Pueblo High School coach Roland LaVetter and his team beat Rincon High School for the Class AAA state boys basketball championship in 1978.

 Jose Galvez, Arizona Daily Star 1978

The statistician for the 1978 Pueblo High School boys basketball team must’ve been in sports heaven.

According to 1978 newspaper archives from the Arizona Daily Star and Tucson Citizen, the Warriors had two players who averaged triple-doubles during Pueblo’s historic 28-0 state championship season.

Guard Lafayette “Fat” Lever, the state’s player of the year, averaged 20 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists per year. His backcourt mate, Tony Mosley, averaged 11 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists.

If you ever come across a basketball team with a pair of triple-double players, contact the statistical people at ESPN or NCAA or NBA to see if any other team, at any level, has done so. Unlikely.

No wonder the Warriors went 28-0 and were named the Star’s basketball team of the century.

Lever and Mosley weren’t the only Warriors selected to the 1978 all-city team. Forward Jeff Moore was also a first-team choice; Moore averaged 17 points and shot 54% from the field. What is remarkable is that Pueblo’s ’78 team did not have a center. Moore, at 6-foot-3, was its tallest starter.

That’s how good coach Roland LaVetter’s state champs were. A fourth Warrior, Pat Adams, was named to the Star’s all-city third team, and Ken Martin was honorable mention. How’s that for a superlative starting five?

Pueblo won back-to-back state championships in 1977 and 1978, and although they cut down the nets, their journeys were not all that similar.

“Last year, we were the Cinderella team,” LaVetter said in preseason 1978. “This year, everybody’s after us. I’m trying to make our kids understand that. Even mediocre teams are going to play well against us.”

It didn’t matter much. Pueblo went undefeated by an average of 17 points per game. It’s closest brush with defeat came in the state semifinals against Phoenix East High School in one of the most nerve-wracking games in LaVetter’s long (26 years) coaching career.

Pueblo High School players, including Lafayette Lever, left, celebrate after winning the 1978 Class AAA state boys basketball championship in Tempe.

Lever was hobbled with a sprained ankle. Mosley got an elbow in the mouth, knocking a tooth out. Moore had a back injury. To make it worse, Pueblo was unable to get to the ASU basketball arena to get proper treatment for those injuries before the game. A massive rainstorm left many of the Tempe streets flooded, and some blocked to traffic.

Pueblo arrived just 10 minutes before scheduled tipoff and officials did not delay the start of the game.

LaVetter, an old-school coach, chose to play a four-corners offense. A stall. There was no shot clock in 1978 in college or high school basketball, and LaVetter decided that his injured players would not effectively be able to play an up-and-down game against East for 32 minutes.

The stall worked. Pueblo won 29-28 when Lever made two foul shots with 41 seconds remaining and East missed two final shots.

A day later, Pueblo won the state title, defeating Rincon High School, 70-54.

“I think we’re the best team in the state,” said LaVetter, who played basketball at Tucson High School and on the UA freshman team before entering the coaching profession at Mansfield Junior High in 1966. “It was a shame so many of our players were injured. But the kids took the pressure better than their old coach (LaVetter was 38). They were loose.”

Pueblo High School coach Roland LaVetter hugs guard Lafayette Lever during the 1978 state title game in Tempe.

And yet Pueblo still went 28-0, one of just four Arizona “big schools” to go undefeated in the last 50 years, joining East’s 1981 team, Phoenix South Mountain’s 1991 team and Mesa Mountain View’s 1995 champs.

If one thing bothered LaVetter in 1978 it was a lack of available funds. He struggled to raise money to pay $180 to buy a color film of the championship game, and then he had difficulty raising enough money to buy his club state championship rings and fund a banquet celebrating their undefeated season.

Pueblo High School players cut down the net after defeating Rincon for the 1978 state championship.

LaVetter was Pueblo’s boys basketball coach from 1969-80. He went 158-98 before resigning, later becoming the athletic director at Rincon and also the Rangers’ girls basketball coach.

In 2019, Pueblo named one of its two basketball facilities Roland LaVetter Gym, adjacent to Lafayette Lever Gym, named after the state’s 1978 player of the year.

Lever went on to be a two-time All-Pac-10 guard at Arizona State and two-time NBA All-Star with the Denver Nuggets.

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Contact sports columnist Greg Hansen at 520-573-4362 or ghansen@tucson.com. On Twitter: @ghansen711