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Time Machine: Andre Woolridge
Omaha point guard found a home with Iowa Hawkeyes
Iowa Hawkeye basketball All-American Andre “Dre” Woolridge was the first Big Ten player to lead the Big Ten Conference in both scoring and assists. That was in 1997, his senior year.
“During my sophomore and junior year, I was playing with Jess Settles and Chris Kingsbury. We had a lot of good players,” Woolridge said in 2017, the year he was inducted into the National Iowa Varsity Club Athletics Hall of Fame.
Woolridge took time in the summer of 1995 to give back, appearing at the Ellis Community Center/Boys and Girls Club in Cedar Rapids. Having grown up in a dangerous part of Omaha, he credited that city’s Boys and Girls Club with keeping him out of trouble.
Woolridge was an outstanding player at Omaha Benson High School — good enough that he received his first recruitment letter, from Iowa, in ninth grade. By his senior year, Woolridge was a record-setter in Nebraska High School Class A basketball, scoring 1,911 points, 50 of those in a state Class A championship win.
Woolridge was Nebraska’s Mr. Basketball his senior year and was on the McDonald’s and Converse prep All-American teams.
Besides Iowa, he was recruited by Nebraska, Duke, Kentucky, Syracuse and several other Division I schools.
Wooing Woolridge
“I loved Andre Woolridge,” Iowa coach Tom Davis said. “(Assistant Coach) Rich Walker was recruiting him for us. … Andre Woolridge is the prototype point guard for the way we want to play.
“We couldn’t even get him to visit.”
Woolridge followed his friends to the Nebraska Cornhuskers, but his freshman year didn’t go as well as he wanted, with him averaging 4.9 points and two assists per game.
He reconsidered Iowa and transferred, which meant he had to sit out the 1993-94 season because of NCAA rules at the time though he could practice with them.
While waiting, he reasoned, “if I perfect my game and do my homework, I should be able to come out here and compete for a position.”
It worked.
Finesse
An example of Woolridge’s finesse came at the March 8, 1995, game against Michigan State. With two seconds on the board, he ran the length of the court and let loose a 12-foot jumper at the buzzer, giving Iowa a 79-78 win.
Another example came in a home game against Missouri on Dec. 21, 1996, a series the schools had resumed for the first time since 1983. Woolridge scored a career-high 32 points, while the Hawkeyes out-rebounded the Tigers, 50-24. Final score: Iowa 88, Missouri 77.
As Iowa’s point guard for three years, Woodridge led the Hawkeyes to three winning seasons:
- 1994-95: 21-12 (9-9 Big Ten)
- 1995-96: 23-9 (11-7 Big Ten)
- 1996-97: 22-10 (12-6 Big Ten).
In his final season at Iowa, he spent most of it shouldering the team after forward Jess Settles was injured. The Hawks finished second in the Big Ten.
“The Lord sends you down the road for special reasons,” Woolridge said before his last game at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on March 5, 1997.
“He enters tonight’s game with 1,419 points (seventh-best in school history) and 546 assists (10th in Big Ten history), but his career has been about much more than numbers,” The Gazette reported.
Bobby Knight
That same article reported that famed Indiana coach Bob Knight “believes Woolridge is the most valuable player in the Big Ten. He made that announcement in midseason and has not changed his mind.”
“That kid is tough,” Knight said in an interview in which he lobbied for Woolridge to be Big Ten Player of the Year. But the honor went to Minnesota’s Bobby Jackson.
Woolridge ended his Iowa career as first-team All-Big Ten and third team Associated Press All-America, averaging 20.2 points and six assists per game.
After Iowa
After Iowa, Woolridge played two years of professional basketball in Turkey, followed by a season in France.
In the summer of 2000, he played for the Denver Nuggets in the Rocky Mountain Revue summer league. The Nuggets signed him in September but waived him near the end of October.
Undaunted, he went on to play professionally overseas for another eight years, starting in Greece, before retiring in 2010.
The University of Iowa, marking its 100th season of basketball in 2002, put Woolridge on both its All-Decade and All-Century teams.
That year, Woolridge was also mentoring teens at Total Fitness Connection in Sacramento, Calif. He said the kids were held to strict standards in sports and academics.
“I tell them, ‘Your knees and back will go before your brain does.’ ”
After holding the Hawkeye career assist record for nearly a decade, Woolridge became No. 2 in February 2006, when Jeff Horner passed him by two.
After he retired, Woodridge opened All World Ballin’ Dojo in Sacramento, teaching basketball skills to students from elementary to college level. Sometimes he laced on basketball shoes to demonstrate his points.
“To do what I loved professionally for 13 years, I can’t complain about it,” he told a reporter in 2013.
Other Woolridge trivia:
- In 2008, Hawkeye player and Iowa City native Matt Gatens couldn’t wear jersey No. 50 because fellow player Jarryd Cole already had that number, so he chose No. 5, Andre Woolridge’s number from 1994-97. “Andre Woolridge was one of my favorite players as a kid,” he said.
- Woolridge held the Iowa school record of making 15 consecutive free throws in a game until 2023, when Tony Perkins tied it.
Comments: D.fannonlangton@gmail.com
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