This profile is one in a series of articles posted on GoBonnies.com throughout this basketball season that will shine a light on some great players from Bonaventure's rich men's basketball history.  Earlier profiles include Glenn Price and Barry Mungar.

Over the course of its storied 104-year history, the St. Bonaventure men's basketball program has boasted players not only from all over the United States, but also from Canada, Europe and even South America and the Caribbean.  The state of Mississippi, however, has not necessarily been fertile recruiting ground for the Bonnies, yet the Magnolia State did give us one great one:  Carl Jackson.
 
A 6'4", 190-pound forward, Jackson averaged 16.7 points and 8.4 rebounds over the course of his three-year varsity career at Bonaventure (1970-71 to 1972-73).  A major offensive threat who was also called upon to lock down opponents' top scorers, he was inducted into the St. Bonaventure Athletics Hall of Fame in 2001.
 
How did Jackson find his way from the Deep South to the Heart of the Enchanted Mountains?  It all started at the segregated Rosa A. Temple High School in Vicksburg, Mississippi, the first Black high school to be accredited in the state.    
 
A Very Special High School Basketball Career
Temple historically was not known as a basketball school, but things changed during Jackson's sophomore year (1966-67) when he helped lead the Buccaneers to a 36-6 record en route to the 1967 Mississippi Black School State Championship. 
 
That team also competed in the National Basketball Tournament for Black High Schools, losing in the championship game.  Jackson led Temple with 22 points in its second-round game and again with 16 in the championship game.  He was named to the all-tournament team along with Howard Porter from Booker High School in Sarasota, Florida, who ironically later played against Jackson and Bonaventure while at Villanova. 
 
Temple ran the table Jackson's junior year, winning its second straight state title with a perfect 29-0 record.  Temple did not lose again until well into Jackson's senior campaign, 1968-69, giving the program a winning streak of more than 60 games.  Jackson was named All-State and All-American his last two years, averaging 25.5 points and 20.4 rebounds a game as a senior.  
 
 
At the conclusion of his senior year, Temple played in the prestigious Bishop O'Connell High School tournament in Arlington, Virginia.  The expectation was that the championship game would pit Jackson and Temple against the Washington, D.C. powerhouse DeMatha High School led by James Brown, who later played at Harvard and is known by many as the venerable FOX Sports and CBS Sports studio host. 
 
Unfortunately, Temple was upset in its semi-final game by Cardinal O'Hara High School from suburban Philadelphia (whose star, Tom Ingelsby, also later faced off against Jackson and Bona's while at Villanova with Porter) on its path to the title game.  Thus, the highly anticipated Jackson-Brown match-up did not materialize.  All was not lost, however, as Jackson and Temple teammate Marshall Sanders had impressed Bonnies head coach Larry Weise and assistant Bob Sassone, both of whom had attended the game.     
 
 
Go North, Young Man
When the coaches told Jackson and Sanders that they were from a college in New York, Jackson thought the school was located in New York City.  He was in for a surprise when he and Sanders later visited SBU.   "I had no idea there was an area called 'the Heart of the Enchanted Mountains'!" Jackson laughs.  
 
Meanwhile, Jackson was being recruited by a multitude of big-time college programs including Villanova, Kentucky, Florida State and UCLA.  Upon visiting schools such as Florida State, Nebraska and Ole Miss, though, he realized that he did not want to attend a big school.
 
"Those state schools were just too big," says Jackson.  "They had classes in auditoriums.  I couldn't learn in that environment.  I'd be nothing but an IBM card at those schools."
 
All the while, Jackson and Sanders had an agreement that they would attend college together, with one caveat:  if Sanders were accepted into Harvard, he'd play for the Crimson.  If not, he'd be shuffling off to Buffalo with Jackson.  Well, Sanders ended up getting into Harvard, where he subsequently played alongside the same James Brown from DeMatha!
 
Jackson for his part acclimated himself quite well upon setting foot on the Bonaventure campus in the fall of 1969.  He favored the small class sizes, and teachers and mentors such as Professor Austin Finan, Fr. Canisius Connors, Fr. Timothy Quinn and Fr. Dan Riley.   He also remembers the unique experience playing on the freshmen squad (the NCAA did not allow freshmen to play varsity back then).
 
"We had to practice against the Final Four team (including Bob Lanier) every day," he says.  "I used to get angry because they would score just about every time down the court." 
 
"He (Jackson) must have been asked a million times why he came all the way to St. Bonaventure to play basketball and get an education," recalls Dale Tepas, a member of the 1970 Final Four team and Jackson's varsity teammate during the 1970-71 season.  "He always expressed that it was Coach Weise and how comfortable he made him.   He adjusted pretty well, although the snow was a first for him.  Nobody adjusts to that!"
 

The Formation of Lifelong Friendships and Memories
There were perks, though, as Jackson recalls:  "We played before a full house (in what was then called the University Center) in the second half of our games," as fans filed in early to get good seats for the varsity games featuring Lanier, Billy Kalbaugh, Matt Gantt, Greg "Bubba" Gary, Paul Hoffman, Tepas and others.  "After our freshmen game, we'd shower and come back out and sit behind the bench for the varsity game.  It was a wonderful feeling.  When you walked around campus, everyone knew that you were a ball player."
 
"It was always the upperclassmen's role to help the incoming freshmen players get acclimated," says Tepas.  "Carl was an easy fit because he was so easy going. He came in with no baggage.  His family raised a true gentleman and that was so impressive.  It was always about the team, and our team was our family away from home. We did a lot of things together, and including Carl and all the freshmen was part of the process of making them feel at home and part of the Bona family."
 
And then there was Ramsey Lewis' iconic version of "Wade in the Water," Bonaventure's legendary warm-up song.  "It lit a spark back then, and I still get chills when I hear that song," he says.  "That was the moment when you knew it was real.  Everything became serious when 'Wade in the Water' was played."  Jackson even remembers the song being played at Madison Square Garden in New York City when Bonaventure played in the NIT at the end of his sophomore season.
 
Jackson led the freshmen team in scoring and rebounding, pouring in a season-high 42 points against Canisius.  Jackson fondly recalls time spent on and off the court with Mike Mayurnik, Bill Klepper, Jim Wallace and Joe Sabol, teammates who later played with him on the varsity. 
 
It was a smooth transition to varsity basketball the following year.  Jackson averaged 14.1 points and 7.7 rebounds for the Bonnies in their first post-Bob Lanier campaign.  They compiled a 21-6 record and finished third in the NIT.  
 
The team defeated Purdue (against whom Jackson scored 23 points and pulled down 12 rebounds) in its first NIT game and then Hawaii (Jackson had 15 points and 6 rebounds) before losing to Georgia Tech in double overtime (Jackson:  18 points and 11 rebounds).  They bounced back to upend Duke in overtime in the consolation game, with Jackson tallying 13 points and 9 rebounds.  The squad peaked with a #10 national ranking twice in January of that season.
 
"That ball club was unique," says Jackson of a team that featured seven players from the Final Four team:  Gantt, Hoffman, Gary, Tepas, Vic Thomas, Tom Baldwin and Paul Grys.  "They were together.  They made me feel like I was a part of the team.  Everywhere I wanted to go or needed to go, they always made sure I was taken care of." 
 
The feeling was mutual:  "Carl was probably as well-liked and respected as any player we've ever had," says former Bonnies great Jim Satalin, who was the head freshmen coach and assistant varsity coach during Jackson's three varsity campaigns and later was the head varsity coach, winning the NIT in 1977 and taking the Bonnies to the NCAAs the following year.

Tepas adds:  "Carl was a ball of energy.  He brought that energy each and every game.  He was a very confident player - and you need that to be successful and win at the varsity level.  But he never had an ego. He made us better for sure. He was fun to be around and when you're traveling and playing as a team you need to be around fun guys who brought confidence to the table.  Carl was that guy from day one."

Jackson's roommates his sophomore year were Mike Davis and Lonnie Harvey.  Together, they formed the "Soul Sandwich," a play on the fact that Jackson and Harvey are Black and Davis is White.   They had triple bunk beds, with Davis sandwiched between Jackson and Harvey. 
 
When the trio reunited at their 50th-year Bonaventure reunion last June, they sported "Soul Sandwich" T-shirts harkening back to their college days.  Davis was also the Brown Indian during the 1971-72 season.  Jackson still chuckles when reminiscing about Davis' antics before and during basketball games, which usually involved humiliating and ridiculing opposing teams' players, mascots and fans. 
 
Jackson upped his numbers his junior season (1971-72) to 17.6 points and 8.7 rebounds per game as the team finished 16-8, with wins over Boston College, DePaul, Xavier and 12^th-ranked Providence.   He suffered a knee injury that year which cost him four games.
 
 
He averaged a career-best 18.7 points and 8.8 rebounds per game his senior year (1972-73), with the team earning signature wins over Rutgers and Villanova. The knee injury from his junior year hampered him throughout, however, and after his final game in the brown and white he was fitted with a hip-to-ankle cast in hopes that the knee would fully heal.   
 
Fellow Bonnies great Glenn Price, a teammate who was a year behind Jackson, remembers him thusly:   "He was the best defensive player to come through Bonaventure, by far.  He had an all-around game, but defense was his best attribute.  He always took the toughest opponent on the other team." 

"Carl was an excellent defender who always was assigned to the best opponent," echoes Satalin.  "He was very smart, and strong on both ends of the court.  He was a throwback, being a 6'4" post-up player with an unstoppable fallaway jumper."

Given the distance between St. Bonaventure and Vicksburg, Jackson did not go home during the school year.  He'd frequently stay on campus for holidays and long weekends, spending time with teammates and townspeople.  The Daniels and Milliner families in Olean frequently hosted Jackson and other Bonnies, just as they had hosted players throughout the 1960s.  Jackson has remained in touch with members of the Milliner family, including Calvin Milliner, for more than 50 years.
 
As for teammates, Jackson recalls with a laugh when Tepas invited Jackson and other teammates to his family's Buffalo home over one Thanksgiving break.  Tepas neglected to tell his teammates that his parents would not be home, which meant that Tepas would be cooking the Thanksgiving turkey.  "You can imagine what that turkey looked like and tasted like," Jackson exclaims.  
 
Thomas, his teammate who passed away in 2022, holds a special place in Jackson's heart.  After attending classes and working on campus over the summer, Jackson would travel down to Washington, D.C., Thomas' hometown, and live with the Thomas family for the remainder of the summer.  The duo would play playground basketball against D.C.'s finest (including the aforementioned James Brown and Marshall Sanders).  A bond formed between Jackson and Thomas that remained strong all these decades later.
 
"Victor was one of a kind," Jackson says of Thomas, who was also his roommate one year at Bona's.  "He was there when I came as a young man from the Deep South and didn't know much about the North.  He took me under his wing.  'Whatever you need,' Vic said, 'talk to me.'"
 
Jackson continues:  "He would also take me home to D.C. for some breaks and long weekends, and I would also visit in the summer.  His family made me feel so welcome, like an adopted son.  I never missed home because I felt at home with them.  It was a joy to have known him.  We were extremely close."
 
Upon graduation, Jackson was selected in the eighth round of the NBA Draft by the Buffalo Braves (who later re-located to San Diego and are now the Los Angeles Clippers).  The knee injury suffered in college still lingered, however.  It compromised him throughout camp, and he did not make the regular season roster.   
 
He subsequently took a job with General Electric.  Ironically, one of the GE employees who interviewed Jackson for the job was a graduate of…Canisius!  Jackson remembers the Golden Griffin spending more time talking about the Little Three than about GE!
 
Jackson ended up working at GE for more than 40 years, all in Cincinnati.    He worked in the aircraft engines division managing the international sales group, which involved his traveling all over the world.  He retired in 2015.
 
He and his wife Cheryle, whom he met as a freshman at Bonaventure and married in 1975, have two daughters and a son, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild. 
 
Jackson still lives in Cincinnati and keeps in touch with some of his teammates.  "Would I do it again?," he asks about attending the small school 1,158 miles from his hometown, yet seemingly a million miles away from a culture standpoint.  "Yes, I'd do it again.  In a heartbeat.  I am a Bonaventure Man." 

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Jackson is just one of a number of Bonnies basketball players and teams whose exploits, although perhaps not well-known, were essential in weaving the fabric that is Bonaventure Basketball.  As we move further into the 21st century, it is important that their stories are told and remembered. 

This is one of the objectives of Project Unfurl, a documentary in progress.  Project Unfurl: The Heart of Bona's Basketball will tell the story of the remarkable aura surrounding the St. Bonaventure University men's basketball program over the last eight decades. 

In addition to chronicling the great NCAA and NIT teams, Project Unfurl will also shine a spotlight on many unsung SBU players and teams. To learn more about Project Unfurl, visit its official website: https://www.projectunfurl.com.