Today, we start Season 4 of the ButteCast with one of my childhood heroes, “Flyin’” Brian Vaughns.

Vaughns was a superstar for the Montana Tech men’s basketball team in the mid 1980s. The 6-foot-7 center from Camden, New Jersey played on two Frontier Conference championship teams. He averaged nearly a double-double with points and rebounds in his time with the Orediggers.

He also led the world in electrifying dunks. That is what led Montana Standard Sportswriter Jim Edgar to coin the name, “Flyin’ Brian.”

Oredigger head coach Kelvin Sampson left Montana Tech for a job as an assistant at Washington State following the 1985 season. That is when Vaughns left the great moniker behind and transferred to NCAA Division I University of California Santa Barbara. 

He played one season at Santa Barbara, and he led the team with 13.9 points per game. Because of a strange NCAA rule at the time, the redshirt season he had to sit out as a transfer robbed him of his senior season.

Vaughns, though, was drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks in the fifth round of the 1987 NBA draft. Vaughns never played in the NBA, but he fell in love with the game during a professional career that took him around the world.

That career took him to Australia, and he now lives in Melbourne. In the Land Down Under, Vaughns is a legendary basketball coach, and his son, Marcus, is committed to play hoops at Louisiana State University. The younger Vaughns will join LSU in January, after he finishes high school in November.

Now that he is no longer flying, the soon-to-be 61-year-old Brian Vaughs might just end up with a new nickname, Peyton Manning style. Today, he is “Writin’ Brian,” and his second book is about to be released.

The title of the book is great. It’s called, “Basketball Used to Be My Girlfriend. Now She’s Just a Lady I Know.”

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