versus darks, though even that can be muddled at times. There’s no official entry into the “league,” no draft, and certainly no exit interviews. There’s not even a regulation ball, just a generally preferred option from the many that appear out from gym bags, lockers, and the trunks of cars.

About the only thing that glues everything, and everyone, together is an email chain to ensure there’s sufficient numbers on gameday — eight at the very least.

It’s all very Field of Dreams … if you build it, they will come — and the current Kevin-Costner-esque father-figure of the league, Layne “Night Train” Coppock, has been coming since before the turn of the century.

“I think first of all, we have a very strong shared love of pickup basketball,” says Coppock, a professor emeritus from the S.J. & Jessie E. Quinney College of Agriculture & Natural Resources. “We have so much fun just being out there. It’s really remarkable the enjoyment that everyone gets out of these games.”

At 71, Coppock — who picked up his nickname as a hand-me-down from the Detroit Lions’ Dick “Night Train” Lane — is the oldest active member of the group.

But he’s not the oldest to have consistently played.

That honor most likely belongs to Ken “Move It” Mitchell — who earned his nickname due to his propensity for harping on other players to “move it.”

Mitchell joined the university in 1969 as the sports information director and played into his early 80s. He’s largely recognized as one of the NBA’s “Founding Fathers” and oversaw the transition from an early-morning game at the HPER to a high-noon affair on the Fieldhouse floor.

“It was as much a mentally relaxing exercise as it was physical, because we just all enjoyed each other,” Mitchell emphasizes.

That was, at least most of the time.

Mitchell recalls a memory of “some guy from the Sociology department” who kept dribbling the ball into the corner. Being a strong proponent of ball movement, Mitchell barked his familiar phrase.

Eventually, tired of Mitchell’s insistence, the man complied, fired the ball at Mitchell and stormed off the court — and with that show of frustration, “Move It” Mitchell was born. It’s a nickname that he still, at times, emblazons arts-and-crafts style, across a baseball hat.

“You don’t have to have talent, you just have to have fun,” Mitchell quips. “But you have to move it. You gotta move it.”

Mitchell and Coppock weren’t alone with their nicknames. For many years, all participants were required to have one — usually courtesy of Mitchell. There was former Facilities director, Wayne “Hold It” White, so named for an alleged proclivity to stop the game with a foul call, and Evertt “Smash” Byington, whose playing style was a product of minimal basketball experience growing up in rural Idaho.

There was Roger “McD” McEvoy, known for his defense, and Steve “McO” McMaster, whose philosophy was, again allegedly, “Who needs defense when you can score?” Longtime Utah Statesman faculty advisor Jay “Stockton” Wamsley was known for this 3-point prowess — and his ever-present, now-retro, John Stockton jersey. Todd “Bugzz” Hlavaty, a current facilities team lead, earned his moniker because of a former side-gig as the campus exterminator.

“It’s a great place to gather, have fun, and get to know your work colleagues in a relaxed, fun environment,” recalls McMaster, who worked at Utah State from 1992–99, first as an attorney, and then as the director of purchasing. “I’m evidence of the long-standing friendships that evolved from the NBA. I left the university in ’99 and then we moved out of state for 23 years. I just came back about three and a half years ago, and yet the friendships have persisted.”

That camaraderie is how Mike Taylor got involved a decade ago, despite never being an employee of USU himself.

Taylor transplanted from Washington D.C. in 2008, when his wife, watershed sciences and Ecology Center faculty member Dr. Karin Kettenring, accepted a position at the university.

An expert in solar energy, Taylor connected with Coppock and began guest-lecturing in his environmental science class. Eventually, the NBA came up in conversation and Taylor, through a spouse-pass, decided to pick up a ball for the first time in 20 years to participate.

“Coming to Logan from outside of Utah, a hard part can be figuring out what your spouse is going to do for a job, or for entertainment, or integration into the community. If the spouse isn’t happy, I think a lot of times faculty end up leaving,” Taylor says. “This is one tiny example of the way that holistically looking at recruitment can have benefits — even if it’s not directly with that faculty person.”

When Taylor first started playing around 2015, Mitchell was winding down his NBA career, but Taylor remembers “there was an unwritten rule that you don’t go up and block his shot.” In true competitive fashion, Taylor, who claims to be Coppock’s “protégé,” says he hasn’t yet implemented that rule for his mentor. Meanwhile, Coppock claims he taught Taylor everything he knew about the game.

“That process only took about a minute or so,” Coppock jokes.

On the topic of rules, the standards of play are often passed down in a haphazard generational manner — meaning things are often the way they are, because they always have been.

For example, the games are played halfcourt, with the majority taking place on the northwestern-most corner court in the Fieldhouse. During summers or whenever the Fieldhouse is closed, the game usually moves to the HPER.

If players are waiting to get in, games are played to 21, but if the teams are even and nobody is waiting, games go to 30. If someone sits for a game, they get in on the next, no questions asked — though that honor means you often reinforce the losing side. The remaining defeated have to win a slightly altered and drastically slower game of free throw knockout to stay in.

In USU’s NBA, you don’t have to win games by two, nor does the league carry a “make-it, take-it” philosophy. And if you shoot an airball, the defense can score without clearing it — same with blocked shots and steals.

There’s a lot of chatter, some good-natured trash talk, and even the occasional scuffle — though that’s exceedingly rare.

“Win or lose, you walk off the court, take a shower, and go back to work,” McEvoy quips.

One tradition that has fallen by wayside over the years — though it might need to make a comeback — is a battle for “all the marbles.”

According to Hlavaty, if the teams had won an even number of games with time for just one more game remaining, Mitchell kept a literal bag of marbles that the teams would play for. Meaning, they earned the right to keep the bag — at least until the next game.

The NBA has been informally meeting for so long, it’s even become a family affair for some.

Ryan Fuez, an assistant professor in applied economics, who also earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from USU, learned about the NBA from his father, Dillon.

“When he’d hit a big 3 in someone’s face, it would be the first thing he told us about at dinner,” Fuez laughs. “Then I went through school here, went and did a Ph.D., and then actually ended up getting a job here. So, that was the first thing, he was like, ‘Well, initiation into the faculty is to come to noon ball.’

“I like the competitive aspect. Some guys like getting that going. I like having competition, a little smack talk, but I come mostly for the camaraderie with the guys. It’s fun.”

Dillon “The Bank” Fuez, former applied economics department head, officially retired from both the university and the NBA last August. There were a couple of other longtime NBAers that decided to hang up their sneakers at the same time, leading to a retirement party and gathering during USU’s Homecoming weekend. The group met at Aggie Ice Cream, and Taylor compiled a PowerPoint for the occasion.

This event followed a much larger gathering in the Taggert Student Center in October 2021. That assembly honored Mitchell’s official NBA retirement and featured an array of speakers telling NBA “war stories” while reflecting on the previous 52 years.

Despite the recent bump in retirements, a new wave of players has picked up the mantle.

“I started 2019 and there’s a couple others that started around then, and it’s just cool to think, are they going to be here in 20 or 30 years, when I’m hanging it up?” Ryan Fuez says. “It’s kind of fun that those ones are like your own little cohort — your rookie class — and then you just work your way through the Noon Basketball Association. Our careers just last a little longer than your average NBAer.”