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Teague takes on new challenge

Former Foard star made his mark playing basketball at Navy

By Chris Hobbs | Hickory Daily Record

Published: May 10, 2009

Former Fred T. Foard High basketball star Adam Teague loves a challenge.

He met one head-on by becoming a significant contributor in NCAA Division I basketball at Navy over the past four years.

In less than two weeks, he is headed for a new can-ya-do-this?

"I'm excited and interested to see what is going on," Teague said this week by phone from Annapolis, Md.

He was talking about his life after May 22. He'll graduate from college that day with a degree in economics but won't have to leap into an unsure job market.

Teague, 22, is due in Virginia Beach, Va., on June 22 to begin the nearly five years of active duty that comes with accepting an athletic scholarship to a military school.

By July, the 6-foot-8 forward with the sweet shot who led Fred T. Foard to its only West 3A Regional appearance (2005) will be on the USS Fort McHenry and probably headed to Iraq to transport some of our troops home.

Basketball, he said, is probably behind him now. But it brought him experiences he will always cherish.

Last summer, before he put together a senior season that won him the highest honor bestowed on a Navy basketball player (the Rear Admiral Marryott Award), Teague got a taste of what he'd left Newton for.

"I was on an aircraft carrier and they were shooting (launching) jets and doing practice bomb runs," Teague recalled. "It's kind of like going to school… and you have an idea (of what's ahead).

"It's the real deal."

When Teague was considering where he wanted to play college basketball, he decided he wanted to face the real deal, too.

Athletic and owner of a nice jumper, he could have taken offers from Appalachian State or Davidson and probably been a notable Southern Conference player.

But there was a part of him, he said, that wanted to see what was out there and to experience new things — and being on an aircraft carrier certainly fits that bill.

When Teague turned one day to his dad in church and told him he was going from Newton to Navy, he knew there would be tradeoffs.

For one, who in Newton can say one of their lunch mates as a college freshman was the Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld), and that George W. (the former prez) stopped by, too.

"There's s so much I have seen that I would not have been able to see," Teague said of going to Navy. "There are so many things that I have been able to see and do that I wouldn't have been able to do somewhere else."

He played on TV against Army as a junior and was the Chevrolet Player of the Game after a double-double (18 points, 10 rebounds).

He scored 18 points against Virginia Tech this season, and was The Man in the game — at least at Navy — where being that guy is something everyone remembers.

The Star Game trophy goes to the winner of the second Army-Navy game each year. With the Midshipmen up by two and 40 seconds left, Teague drained a three-pointer — his only field goal of the game — in a victory before 6,000 home fans.

That was a long way removed from what Teague found his first season at Navy. That year, he was told by coaches to leave practice three of four times because his defense wasn't up to snuff.

"It was definitely a challenge," Teague said. "I expected to step in and light it up and play all the time.

"The whole point (of choosing Navy) was to rebuild pride in the program and I thought it was going to be easy. "

By the third game, Teague was starting. Then, after eight games in the lineup, he was back on the bench.

"The biggest challenge (transitioning from prep ball to college) was defense," Teague said. "That was the reason I was not playing.

"If you don't play defense at the D1 level, you are not playing.

"It wasn't that I did not play hard but there's another level you have to take it to.

"And for a freshman, it's difficult to find what that level is and be doing it 100 percent of the time."

Safe to say, Teague had met his first challenge. He was miles away from home, often calling his parents to talk about the tough times he was having, and he found a way to meet the challenge head on.

He averaged 16.6 minutes per game as a freshman and 4.7 points. As a sophomore, those numbers climbed to 22.6 and 7.4.

As a junior, Teague played 22 minutes and averaged 6.7 points. His senior year, as it was at Foard, was his best — 30.8 minutes per game and averages of 10.9 points and 4.8 rebounds on a 19-win team that he captained.

"I got used to it (college basketball) probably halfway through my junior year," Teague said. "But not at the point that I would excel at it.

"The biggest thing for me wasn't physical, it was mental."

Navy's coaches pushed Teague. They challenged him to work harder and didn't mince their words about expectations.

"They said the No. 1 thing we're going to do is give you the truth," Teague said. "And potential, that means you haven't done (anything) yet.

"It's dog eat dog in college and either you jump on the train or you don't.

"Part of the accomplishments of a D1 athlete … is to get through it."

At Foard, Teague said he remembers playing against only one other player who signed an NCAA Division I scholarship (Newton-Conover's Julius Powell, who went to Clemson but is now at Lenoir-Rhyne).

By contrast, Teague's first college game was against Georgetown.

"I was watching my captain get dunked on," he recalled. "And I thought 'Wow, this is real.'"

So was Teague's eventual impact on Navy basketball. He leaves No. 26 in all-time scoring at the school whose most famous hoop star is David Robinson.

Other highlights for Teague include being fourth at Navy in career three-pointers (189) and in career three-point shooting percentage (.390). And only six others have played more games for the Midshipmen than Teague (116).

"It's not about my career, it's about the program," said Teague when asked to reflect on his college basketball experience. "My senior class, we feel like we've set the program up for success. They can compete for championships every year.

"I wanted to win championships, no doubt. But the main goal was to put (Navy basketball) back on the map. And I really feel like we accomplished that."

Now, with five years of active duty in front of him, Teague says he is ready for the next step and the next bell he must answer.

"When you're going through it, you don't think about it," he said of the past four years. "Everything is going 100 miles per hour.

"But when you finally finish and you're getting ready to graduate, you realize it's only the tip of the iceberg.

"It (the experience) is definitely what I had hoped it would be."

Chris Hobbs, The Record's Sports Editor, covered Teague's career at Fred T. Foard and is less than a month away from completing his 33rd year covering Unifour-area sports. Reach him at
chobbs@hickoryrecord.com.