Upfront
At last:
A
Chance
After years as an assistant, Leonard Hamilton finally gets an opportunity to run his own program and folks at Oklahoma State are hoping he gets the Cowboys out of the Iba era, finally.
BY LARRY DONALD
Editor & Publisher
STILLWATER  Athletic tradition has all the enduring quality of July 4th fireworks, and if you doubt that then name all of the 1981 Final Four teams without reference material. Recent history. Ancient history. No difference.
"Tradition," says Kansas coach Larry Brown, "is last year's Final Four or how many times you were on national television last season. That's as far back as it goes." His argument is documentable. For instance,long time college basketball students can tell you about the great days at Oklahoma State University (called Oklahoma A&M back then). Of Mr. Henry Iba and his great All-American, Bob Kurland. Of twenty win seasons and Missouri Valley Conference championships as a regular feature. And in the most glorious moments, about Iba's Aggies and their back-to-back National championships in 1945 and '46.
What's signifcant here, though, isn't so much the time span since, but what's happened in that interval. There have been 40 seasons since Kurland, a giant 7-0 center who, along with George Mikan, was the prototype pivotman of his day, led A&M to the NCAA triumphs. The Aggies, nee Cowboys, have posted 21 winners and 19 losers, appeared in NCAA play just once since Iba retired in 1970, failed to have a winning season in the 1970's and at the conclusion of this past year marked the 40th anniversary of Kurland's era which still has him as the all time leading scorer, career and single game. Incredible when you consider how the game has progressed since he played.
But failure didn't kill Oklahoma State basketball. Boring mediocrity did.
"I don't know what happened for all those years," said Kentucky coach Eddie Sutton, a guard on Iba's teams from 1955 to 1958. "It seemed like they were always playing with a short deck. I don't think it was bad coaching because all those guys were good coaches.
"But it was tough competing with Kansas and Kansas State becuase they (OSU) just didn't seem to have personal that was as good.
"You can't win the Kentucky Derby with a jackass, you know," said the Oklahoman who has obviously learned quickly about the matters of importance in the blue grass.
STILLWATER IS situated at the point of a triangle about equally distant from Oklahoma City and Tulsa, this state's two largest cities. It is reachable via modern, four lane highways and the drive time is approximately one-and-one-half hours. Isolation is an excuse for the hoop drought,
(Reprinted From Basketball Times)
but a rather weak one when you talk about Pullman, WA or Fayetteville, AK.
Besides, one need not research deeply at this 21,500-student university to find athletic success. Wreslting has long been among the nation's best. Golf has drawn considerable attention, highlighed last summer when Scott Verplank won the Western Open becoming the first amateur player in two decades to win a professional tournament.
Tennis is a perennial top tenner; the baseball team has advanced to the College World Series in each of the last nine years and since the arrival of coach Pat Jones, Cowboy football has been a constant resident in the top ten.
Only basketball has languished, never making a dent in the national sporting conscience.
Sam Aubrey, Guy Strong and Jim Killingsworth combined on the ten-year losing streak in the 70's and in 1979 Paul Hansen came along to complete the lost decade. But Hansen, a former assistant to Abe Lemons at Oklahoma City, pumped some life into the program during his second season as the Cowboys won 18 while losing nine. Two years hence his team went 24-7, won the post-season Big Eight tournament and snapped a string of 18 NCAA-less years.
A vear later, thoueh. it was 13-15. then a 12-16 effort followed. No more party.
Following the 1985 season OSU athletic director Myron Roderick, long time and highly successful wrestling coach here, began to seriously ponder the program's direction. Not only wasn't it keeping pace with other sports on campus, but down the road at Norman the despised Sooners had become a national spotlight team. So had nearby Tulsa with the fast draw attack of coach Nolan Richardson.
Crowds of 3,000 and less in the 7,000-seat Gallagher Hall (an antiquated faciltiy most often blamed by Hansen as an unsolvable recruiting obstacle) were routine. Disinterest, beaten down by 1983's success, had returned.
But Roderick decided not to guillotine Hansen, partly because the coach was such a decent man and, "because I wanted to be sure the basketball coach had all the tools he needed."
Last winter the Cowboys crawled back on the winning side at 16-12 against a schedule which wasn't overpowering. And attendence continued to be low with indifference running high. In January Roderick made the decision to change coaches.
"Athletics isn't just a matter of wins and losses," he said. "We're in a battle for survival financially. We are in the business of competing for the sports dollar and when your arena is only half-filled something is wrong with your program.
"I felt Paul could keep us, oh, maybe where we
are and if you are standing still, you are falling behind in the Big Eight because it's going to be more difficult to compete in the coming years." he said.
Interestingly, front the day he first considered sacking Hansen in 1985 one name headed Roderick's list of potential successors. Sure, there were a number of candidates, including Iba's son Moe who stepped out at Nebraska this year, Lamar's Pat Foster and. who knows, maybe even Sutton if the move had come a year ago.
But one guy was the leader for a long time.
Leonard Hamilton.
Austin Peay coach Lake Kelly remembers vividly the first time he met Leonard Hamilton. It was one of those player/coach things that happened in the late 1960 s. Kelly was the assistant coach at Austin Peay and Hamilton a defensive standout for the University of Tennessee-Martin.
"We had a player named Larry Noble and he was one of those Kentucky mountain boy-shooters," Kelly said. "He could really shoot it. Leonard was assigned to guard him and was doing a great job. He was all over Larry, wouldn't let him get the ball or take a shot and naturally that was frustrating.
"Somewhere in the second half Leonard was guarding him very closely and after a shot Noble nailed him with an elbow. Leonard never backed down and came up, fists flying. He ended up getting kicked out of the game.
"So that was quite an intoduction, wasn't it?" he said.
Shortly after that season, however, their lives would bump again. Kelly was named head coach at Austin Peay and needed an assistant. Hamilton, just graduated, was ready to step into the profession and through his coach at UT-Martin got such a glowing recommendation Kelly decided to take a chance on this unproven. but fiesty young man.
Dividends were soon to come.
HAMILTON'S QUALITY as a salesman was in early evidence. He didn't just want to sell, he had to, and that, in college basketball parlance, comes out something like, "doesn't just want to recruit, has to."
One of his early journeys as a freshly minted assistant at Austin Peay was to New York to watch a summer league "tournament. It was here that Hamilton was to leave his calling card for the entirety of college basketball to see.
"As I remember it when Leonard got there he ran into Freddie Overton ( coach at Murray State) who said he was there to see the greatest basketball player in New York City." Kelly said. "Leonard, being the sly fox he was even then, soon started asking around about this player. Finally Freddie gave him the name."
But in the world of New York asphalt basketball, you don't talk to the player, you talk to his. err, advisor(?) and so Hamilton quickly got acquainted with a man named Rodney Parker, the street legend known well by those seeking to recruit players from the city.
"Leonard began courting Rodney and finally convinced him Austin Peay would be a better place for the kid than Murray," Kelly said. "He just outrecruited Freddie."
And so did James "Fly" Williams happen to Clarksville.TN where a few months later he led the Governors into NCAA play for the first time in that tiny school's history.
Never before, or since, has the University of Dayton Arena heard such a cheer:
"The Fly is open, let's go Peay."
HAMILTON STAYED with Kelly for three seasons and then abruptly walked away, taking a job with Dow Chemical Co. It was the sort of impetuous outlook on coaching that stayed with him for many years.
"I think he was mostly discouraged about the prospect of becoming a head coach," Kelly said. "He just didn't think there was any opportunity for a black coach to move up."
The job at Dow lasted six full days before Hamilton called and recanted. Kelly told Hamilton he'd already filled his old spot, but did know of a vacant assistant's job which might be of interest. Kelly then hung up and placed a call to Joe B. Hall at Kentucky.