The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

My Mizzou basketball season tickets arrived today, and I've started to daydream. How's this for a festive holiday season scenario? Thanksgiving week kicks off with Norm Stewart's induction into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, followed by the Tigers playing Michigan State and UCLA or Maryland at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, just days before the football Tigers beat Kansas at Arrowhead Stadium to clinch the Big 12 North and advance to the league title game. Then its Christmas in St. Louis for a long-awaited Braggin' Rights victory, followed by New Year's in the sun belt at a BCS bowl game.

Please don't wake me.

Charlie Henke, Hall of Famer

When I heard that former Rat Pack funnyman Joey Bishop had passed last week at age 89, my first reaction, regrettably, was “Joey Bishop wasn’t already dead?!?”

My reaction was much the same upon hearing that Charlie Henke had been elected to the Missouri Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame. “He’s not already in?” I asked, incredulously.

For many if not most of us, the men who played basketball for the University of Missouri before Norm Stewart became head coach in 1967 are largely forgotten. But Charlie Henke, from tiny Malta Bend, Missouri, remains one of the best ever to wear the black and gold.

Henke, who played from 1958 to 1961, was a star for Sparky Stalcup in the coach’s waning days at Mizzou, and he certainly would be better remembered if he had been surrounded by better talent. But statistically, Henke has few peers among Tigers of yore. On February 18, 1961, he sank a shot against Kansas State to supplant Bob Reiter as Mizzou’s all-time leading scorer, and his 1,338 career points stood as a Missouri record until John Brown surpassed it twelve years later. Henke’s career averages for points (18.1 per game, fifth all-time) and rebounds (9.8, also fifth) make him one of the most productive Tigers in history.

Despite those impressive credentials, Henke may be best remembered for his role in the most violent spectacle in Missouri lore. Entering the final game of his career, Henke was engaged in a fight for the Big Eight scoring championship with Kansas’s Wayne Hightower for the second straight year (he had finished second to Hightower the previous season). The Jayhawks invaded Brewer Fieldhouse for the season’s last contest, and the animosity between the programs was greater than ever before. KU’s football team had beaten top-ranked Missouri less than four months earlier, costing the Tigers a national title, but had been forced to forfeit the result for playing Bert Coan, a running back who was ruled ineligible. Kansas’s basketball team had also recently been placed on probation, and some in Lawrence believed that Missouri athletics director Don Faurot had snitched on them. The Jayhawk fans’ fury boiled over when the Tiger hoops team visited Allen Field House in February, and they showered Mizzou’s team with such hostility that pre-game introductions were called off. When the teams met again in Columbia, it was a nasty, physical affair, but Henke was sensational, scoring over Hightower with ease, and clinching the scoring title. But early in the second half, Hightower intercepted an outlet pass thrown by Henke, drove to the hoop, got fouled, and then sparked one of the wildest scenes ever on a basketball court.



Henke was ejected for his role in the riot, an unfitting end to one of Missouri’s finest careers.

Maybe I Should Be Flattered . . .

It has come to my attention that two copies of True Sons are available through Amazon Marketplace - one listed at $299.99 and the other at $499.89. Now, it's a pretty damn good book if I do say so myself, but it's not made of diamonds.

If you'd like a copy, save yourself a few hundred bucks and buy online here, or stop by any Borders Bookseller in Missouri, or the Tiger Team Store or University Bookstore in Columbia.

Random Thoughts from a Football Weekend

I officially declare it the Greatest Homecoming Weekend Ever! Glorious weather, good friends and a thorough dismantling of a nationally-ranked team made for a fabulous 48 hours . . . . I met Homecoming Grand Marshal/Football Hall of Famer Roger Wehrli and his wife Gayle (remarkably lovely people) twice over the weekend, and confessed that, when I was a kid, my favorite book was All-Pro Football Stars 1977 (it sorta still is, actually), in which Mr. Wehrli was recognized as one of the NFL’s top defensive backs. I also told him that my father-in-law wore number 23 for the Tigers just a few years before Roger and Johnny Roland did, and that we like to say that Bruce’s number was retired, which is half true . . . . A streak continues: the Tigers have never lost a Homecoming game after I’ve eaten a Heidelburger the preceding Friday night. . . . While waiting for the parade to begin on Saturday morning, I saw Gary Leonard dragging a three-wheeled red wagon along a Ninth Street sidewalk. While it might appear peculiar to see a seven-foot man captaining such a defective vessel through the streets of a mid-sized Midwestern town, with Gary it somehow seemed normal. . . . Columbia’s West Junior High School band has a scrappy cymbal player who overcame a broken strap/handle to provide the event the proper fanfare. . . . The parade’s most prolific candy-thrower, by far, was Rocky Alden, wife of Mizzou’s athletics director Mike Alden. . . . Noted without comment: A group of adult people dressed in some oddly sophisticated Star Wars regalia marched in the parade. . . . Weekend’s Moment of Zen: Attending a reception at Jesse Hall, sitting outside on the north steps, beer in hand, contemplating the Columns. . . . Offensive coordinator Dave Christensen is a mad scientist. The whole world anticipated one of history’s great aerial showdowns, and he controlled the game by running the ball down Texas Tech’s throat. Before Saturday, I could not fathom that Mizzou could score 41 points despite Chase Daniel throwing the ball just nineteen times. Pity the poor defensive coordinator who has to prepare for this team. . . . Jeremy Maclin (who badly needs a nickname, by the way; The Jet? Flash Maclin? Somebody help me) has easily the best football speed I’ve seen in two-plus decades of closely following the Tigers. The only possible precedent I can come up with is Mel Gray. Maclin’s 57-yard catch and run for touchdown in the fourth quarter was pure poetry. . . . Mizzou’s defense has developed a fourth quarter sadistic streak. In the last two home games, the front seven has pinned back its ears and punished Sam Keller and Graham Harrell. I like it. . . . Though there’s work to do before we get there, Mizzou’s November 24 meeting with Kansas at Arrowhead Stadium is starting to look like the most anticipated sporting event in Kansas City since the 1988 Final Four. Disagree? What ranks above it?

A Family Reunion

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of speaking at the Kansas City regional dinner for the University of Missouri’s Jefferson Club. A packed house of Tiger supporters came to celebrate Mizzou’s basketball history and their own commitment to the University.

I’ve given lots of talks about Tiger hoops, but never in a room so alive with the program’s history. Norm Stewart was there, as was Ed Matheny (who played from 1941 to 1943), Phil Snowden (who played for Norm Stewart’s freshman team in 1957 before going on to greater fame as a Missouri quarterback), George Flamank and Ned Monsees, Don Early (1962-65), Greg Flaker, Bob Johnson (1970-71), John Brown, Al Eberhard, Gary Link, Bill Flamank (1973-75), Willie Smith, Kim Anderson, Derrick Chievous and Lynn Hardy. It was a remarkable assemblage of men who spanned nearly sixty years of Missouri basketball.

I talked about the beginnings of Tiger basketball, Missouri’s World War I era Golden Age, and stars of long ago like George Williams, John Cooper and Bud Heinemann. We celebrated the program’s history, Norm Stewart’s upcoming induction into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, and the brotherhood that binds these men and their school.

The past players came to celebrate all of that, but as much as anything, they came to support Bill Flamank, a hard-working forward and a second generation Tiger who was the third member of his family to wear the uniform. Bill has endured a year of incomprehensible tragedy, losing his wife and suffering devastating injuries in a terrible car accident, for which has undergone five surgeries to date. Though he moved about on crutches, Bill walked tall.

Coach Stewart spoke a few words after I finished, and praised Bill's perseverance. As you spend time with the men who played so hard for Coach Stewart and his predecessors, you can see why they were so successful. They are tenacious, dedicated men of character, and they make for a tightly-knit fraternity. John Brown made the trip to Kansas City from Rolla because he wanted to ensure that Bill got out to a dinner where he could be supported by his friends.

No one made a show of why they were there, and Coach Stewart spoke of Bill’s circumstances in only vague terms. Everything about it was understated and dignified, but stirring nonetheless. It was one of those times when you really could be proud to be a Tiger.

Clay Cooper, 1917 - 2007

Mizzou lost one of its greatest Tigers on Thursday. Here's a remembrance that I posted at Mizzou Sanity.

True Sons: Undaunted, Undefeated

Garris, a freshman, had been sensational—he scored thirty-one points in the game—but he had never been in such a spot. He stepped to the line, the lane vacant, the other players reduced to spectators. Garris entered the game shooting 94 percent from the line, but as he stood there, nerves shot and legs spent, the basket might as well have been fifty feet away. He focused on the hoop. He breathed in and out. He put up his first shot. It hit the rim and bounced away. There were shrieks, moans, cheers. And then all of the air was sucked out of the building as Garris prepared to shoot again, feeling pressure like never before. He squared up and released. But after so much fight, the radar was gone. The ball bounced away harmlessly. On to a third overtime.

True Sons: Season on the Brink

There has never been another season like it, none that flirted so closely with triumph and tragedy, none in which such intense pressure collided with such ferocious play. The 1988–89 Tigers played for their own pride, for the integrity of the institution, and for the coach they nearly lost along the way.

True Sons: The Arrival

Read about the birth of a Big Eight dynasty here.

The first call came from St. Louis, the second from Kansas City. By the time Norm Stewart put down the phone, he knew his program was about to take a giant leap forward, but he did his best to contain his joy. "We're very pleased with both Steve and Jon," he said in an act of staggering understatement. He had just received commitments that would change the course of Missouri basketball.

True Sons: The Magic Show

Willie Smith put up gaudy numbers throughout his career at Missouri, but he was never motivated by individual glory. He scored for the good of the team. Smith and his teammates came from diverse backgrounds, but they shared a blinding desire to win. Even more than he loved to win, though, Mr. Magic hated to be embarrassed. One of the proudest players ever to wear the black and gold, Smith took defeat personally. Late into the night before the Kansas State game, Smith and roommate Jeff Currie talked about the mission that faced them. K-State's guards Chuckie Williams and Mike Evans formed one of the nation's best backcourts, and they had humiliated the Tigers a month earlier by leaving the Hearnes Center with a win, the only time Smith ever tasted defeat in Columbia. Already keyed up for the challenge, Smith found further motivation during the walk from Mizzou's hotel to the field house. Kansas State's fans were out in force, taunting the Tigers along the way. Smith was incensed, but managed to keep a cool exterior. "Just wait till you get inside," he thought to himself.

True Sons: The Legend of John Brown

Today's excerpt takes us back to the 1972-73 season when the Tigers moved into the Hearnes Center and big farewell to John Brown, the first superstar of the Norm Stewart era.

The new building featured a space-age Tartan floor, an exotic gray court that the players loathed. The rubbery surface prevented them from sliding, and it dampened sound such that they could not hear the ball bounce, a disorienting experience for players who grew up on hardwood. Despite the new environment and crowds often well below the 12,600 capacity, the Tigers maintained the home-court edge that had become a hallmark of the Stewart era and rode it to the best start in half a century. Against Ohio, before a packed house, John Brown christened the building with a midrange jumper, and he and five other Tigers—Al Eberhard, Mike Jeffries, Orv Salmon, Gary Link, and sophomore Felix Jerman—tallied double figures. Attendance dropped sharply after opening night. Only 7,714 fans saw Brown collect thirty-five points and fifteen rebounds in a win over Purdue that moved the Tigers to 4–0.

True Sons: Enter Norm Stewart

Columbia was football crazy in the 1960s, so much so that basketball was an afterthought on campus. In his first nine years at Missouri, coach Dan Devine had presided over nine winning seasons and had taken the Tigers to three New Year's Day bowl games. As such, mediocrity by the hoops squad might have been tolerated. Humiliation, however, was something different. And so it came as no surprise when a pair of football legends accepted Bob Vanatta's resignation. That was the easy part for Don Faurot and Devine, who was set to succeed the retiring Faurot as athletic director. The hard part was to find the right man to revive the program. They made their choice just four days after the end of the 1966–67 season. Missouri would wait thirty-two years to hire another men's basketball coach.

True Sons: Breaking the Barrier

Today's excerpt takes us back a half century, to when Al Abram stepped on to the basketball court and and forever changed the University of Missouri.

It was the start of a long, slow fade for Sparky Stalcup. In his first ten years at Missouri, his teams finished second in the conference five times. But after Norm Stewart's graduation, they would never again place higher than fourth. Though his clubs were not devoid of talent, Stalcup could not match the enormous firepower that found its way to Lawrence and Manhattan. Part of that was due to his personal fabric. When it came to recruiting, Stalcup was ethical to a fault and even a bit naïve to the way the game was changing. He believed to his core that basketball should be just one piece of the university experience. He believed in students who played basketball, not basketball players who dabbled in education. "A school like Missouri will not relax its educational requirements for the sake of getting an exceptional athlete," he said. "The era of the dumb athlete is fast drawing to a close." He abhorred the corrupt recruiting practices that became more prevalent in the 1950s and railed against them. He believed that under-the-table payments were being made to the best big men, the kinds of players that were changing the game. He blamed alumni for brokering deals and blamed coaches for turning a blind eye. He feared for the integrity of the game.

True Sons: War and Glory

Today's excerpt: 1943-44 and the arrival of Jumpin' Dan Pippin.

In 1938, enrollment at MU had surged past five thousand. By 1943 it was down to
fifteen hundred as men went off to war. But even as other activities around
campus and the country were curtailed, college athletics—including Big Six
basketball—carried on to help boost morale on the home front. Even so, Kansas
coach Phog Allen undoubtedly was right in his assessment that "not many people
will take a wartime championship seriously. With us here athletics are simply
incidental to the war effort."

That effort had decimated the Tigers. Thornton Jenkins, Pleasant Smith, and others should have led Missouri's fight for a Big Six title. Instead, they were engaged in a fight of infinitely greater consequence. And with a dwindling student population, George Edwards's immediate challenge was not to win the conference; it was simply to field a team.

True Sons: Meanwell Arrives

Today's excerpt takes us back to the 1917-18 season, when a charter member of the Basketball Hall of Fame arrived in Columbia and laid a foundation that would help make the Tigers the nation's best team over the ensuing six-year span.

Few athletes are as largely forgotten as those who played basketball before World War II. Everyone knows legends from other fields of play: Babe Ruth, Red Grange, Joe Louis. But ask even a knowledgeable basketball fan to name a handful of great pre-war players and you're likely to receive a blank stare.

There are good reasons for this, not the least of which is basketball was a second-tier game in those days, far less popular than baseball, college football, or boxing. It also lacked a national stage, with the NIT and the NCAA Tournament coming into existence only in 1938 and 1939, respectively. Finally, and no less important, players from that era have been eradicated from the record books. Slower play, shorter seasons, and freshman ineligibility guaranteed this. Players simply could not score enough points during games, seasons, or careers to compete with more recent athletes, and statistics like rebounds and assists were not officially kept. This amnesia is unfortunate, especially for Missouri basketball loyalists, because the Tiger players of that era rank among the most accomplished in school history.

Yet more anonymous than the players of that era are its coaches, even the great ones. As evidence, try asking Missouri fans to name a coach who took over the Tiger program in his early thirties. Some will pick Quin Snyder, who arrived in Columbia in 1999 after serving as an assistant at Duke. Others might choose Norm Stewart, who returned to his alma mater in 1967 after six years as head coach at the State College of Iowa. But few—probably none—will mention Walter Meanwell, who became Missouri's coach in 1917 at age thirty-three. That is more than a little ironic because while Snyder and Stewart came to Columbia looking to build legacies at a major program, Meanwell arrived already established as the finest coach in the brief history of college basketball.

True Sons Excerpt: The First Tigers

Beginning today and extending over the next two weeks, PowerMizzou.com will run ten excerpts from True Sons, A Century of Missouri Tigers Basketball. We start, appropriately enough, at the beginning, with the first team to don the black and gold. We continue tomorrow with the birth of a long-forgotten dynasty. Click on the intro below to go straight to the first excerpt.

From modest beginnings came magical things. Inside a little gymnasium on the edge of campus, a few young men formed a team and founded a tradition that would provide a century's worth of thrills. The rich history of Missouri Tigers basketball
begins with them, players who toiled for little more than the pride of their
school and a love of the game, but whose efforts would come to mean more than
they could ever have imagined.

Cass County, Here I Come

I'll be the featured speaker at the Spring Banquet of the Cass County chapter of the Mizzou Alumni Association this Thursday, April 26, in Harrisonville. Details here.

The Call From the Hall

This week, Norm Stewart was selected for enshrinement into the College Basketball Hall of Fame. I’d say that the honor is long overdue, but the College Hoops Hall hasn’t even been built yet, so it’s pretty much right on time.

The old coach is good at a lot of things, but none more than winning – 731 victories as a head coach, 634 at Missouri – and telling stories. Norm Stewart tells more stories than anyone else I’ve known. And if any part of a story is true, it counts as a true story. By that standard, what I write here is genuine, verifiable and factual, except the parts that are not.

The Missouri Tigers won a total of six games in the two years before Stewart became head coach. The Tigers lost a total of six games in Stewart’s fifth season.

Missouri borders eight other states, the most in the nation. Norm Stewart can defend all eight borders simultaneously.

Norm Stewart coached the Tigers to their first 20-win season. And their seventeenth.

Cancer tried to mess with Norm Stewart once. Cancer learned its lesson.

Before Norm Stewart took over, Missouri had won its last league championship in 1940, and its last conference tournament title in 1954. Stewart’s Tigers captured league crowns in 1976, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1987, 1990 and 1994. They won conference tournaments in 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1978, 1982, 1987, 1989, 1991 and 1993.

Long ago, a small tornado threatened central Missouri until Norm Stewart stood up and fought it off with his bare hands. Years later, a larger one came through, so he had Al Eberhard help him.

Once, in a hard-fought game against Kansas State, Stewart wanted to fire up the Hearnes Center crowd, but he didn’t want to pick up a technical foul, so he got in an official’s face, stomping, veins popping from his forehead, and screamed, “Do you see that tie Jack Hartman is wearing?!?! That’s got to be the ugliest tie in the whole %$#@&*% world!!! I can’t believe how ugly that thing is!!!” The crowd went bonkers. Missouri went on to win.

Sailors sometimes complain about Stewart’s language.

In 1989, while recuperating from cancer surgery, Norm Stewart heard that his players were rebelling against interim coach Rich Daly. So Stewart assembled the team and said “If Coach Daly asks you to stand on your head and crap through your nose, you stand on your head and blow.” A week later, the Tigers beat second-ranked Oklahoma to win the Big Eight tournament.

WWND? He’d kick your ass and make you like it, that’s WNWD.

Coach Stewart wrote the forward to this book and he wants you to buy a copy.

Phog Allen tried to recruit Norm Stewart to play basketball at Kansas. Phog didn’t know Norm very well.

Take 300 wins off of Norm Stewart’s record at Missouri and he’s still above .500.

As a sophomore at Mizzou, Norm Stewart went out for baseball on a bet with a fellow student. He made the team and helped the Tigers win the national championship. Stewart won the bet.

Before Norm Stewart became Missouri’s head coach, the Tigers had last appeared in the Associated Press poll in the 1954-55 season, when he was an all-conference basketball player, and they made it to number six, their highest ranking to that point. Stewart led the Tigers back into the poll in 1971-72, his fifth season. He had them at number five the next year. They reached number one for the first time in the 1981-82 season. They did it again – twice – in 1989-90.

Norm Stewart walks into a room and pride follows.

So here’s to Norm Stewart, a hall of famer – our hall of famer – and the truest Tiger of them all. Congratulations on an honor well-deserved.

Seems Like Old Times

OK, after a month or so off, I'm back with something to say, which you can find over at the new Mizzou Sanity group blog.

100 Years Ago Today

On January 12, 1907 – 100 years ago today – five young men donned Tiger uniforms and took to the court at state-of-the-art Rothwell Gymnasium to play the first intercollegiate men’s basketball game in the University of Missouri’s history. Hezekiah “Zeke” Henley, Carl “Curly” Ristine, William Driver and John Gardner had come to Mizzou from Joplin, and the fifth starter, Fred Bernet, came from St. Louis. With head coach Isadore “Izzy” Anderson watching from the sidelines, the Tiger five overwhelmed the Central College of Fayette team, 65-5, still one of the most lopsided victories in Missouri’s history.

Since that first day, Missouri Tigers fans have been thrilled, dismayed and enthralled by a century’s worth of moments and memories. There have been monumental wins and crushing defeats. There have been heroic players and coaches we remember well, and others who have faded from memory. But they’re all part of a continuum and a tradition that is Missouri Tigers basketball. While that first team may now seem like little more than a historical curiosity, they began a thread that winds through the program’s full history.

Carl Ristine, the first team’s best scorer, played with Herman Cohen, who played with Joe Parker, who played with George Taaffe, who played with Pip Palfreyman, who played with Fred Williams.

Williams played with Paul “Deerfoot” Vogt, who played with Craig Ruby, who played with George Williams, who played with Herb Bunker, who played with Frank Wheat.

Wheat played with Ted O’Sullivan, who played with Kenneth Yunker, who played with Wendell Baker, who played with Charlie Huhn, who played with Norman Wagner.

Wagner played with John Cooper, who played with Evans Powell, who played with Ralph Beer, who played with Kenny Brown, who played with John Lobsiger.

Lobsiger played with Herb Gregg, who played with Roy Storm, who played with Thornton Jenkins, who played with Dan Pippin, who played with Bud Heineman, who played with Bill Stauffer.

Stauffer played with Med Park, who played with Norm Stewart, who played with Lionel Smith, who played with Al Abram, who played with Charlie Henke.

Henke played with Ken Doughty, who played with George Flamank, who played with Ron Coleman, who played with Gene Jones, who played with Don Tomlinson, who played with Henry Smith.

Smith played with John Brown, who played with Al Eberhard, who played with Kim Anderson, who played with Larry Drew, who played with Steve Stipanovich and Jon Sundvold, who played with Greg Cavener.

Cavener played with Derrick Chievous, who played with Doug Smith, who played with Melvin Booker, who played with Kelly Thames, who played with Brian Grawer.

Grawer played with Arthur Johnson, who played with Thomas Gardner, who played with Marshall Brown, Matt Lawrence and several other members of the current Tigers team.

And just as the players form a thread, so do the generations of fans who have lived and died a little on each hoop this past century. One of the great pleasures of my life has been the opportunity to document and share the history of Missouri Tigers basketball. And since you’re reading this, that history is probably important to you, too. So, tonight, raise a glass to a century of thrilling, maddening, captivating Missouri Tigers basketball history, and maybe one to its future, a toast to all the true sons.