Earl Roberts quickly became a household name around Brandon University and could easily have garnered national notoriety.

That is, if it wasn't for the guy two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash emulated his game after. Roberts wound up on the wrong side of too many matchups with the pesky Eli Pasquale, from high school to Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union games and Team Canada tryouts.

"(Pasquale) was almost haunting me right from high school all the way up," Roberts said via phone interview.

"He was fantastic. He was a good player, great player. I can't say anything about him that's bad, and a great person too.

"The only thing I regret was not being able to play against him a lot more. If I had played against him more it would have helped my cause better."

The six-foot point guard was absolutely no slouch as a Bobcat from 1980 to 1985, however, as he was named a Great Plains Athletic Conference all-star on two occasions and guided BU to nationals three times, earning two bronze medals and a silver in 1984.

Roberts started playing ball in junior high but really developed when McMaster University men's guard Victor Dhue coached him along at a local recreation centre. Roberts and his friends would get to as many open gyms as they could, often battling older guys.

"We had fellas at George Brown College that would train us if we wanted to go and in the summer time we used to play Sunday nights at George Brown where you'd have a lot of Americans and people playing and it was cutthroat. When I say cutthroat, I mean cutthroat," Roberts said.

"You have 20, 30 people on the sidelines and if you lose you're done, you got to go home basically.

"We would go early and play before all the older guys got there because they wouldn't let us on the court. They'd get there and we'd lose the first game and be done."

Roberts said playing three-onthree was big for his development.

"That got me more into knowing the ins and outs of the game and training the game as opposed to just running up and down," he said.

The point guard put it all together and led Humberside Collegiate — alma mater of former BU women's coach Bill Moody — to AAA provincials in Windsor his Grade 11 year. BU head coach Jerry Hemmings tried to talk to him after his team lost to Pasquale's Lockerby Composite.

"My coach wouldn't let me because I was just in Grade 11 at the time," Roberts said.

"The following year I had more communication with him … I ended up going out to Brandon.

"It seemed like that was the start of a pipeline to Brandon from Toronto."

To say his arrival in Brandon was love at first sight couldn't be further from the truth.

If you told Roberts at 18 that he'd not only stick around for five years but move to Boissevain then spend the rest of his life in Winnipeg, he'd nod along like, well, a referee absorbing nonsense from a high school coach, which he has done the last 30 years.

But Roberts realized the Wheat City was the furthest thing from his hometown Toronto when he went for a run with Willie Dallas soon after they moved together.

"We ran from the university to First Street … that was it. We turn around and say 'Now what do we do?' That was our life, it was 'What are we doing? What are we doing here?'" Roberts said.

"Any chance I had to go home I was gone. I used to fly standby, I think it was 99 bucks and I was gone."

It turns out small-town life, relatively speaking, was an acquired taste. By Year 2, Roberts was hooked.

"You know what's going on and got a feel for everybody, and the people in Brandon were great. I met lots of people, people you got to know through the basketball scene, my former teammates Grant Coulter, Tom Price … Warren Watt, they're all great people," he said.

"The life is different, coming to Brandon from Toronto, it's a big change but for my personality it seemed to fit.

"I'm more of a quiet guy and try to be low-key as much as possible. Toronto is fast, it's always on the go. That's probably the reason I'm still in Winnipeg."

Roberts may have stayed for the lifestyle — or for a certain young woman across the hall of his ninth-floor McMaster Hall room — but he came as a result of Hemmings' thorough recruiting and was quickly drawn into a competitive locker room.

Roberts happened to show up the best season in BU history to date. The Bobcats won their first GPAC title and reached the 1980 national final, losing 73-65 to Pasquale's Victoria Vikings.

But most of the group was new, save from Jude Kelly, Jerry Abernathy and Tom Price. The new group gelled together quickly and compiled a 14-2 record, defending its GPAC crown.

"If I recall correctly, we were ranked number one ahead of Victoria with 10 freshmen," Roberts said. "I didn't feel there was an expectation for us to win, we just knew we could win. We had that confidence, and as freshmen we were cocky, but we just knew."

BU entered nationals ranked second, but was stung 81-69 by Concordia in the quarterfinals. Brandon won bronze the following year.

In 1983, Roberts came up absolutely huge for Brandon at the Midwest regional tournament. He scored his team's last seven points, including a game-winning buzzer beater to defeat Dalhousie 83-82.

"I guess I just didn't want to lose," Roberts told The Brandon Sun's Jack Gibson that day.

"And the rest of the guys decided the same thing."

The Bobcats beat the University of Calgary Dinosaurs 86-69 to punch their ticket to a four-team national tournament against the host Waterloo Warriors. Roberts was named MVP.

But live by the dagger at the buzzer, die by the dagger at the buzzer. Waterloo's Peter Savich's 18-footer knifed BU straight in the heart for a 73-72 decision. Brandon rebounded to beat St. Mary's 85-72 for third.

In 1984 the Bobcats made the breakthrough and had what would later prove to be Roberts' last shot at a CIAU title. Under interim head coach Dwight Kearns — Hemmings was on a sabbatical — BU fell 70-62, once again, to Victoria as Pasquale capped off a perfect five-for-five gold medals before going 106th overall in the NBA draft to the Seattle SuperSonics and competing on two Olympic teams.

After that game, Roberts told the Sun, "We could have done better. We could have won. We had to play 40 minutes to beat them and we played 37 minutes."

Now he looks back at his time spent on the court in a similar way.

"Right now I look at it as 'We just didn't do it.' I blame myself and the reason I do that is I don't think I worked hard enough," Roberts admitted.

"One thing I was able to do was get by on natural ability and probably didn't work as hard as I should have to get to where I needed to get to."

Nevertheless, Team Canada invited Roberts to tryouts, then asked him to spend a year overseas to hone his skills. Roberts headed for England but ended up returning for his fifth year, even though the Bobcats were handed a two-year probation and had no shot at a national title in 1984-85.

Following a 13-3 regular season, Roberts had another invite to chase a Maple Leaf, but it didn't pan out.

It was just as well, as he was ready for the next chapter with now wife Colleen. He met her his first day on campus, when they coincidentally lived across the hall from each other. They only got married a few years after Earl's playing days. They moved to Boissevain and eventually to Winnipeg. Colleen is now principal at General Byng School while Earl works for a heating and air conditioning company and stays heavily involved in basketball as an official. Their daughter Rachael spent two years with the University of Calgary rowing team.

While his colleagues say he had a bit of a head start in the proverbial zebra stripes, he admits it wasn't because of the few Brandon high school games he called. But he sure had a knack for it.

"Some referees would tell you on the court I refereed when I was playing," Roberts said with a laugh.

"A lot of coaches and players will say I communicate with them very well and that's from my playing days because I used to talk to the referees all the time, expecting to get some communication."

Roberts got into refereeing a little too late to get into the FIBA stream to go really big with it, but secured a university contract 20 years ago.

He said the game has changed a ton from his oncourt perspective — that time period is older than the threepoint line — noting the long ball has dramatically impacted the sport at all levels.

"When I was playing it was more of a mid-game. The three-pointer wasn't such a big deal but players now you can calculate, they either go to the hole or take a three," he said. "Nobody pulls up at the foul line … everybody wants to be a showboat. Threes are big, or dunking it in the hole.

"Basketball has evolved to that."

In the wake of Sport Manitoba's "No Ref, No Game" campaign highlighting abuse of local officials, the 57-yearold said he "can count on one hand" the number of times he has received abuse from a coach over a call or no-call.

Call it good fortune, but a big part of it is people skills.

"I like the communication with the coaches and players, I really like that. You get to know players and once you see them on the court, you give them a

fair shake, off the court they're happy," Roberts said.

"I've had a lot of players I don't know or don't remember that have come up to me and said good things."

Forty years after moving to the prairies, Roberts said Brandon changed him in "every which way I can think of." He credits Hemmings, athletic director George Birger — who died earlier this month at 91 — and BU president Harold Perkins for supporting the Bobcats program throughout his time.

"I'm learning from Hemmings how to be a person, you're learning from your teammates, people in Brandon, it's different cultures and different ways and it's helped me be who I am. I'm hoping I'm a good person," Roberts said.

"I got my daughter, who (my wife and I) seemed to give her the right direction … it's hard to put into words how it has changed my life.

"… I thank my lucky stars I went to Brandon and played for coach Hemmings."

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