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All-time Prep great Winey lauds O'Connell's scoring record

Tuesday, February, 12 By Mike Grenier
Staff writer

St. John's Prep basketball standout Ryan O'Connell was watching an alumni game in the school's gymnasium two years ago when he noticed a big man displaying an extraordinary shooting touch from outside.

"I'm watching this 6-foot-9 guy draining threes," recalled O'Connell, "so I asked coach (Dan) Letarte who he was." The man making the shots was 49 years old and hardly anonymous to Letarte.

"That guy," said Letarte, "is Dave Winey, and he was drafted by the Celtics after playing at Minnesota."

Winey played two years at St. John's Prep (1972-73 and 1973-74) and scored 1,131 points, averaging 23.6 points per game.

When he looks back on that alumni game now, there's no way that O'Connell could envision breaking Winey's school record point total, which stood for 25 years until Matt Symmes finished his career with 1,242 points in 1999.

Now, however, O'Connell is about to become No. 1 on the all-time list, having scored 1,239 points over his three seasons at the Prep. Barring some catastrophe, O'Connell will do it against Malden on Senior Night at home this Thursday (7 p.m.).

"Good for him," said Winey, now 51. He was speaking from his office at American Investors Group just outside Minneapolis when informed about O'Connell's feat. "I think if you're a competitor, you want to go after records. Hopefully, he does it within a team concept."

Symmes had a productive career, taking four years to score 1,242 points, but Winey is widely considered the greatest player to lace them up at St. John's Prep. The Eagles went 37-0 in the Essex County League and 45-3 overall in the two years he was there, including a 64-60 win over a powerful Don Bosco team in the Division 1 North championship game at the Boston Garden in 1974.

If you had to name an All-North Shore Team from the last 35 years, Winey would have to be on it along with Rick Brunson and Scoonie Penn of Salem and Bishop Fenwick's Sean Connolly. The fifth starter would be open to debate, but a viable candidate would be current Swampscott head coach Paul Moran, who scored 2,000 points for the Big Blue before the 3-point line was even invented.

The point is, O'Connell has to feel good to be mentioned in the same breath with Winey as a prolific high school scorer. After wrapping it up for the Eagles, Winey played for the University of Minnesota, where his teammates included future NBA players Mychal Thompson, Ray Williams and Kevin McHale, along with Flip Saunders, who is now the head coach of the Detroit Pistons.

Following his senior year with the Gophers, the Celtics took Winey in the sixth round of the 1978 draft. Perceptive Celtics fans will point out that 1978 was also the year Boston drafted some guy named Larry Bird.

"Yeah, they drafted Bird ahead of me. Can you imagine that?" joked Winey.

Winey had a pretty good reputation coming out of Minnesota, which could play with any team in the country in those days. "(Marquette coach) Al McGuire called us the best team in the country the year they won the NCAA tourney (1977)," recalled Winey. "We smoked them in the regular season. I don't know if we could've done it again in the tourney, but we'll never know because Minnesota was on probation that year and we weren't eligible to play in the postseason."

Satch Sanders was the Celtics coach and Red Auerbach was already a longtime legend when Winey was drafted.

"I never played so well in my whole life as I did at the Celtics camp that year," Winey said.

At the time, the Celtics wanted to stash Winey with their minor league affiliate in Maine for further development, but Winey had promised a team in Brazil that if he didn't make it with Boston, he'd play for them instead. He still wonders what might've happened if he'd gone to Maine, where the Celts could've kept close tabs on him.

"It was dumb move to go to Brazil," said Winey, who also played in Europe and for a CBA team in Billings, Montana before giving up his NBA dream. "I mean, this was the Celtics we're talking about. I should've played in Maine."

One thing he would never regret was his decision to attend St. John's Prep after two years of high school in Nashua, N.H. The Danvers parochial school gave him structure and discipline and the Prep's basketball coach at the time, Bob McKenna, taught him life lessons that he applies to this day.

"I was not a good student in Nashua," said Winey. "I needed a kick in the butt and St. John's Prep opened my eyes to a lot of things. It changed my life, and (the late) coach McKenna was a second dad to me. It was a wonderful experience."

Winey wanted to know more about O'Connell, who is averaging almost 25 points per game this season. Is he a good kid? Does he play for a winning St. John's Prep team? Where is he going to college?

The answers to those questions are yes, yes and Bowdoin. "It sounds like Ryan has worked hard at it," said Winey. "I'm very happy for him. It's great that he has the scoring record. My name will still be around; I'll still be in the top five."

Meanwhile, O'Connell was humble when he heard about Winey's career.

"It's an honor (to be in the Prep record book) with a guy like that," said O'Connell.