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68 IllustrateD volume 24, issue 5 f was close to home, his brother had played there and it offered a nationally renown program for dyslexic students. Oh, yes. Scheffler's dyslexic. He was placed in special edu- cation classes in junior high and high school, and branded "retarded," something he can joke about now. His I.Q. and test scores were high, but read- ing and writing were difficult. Spelling bees were the worst for the dyslexic kids, because they had to get up in front of every- body and try to spell words with the letters all jumbled in their brains. They hoped to get diffi- cult words, because it was less embarrassing to miss those. Embarrassment was a con- stant companion for those kids, and the choice was to respond as a bully or withdraw. It wasn't in Scheffler's nature to be a bully, so he turned inward. "You know you're different and you know you're the outsider," he recalled of his feelings. He arrived for his freshman year at Purdue feeling awk- ward both socially and athletically. He was an easy target for kidding, being a straitlaced, withdrawn, philosophical kid who didn't worship basketball as much as most col- lege athletes, but he was unselfish and smart, too. So right away, in the coach-less pickup games with his new team- mates before practice began officially, he figured out how to become valuable. Forget scoring, just run around and set screens for the shooters and try to get every rebound. Reminded of that, 1988 graduate Everette Stephens burst out laughing. "He would pick someone to death," Stephens said. "Se- riously. It got to the point guys would say, 'Don't pick me no more, go pick somebody else.' He'd start laughing, because he knew it had to hurt to get picked by him. He'd giggle, because he liked that." Thing is, Scheffler didn't want to do anything else. "I'd tell him, after you pick, look for the ball," Stephens said. "He liked picking so much, he'd forget to look for the ball." He might have been the least-talented player on the team at the time, but he was a high- ly desired teammate in pickup games. "He was strong as an ox," Troy Lewis recalls, "but ..." Lewis bursts out laughing. "But he was mechanical, to say the least." Scheffler played in just 16 games, for a total of 73 minutes, as a freshman, and scored 24 points. He was so nervous that he usually was on the verge of hyper- ventilating when he did play. He recalls an assistant coach or two suggesting after that season that maybe he'd want to consider try- ing spring football to see how that goes. He looked and moved more like a football player, after all, and he didn't seem to have much fu- ture as the third-string center be- hind Mel McCants and Jeff Arnold. Gradually, though, fate began to favor him. That sum- mer, the team played in Australia, New Zealand and Tahiti, which allowed Scheffler to play longer minutes in games with less pressure. And then Arnold was suspended before the season began and ultimately dropped from the team around semester break. That forced Scheffler into the play- ing rotation, and he gradually began to respond. He aver- aged 6.8 points and 4.4 rebounds, shooting 71 percent from the field for the 1988 team that won the Big Ten champi- onship. He averaged 13 points as a junior on a team that didn't play in the postseason and then 16.8 as a senior for a team that came within one bad call and one crucial turn- over at Michigan State of winning the Big Ten again. Scheffler finished his college career as the NCAA re- cord-holder for field goal percentage (.685), breaking Jer- ry Lucas' 28-year-old record (.678). He was voted the Big Ten's Most Valuable Player by the media, while the coach- Getty Images Scheffler became a fan favorite in Seattle for his enthusiasm coming off the bench.