Andy Russo
New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame
Basketball, 1956-78
Forrier HS/USL/Brother Martin HS
Inducted: 2025
Photo Courtesy of Brother Martin High School.
Basketball became a way of life at an early age for Andy Russo.
He learned the rudiments of how to shoot a makeshift ball with accuracy at an early age through muscle memory.
His coaching skills developed under the tutelage of two great mentors, Milton Clavier and Beryl Shipley.
And he plied his acquired knowledge and innovation as a coach to win 253 games and two state championships over a period of nine years.
His accomplishment in the sport he loves has rewarded Russo through its induction into the Allstate Sugar Bowl’s New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame.
Living in an uptown neighborhood whose streets were lined with oak trees, his father lit a spark that grew into a passion for all phases of the sport.
“Our backyard had one weird tree with a straight trunk, almost like a telephone pole,” Russo said with a wistful smile. “An arborist suggested to my mother to remove it.”
Instead, his father mounted an old basketball rim on the trunk and handed his young son a volleyball that wouldn’t always hold air. But even half deflated, “I played with that ball for hours. Needless to say, I was falling in love with basketball and didn’t even know it.”
Fast forward to the summer of 1969 when the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, who founded and ran both St. Aloysius and Cor Jesu high schools, merged the two into Brother Martin High. They had to decide who would be the new school’s first head basketball coach: Bob Conlin, who tutored the Cor Jesu team, or Andy Russo, the mentor at St. Aloysius.
The decision was historic and set the school athletic programs onto paths of greatness.
The Brothers made Russo their head basketball and Conlin their head football coach.
Russo not only led the Crusaders to a state championship in their first year as a Class AAA school but guided the team to a 36-0 record. Although not undefeated, his second team won another state title as a Class 4A team.
Conlin followed with a state football championship in 1971 and finished his coaching career in 1996 with a 204-99-5 record. Two years after his death in 1997, he was inducted into the Allstate Sugar Bowl’s New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame.
A career that lasted but nine years was lined with success for Russo.
During that span, his teams won two LHSAA state championships, made five Top 20 Tournament appearances and won seven district titles at three schools: Our Lady of Fatima in Lafayette, St. Aloysius, and Brother Martin.
His legend started at Lafayette Elementary School, recently renamed for Chef Leah Chase, on the black-top basketball court when his father finally gave him, “a real basketball,” he said.
“I would hang out until it got dark and played 3-on-3 with older guys. When they realized I could shoot the ball I had no trouble being picked.”
At McMain Junior High, Russo not only continued to develop skills with the ball, he also grew to six-feet, four inches, making him a welcomed addition to Coach “Mook” Clavier’s Fortier High team. Under Clavier, Fortier had won the 1956 state championship by beating De La Salle in the final round of the tournament. That win was one factor that swayed Russo to Fortier and Clavier instead of De La Salle, coached by the legendary John Altobello.
By his senior year, Russo was an All-State caliber player, averaging 18.6 points in Public League play. Fortier advanced to the 1958-59 Class 3A championship game against uptown nemesis De La Salle, to whom the Tarpons lost, 63-44, at the Tulane Gym.
After graduation, Russo enrolled at Central Florida Junior College where he was selected to the All-Gulf States Conference Team by the league coaches. Then it was off to the University of Southwestern Louisiana (USL, now the University of Louisiana) to further his knowledge under Shipley, who set him on the path to coaching.
“Besides being a tremendous coach, he taught his players the value of persistence -- to never make excuses to justify your mistakes,” he noted. “And while being a demanding disciplinarian, he loved his players. He was always there to help his players during and after graduation.”
Russo learned Shipley’s complicated continuity offense and employed it when he went into the coaching ranks. “It was called the shuffle run, designed to promote balanced scoring. From it, four starters averaged double-digit scoring.”
The shuffle gave players open looks at the goal. “I never had to get on a player for poor shot selection. Some opponents couldn’t stop the shuffle using a man-to-man defense. So they would switch to a zone defense.”
Russo countered that move by running the shuffle from a spread and eliminating his aggressive screening to avoid any chance of players being double-teamed.
Russo’s abilities were evident in St. Aloysius’ final season (1968-69) as he guided the squad to the Class 3A semifinals.
Andy Russo (middle) with Glenn Mason (left) and Dale Valdery (right). Photo Courtesy of Brother Martin High School.
Then in Brother Martin’s debut season (1969-70), Russo molded a team full of talents that represented both affluent and impoverished neighborhoods into a cohesive group of athletes who bought into his disciplined, but fun brand of coaching.
Brother Martin High was hardly a household name because it was a first-year school, but Russo changed that in one season as the Crusaders were undefeated and rolled to a championship in the highly competitive Catholic League.
Led by All-State forward Ernest “Skippy” Brunet, the team continued to roll after a regular season that ended in Hollywood fashion in the finals of the Top 20 Tournament in Alexandria. The championship game matched 35-0 Martin against 35-1 Captain Shreve. Anticipation was high with a reported attendance of 15,657 looking on from the overcrowded stands.
The Gators held a 36-24 lead at the half, but Martin came back to tie the game, 56-56, at the end of regulation. Captain Shreve would not score in the three-minute overtime period as the Crusaders dominated the extra session for a 72-56 victory to cap the perfect season with the Class 3A state title.
The Crusaders were also named a mythical “National Champion” by “The New World,” the largest Catholic newspaper in the U.S., ranking the Crusaders ahead of 22-0 Powers Memorial, the alma mater of Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul Jabbar).
Repeating as a state champion in the elevated Class 4A seemed unlikely in 1970-71. Russo acknowledged that his team didn’t work hard enough during the off-season to prepare for a difficult schedule of opponents determined to dethrone the reigning champion. He had also lost his senior leader Glenn Masson, who broke an ankle during an early practice in 1971 that left him sidelined for much of the season.
In response, Russo made some critical changes. He started junior twin guards Charlie and Joe Furlan, good, but undersized (5-7) players. The team lacked overall height, but the defensive tenacity of veterans Dale Valdery, Tommy Smith and 6-4 center Gabe Williams facilitated a winning season even without Masson.
After opening the season with a 7-2 record, the Crusaders shockingly won 13 straight games and eventually beat Rummel twice for the district title. In the state tournament, Russo’s team, now healthy, posted three straight victories to return to the state championship game with a 29-6, facing 35-1 Woodlawn of Shreveport and its seven-foot star center Robert Parish, a future pro basketball Hall of Famer with the Boston Celtics.
Russo found a way to limit Parish’s talent and size by placing Masson at the foul line and Williams at the low post, a decision that forced Parish to choose between covering the two threats.
“I knew that Williams’ quickness could beat Parish to the baseline for reverse layups and limited his opportunities to block shots,” Russo said.
The plan worked well. Masson scored 17 points and Williams 15. But it was Charlie Furlan who was the high-scorer with 24 points, while Parish was handcuffed by foul trouble. In the waning minutes Russo called for a defensive freeze and the second state championship was secured by a 76-72 score.
Russo would coach the Crusaders for two more seasons, helping to develop big man Rick Robey until Robey’s final season. Robey, also a member of the New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame, is noted as the first Louisiana-born basketball star to win a state championship (at Brother Martin), a national championship (at the University of Kentucky) and an NBA title (with the Boston Celtics).
Russo moved on to Jacksonville University as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator for a brief time, then took advantage of a lucrative business opportunity as a food service equipment factory agent and rose to a national sales manager in that industry.
But his legacy continued to be felt in the sports community due to the impact of some of his former players:
- Dale Valdery became a basketball coach at Southern University, New Orleans.
- Tommy Smith served as Delgado Community College Athletic Director.
- Donald Newman became an assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs of the NBA.
- Jimmy Tillette became a successful coach at Sanford University.
Story by Ron Brocato, New Orleans Sports Awards Committee
