Former Cougar hoops star "Jumpin" Joe Nelson passes away

Joe Nelson, one of BYU’s all-time greats, died Monday at the age of 82 following a short illness. Nelson, from Spanish Fork, starred for the Cougars from 1947-50. Obviously, I never saw Nelson play but remember my father talking about him. Somewhere down the line he was related to my grandmother, who was a Jameson. Here’s a portion of his obituary that talks about his basketball days:

“He had a nationally recognized basketball career at Brigham Young University where he was named an All-American, playing for coaches Floyd Millett and Stan Watts. “Jumpin’Joe” was the All-Conference scoring champion of the Skyline Conference in 1948 and 1950 and was named to the Helms All-American team in 1948 – the year he set a scoring record against Denver with 37 points. Many of his college scoring records, as well as free-throw percentages were not broken in over 25 years until the Kresimir Kosic and Danny Ainge eras at BYU. Joe was selected for the Los Angeles National Invitational Tournament (1948), Skyline Conference all-tournament all-star team (1949) NCAA western all-star team (1950) and played in the East-West All-Star game in 1950 in Madison Square Garden, New York. He toured the country in 1950 as a member of the College All-American team, playing against the Harlem Globetrotters – one of his favorite memories. In 1950, he received the Dale Rex Memorial Award for his contribution to amateur athletics in Utah, the fourth recipient and the first basketball participant. He is an inductee to the BYU Sports Hall of Fame. In 1999, he was also inducted to the Utah Sports Hall of Fame in basketball. He played professional basketball with the St. Paul Lights (Minnesota) and also the Waterloo Hawks (Iowa) for several years.
After leaving pro-basketball because there was no money in it, he worked briefly at Dugway Proving Grounds, where he continued to play basketball for recreation. He then worked for and retired from USS Geneva Steel after 35+ years.