Glen Rice at Iowa State? Almost.

Imagine a team with Jeff Grayer and Glen Rice.

Had a few things gone differently in the fall of 1984, imagining such a duo wouldn't have been necessary. Had Rice been allowed to sign following his fall visit to Ames, he likely would have ended up playing alongside his fellow Michigan native at Iowa State, and who knows what might have happened next.

Alas, that is not part of Iowa State history.

Before Iowa State ever got Jeff Grayer to follow Barry Stevens from Flint (Mich.) Northwestern, assistant Jim Hallihan found himself sitting in any empty gym in Michigan at 3:30 one afternoon. He had been told by Flint Northwestern coach Grover Kirkland that practice would start at 4 p.m. Then 4 p.m. rolled around and nobody was there. Finally, players began to roll in and by 5 p.m. there were enough players for a game.

Hallihan found a seat in the bleachers. He noticed this one player who was unbelievable.

"That’s Grayer," thought Hallihan, who had never seen Grayer in-person before. "That’s got to be Grayer."

During a break, Hallihan caught Kirkland's attention.

"Is that Grayer?" he asked.

"No, no, no," Kirkland said, "that’s Glen Rice."

"Whew," Hallihan replied, "maybe I’m seeing the wrong guy."

"Well," Kirkland said, "wait until Jeff gets here. He won’t score."

"I’ll be darned, Jeff comes in and he guards him and he can’t score," Hallihan remembered from his home last fall. "And that’s Glen Rice."

In the end, Iowa State would convince Grayer to leave Michigan and follow in the footsteps of fellow Flint Northwestern star and his idol, Barry Stevens. It wasn't long after, in the fall of 1984, that Iowa State was back in Flint looking at Glen Rice.

Iowa State coach Johnny Orr, who had previously coached at Michigan, called his understudy Bill Frieder one day to check in.

"Are you guys going to recruit Rice?" Orr asked him.

"Nope, we’re after this kid from Muskegon," Frieder said. "We’re not going to recruit Rice."

So Iowa State went full-go. They brought Rice in for a visit and he loved it. It appeared he was ready to sign. There was just one problem.

"His coach was mad from the year before when one of his kids had committed to Southern Cal and then didn’t have a good year, so he wasn’t going to let him sign early," Hallihan said. "Rice visited and had this great visit and he was going to sign and he wouldn’t let him sign. Then, when you’re at your high point in November and you’ve got until April to get him, well all of a sudden the kid in Muskegon didn’t commit to Michigan.

"So they started recruiting Rice about halfway through the year."

In the end, Rice stayed home and went to Michigan where he led the Wolverines to the 1989 National Championship and became the school's all-time leading scorer before spending 15 seasons in the NBA.

"With him and Grayer," Hallihan says all these years later, "we could have been National Champs probably."

Instead, everyone is left to imagine.