In a career that stretches over 40 years as a player, coach and executive, the name of Gene Shue has been closely tied to basketball in the Washington and Baltimore area, and is recognized as one of the greatest players in the history of the University of Maryland. But a turn of events kept Shue from becoming a legend at his first choice, Georgetown University.

Gene Shue was born in 1931 in the Great Depression, living in the Govans neighborhood of northeast Baltimore. While various accounts note that his family was too poor to afford him a basketball, he learned the game at Blessed Sacrament School on Old York Road, where "the gym ceiling wasn't much higher than the basket," he told the Baltimore Sun.

Shue's grades and basketball ability offered an opportunity at Towson Catholic High School. "We played our games in the Towson Armory because the school gym had poles in the middle of the court," he added.

An expert shooter, Shue passed on an offer at Maryland. Focusing on the two major Catholic schools in the region, Georgetown was a clear favorite to Loyola, who at that time was playing a small college schedule. Despite his all-city honors, Gene was no shoo-in, pun intended, to sign with the Hoyas.

To understand why, one needs to examine the recruiting pattern of the mid-century Georgetown program. In the years under Hall of Fame coach Elmer Ripley, he recruited almost exclusively from Catholic high schools in the New York area, a pattern continued by successor coach Buddy O'Grady (C'42), himself a Ripley recruit from 1938. Geoergetown looked with favor upon the New York schools, particularly the Jesuit schools of Regis, Xavier, Loyola, and Brooklyn Prep. Of Georgetown's 15 scholarship recruits from 1948 to 1950, 12 of the 15 came from Catholic schools in the New York area, two from Catholic schools in Pennslyvania, and just one from the Washington area-- Jim Larkins, an All-Met selection from Gonzaga, a Jesuit high school.

O'Grady invited Shue to Georgetown in the spring of 1950 and had him participate in an evaluation tryout to join the team, a practice now prohibited by the NCAA. Shue later admitted it wasn't his best performance, and Georgetown didn't make an offer as a result, placing him instead on the school's wait list. In the 2014 book "Tales From The Maryland Terrapins: A Collection of the Greatest Stories Ever Told", author Dave Ungrady spoke to former Terrapin coach Bud Millikan on what happened next.

"Georgetown was the biggest competition to get him," Millikan said. "Georgetown was recruiting heavily out of [New York], they had a guy or two who was indecisive, and they kept putting Gene off, waiting for a decision from the other players. I said to him, I told you from the word go I want you at Maryland. I don't think Georgetown is being fair to you and I don't think you're being fair to Maryland."

As O'Grady would not commit to a scholarship, Shue walked on at Maryland instead, with would now be called work-study jobs to pay his tuition (including a job sweeping the floors at Maryland's Ritchie Coliseum) and didn't receive a full scholarship until his senior season. By then, everyone on campus knew Gene Shue.

As a junior, the 6-2 guard broke all extant Maryland basketball records, and scored a school record 40 points in the 1953 Southern Conference tournament, becoming Maryland's first basketball All-American since 1932. As a senior, with Maryland joining the newly formed Atlantic Coast Conference, Shue averaged 21 points a game to lead the Terrapins to its first 20-win season in school history (22-7), its first national ranking (#14), and as such he was named its first all-ACC selection. Shue's 1,384 career points at College Park would not be surpassed until 1974.

The third overall selection in the 1954 NBA draft, Shue's innovative use of the spin move led him to five consecutive NBA All-Star appearances with the Detroit Pistons from 1957-58 through 1961-62, including season high averages of 22.8 points and 6.8 assists a game, the latter among the top five in the NBA at the time. A 45 point game against Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics was a career high.

Shue concluded his playing career at home for the newly formed Baltimore Bullets franchise. He then went into into coaching, leading the Bullets from 1966-1973 and 1980-1986, concluding his career at the helm of the Los Angeles Clippers in 1989. A two time NBA Coach of the Year (1968-1969, 1981-1982), Shue coached a total of 1,645 games but his sub-.500 record on some struggling teams (784-861) has left him out of the Basketball Hall of Fame as result. But this was a coach who got the most out of his teams.

"In 1973, he moved to Philadelphia. A year earlier, the 76ers had gone 9-73, the worst record in league history," wrote Mike Klingman of the Baltimore Sun. "In four years, Shue led them to the NBA finals."

One of Gene Shue's early influences was Buddy Jeannette, a player-coach with the original Bullets franchise that Shue followed as a fan while at Towson Catholic. A fast-moving guard of his own in his playing days, it would have been interesting to have seen Jeannette coaching Shue in college. Two years after Shue's fateful tryout, O'Grady was relieved of head coaching duties at Georgetown and replaced with...of all people, Buddy Jeannette. But by 1952, Shue was a Maryland man.