Andrew is the son of Andrew Sr. and Doris E. Purcell.[3] His mother's father was Sanford P. Purcell,a Georgia State Senator and member of the Democratic Party.[3]
Early life
Owens was born in Atlanta,Georgia,but moved to Tampa,Florida as a child with his family,where his father became the owner of an auto parts store.[4] His mother,who had played basketball at Agnes Scott College in Decatur,Georgia,taught him how to play the sport.[4] Owens attended Hillsborough High School in Tampa,where he became a standout basketball player for the Hillsborough Terriers high school basketball team.[5] He played in seventy-seven prep games,while scoring 1,806 points and averaging 23.5 points per game.[5] As a senior,he scored 397 points in sixteen Western Conference games,averaging 24.8 per game,including 51 points against rival King High School.[5] He was named as a high school All-American along with Lew Alcindor and Pete Maravich.[5]
College career
Owens received athletic scholarship offers to attend the University of Kentucky and the University of North Carolina,but he accepted a scholarship to attend his home-state University of Florida in Gainesville,Florida. As a Florida undergraduate,he played forward for coach Tommy Bartlett's Florida Gators men's basketball team for three seasons from 1967 to 1970,and was team captain for the 1969–70 season.[6] In 1968–69,he played with Neal Walk and helped lead the Gators to their first postseason tournament.[6] During the 1969–70 season,he scored 677 points and averaged twenty-seven points a game for the season—still the current record for the Gators men's basketball team.[6] During his three-season college career,he scored a total of 1,445 points and compiled eleven games in which he scored thirty or more points.[6] He was an All-Southeastern Conference (SEC) selection in 1968 and 1970,and an Academic All-American in 1970,and received an NCAA post-graduate scholarship.[6]
The Seattle SuperSonics selected Owens in the eleventh round of the 1970 NBA draft,and the New Orleans Buccaneers picked him in the twelfth round of the 1970 ABA Draft.[6] Instead of playing professional basketball,he decided to attend law school.[5]
Owens graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor's degree in finance in 1970 and a J.D. degree in 1973,and was inducted into the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame as a "Gator Great" in 1978.[7][8] He was honored as an "SEC Basketball Legend" at halftime of the Florida–Vanderbilt game in 2001.[9]
Law career
Owens worked as an attorney in Punta Gorda,Florida after graduating from law school.[4][5] Florida Governor Bob Graham appointed him to a newly created judgeship on the Twelfth Judicial Circuit in 1982,and he later presided over the Carlie Bruscia murder trial.[10][11] He was one of the driving forces behind the creation of a Mental Health Court in Sarasota,[12] as well as the Court Intervention Program also known as "Drug Court," a year-long out-patient program for felony drug offenders.[4] He served as the chief judge of the Twelfth Judicial Circuit from 2011 to 2015.[13][14][15] He resigned from the court on March 22,2017.
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