Chathamite to Take Court at NCAA Basketball Tourney

When Billy Oliver takes the floor for Penn State in the NCAA men's basketball tournament on Thursday, he’ll have some fans from Chatham there to cheer him on.

Oliver’s mother Laura flew to Arizona Wednesday afternoon to watch her son, a junior at Penn State, play in the tournament. Todd Ervin, Billy’s basketball coach for all the four years that he played varsity basketball at Chatham High School, got on a plane Wednesday afternoon to watch him play against Temple.

“I figured, it might not happen again,” Ervin said. “We’re not a tremendous basketball power, especially in our county we’re not highly regarded, so to have a kid playing Division I basketball is pretty good.”

Laura Oliver said she and her husband William have been alternating traveling to see their son play as much as possible this season.

“We’d both love to do it but we do have four kids, so we’re just taking turns. We hope they go all the way,” she said.

Oliver graduated from Chatham High School in 2008 and is what his parents and former coach describe as a perfect fit at Penn State.

“Billy wanted to play at the highest level he could in college,” Laura Oliver said. “Penn State was a good fit for him. He loves it–all around, not just the basketball.”

The transition was not an entirely seamless one, though. Laura Oliver said her son sustained two concussions his freshman year, and as a sophomore experienced headaches that kept him off the court.

“For two years he worked hard and practiced hard, and now he gets to play,” she said.

Now in his junior year, Billy has played in 32 of Penn State’s 33 games so far this season, logging 457 total minutes and averaging 14.3 minutes and 2.3 points per game. He has also pulled down 1.4 rebounds per game.

While on the Chatham High School basketball team, he scored a record 1,300 points in his career and was named MVP three times. As a high school junior, Billy led the squad to a Group II state title and 31 victories in the 2006-07 season. The team made the Tournament of Champions, just missing out on upsetting Seton Hall Prep in the quarterfinals at the Ritacco Center in Toms River. The Cougars fell just short of making it to the semifinals, losing 48-43 to the Pirates.

Not many parents who would call their son playing Division I basketball “icing on the cake,” but Laura Oliver said that after two years of sitting on the bench for medical purposes, the family is just happy her son gets to play.

“The fact that he can and he’s getting time, it’s just great all around," she said. "But his health is our first priority. He’s doing what he came to do, and he was very patient.”

Ervin said that even in high school, Oliver was a hard-working athlete, the kind who “made things easier for everyone else.” At 6-8, Laura Oliver said her son is tall even in a family with “a lot of height” in it already. She said she is 5-foot-9, and her husband is 6-foot-4.

“He’s got some 6-6 and 6-7 cousins on both sides, but [Billy’s] the biggest,” Laura Oliver said.

Her other son, Brian, is 6-2 and not done growing yet, she said.

Laura Oliver’s secret to achieving such literal great heights with her kids?

“I tell everyone, just serve pizza four times a week,” she said.

Assistant Regional Editor Rick Burchfield contributed reporting to this article.