Ted Owens, along with Dick Harp, remains extremely unappreciated among the eight men who have had the prestigious honor of serving as KU head basketball coach in the 121-year rich history of the program. While Owens had some inconsistent years, he is the second-longest tenured coach in school history (19 years from 1964-83) behind legendary Phog Allen.
That must tell you about the good job he did at Kansas.
He was the winningest coach in Allen Fieldhouse history (206 games) before Bill Self broke his mark in 2016, led two teams to Final Fours in 1971 and ‘74, won six Big Eight titles and advanced to NCAA postseason play seven times. Owens was named Big 8 Coach of the Year five times and named National Coach of the Year in 1978 by Basketball Weekly. He also coached five All-Americans, including Darnell Valentine, Jo Jo White, Dave Robisch, Bud Stallworth and Walt Wesley.
In this multiple part series on Owens, I examine his basketball roots, his days at Kansas, and how he opened doors for African-American athletes.
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Ted Owens had a revelation when he was just 5 years old growing up in a cotton farm in Hollis, Oklahoma, during the Great Depression.
“I took a basketball and we had an outdoor goal and I had the ball between my legs, I couldn’t push it up any other way, had it between my legs and pitched it up and it went in,” Owens told John Hendel in his 1991 book, Kansas Jayhawks: History-making Basketball. “I’ve been in the love with the game ever since. I’ve been infatuated with it.
“It wasn’t necessarily the shot heard ‘round the world, but it was meaningful in my life. I’ve just always loved the game and always wanted to be part of the game.”
Owens’ love affair with hoops kept growing, becoming a high school star before earning a scholarship to Oklahoma. He played for coach Bruce Drake and was a three-year lettermen from 1949-51. Driven by a desire to coach and help shape young men, Owens eventually served as head coach at Cameron Junior College in Lawton, Oklahoma, from 1956-60, where he recruited Homer Watkins, the first African-American player in Oklahoma junior college history in 1958, whom Owens invited to stay at his home.
Owens signed three more black players the following year. In my 82-page honors thesis in 1988 at the University of Kansas, I related an interview from Owens in the 1980s after he was fired from KU.
I wrote that “Owens was criticized by the white players’ parents, who did not like the fact that three blacks were playing ahead of their sons. However, Owens reiterated that he did not experience much outside pressure, as ‘we just didn’t let it become a problem.’”
Owens, who believed strongly in racial equality and justice, was very successful at Cameron as his teams never won fewer than 20 games in four seasons and three times advanced to the national junior college tournament semifinals with a third-place finish in 1960. His 1958 team was ranked No 1.
Owens, the second-longest tenured coach in KU basketball history behind the legendary Phog Allen (19 years from 1964-83), compiled a glossy 93-24 record at Cameron and coached four All-Americans, while also coaching the baseball team to the National Junior College championship in 1958.
Before becoming KU head coach, he served as Dick Harp’s assistant at Mount Oread from 1960-64. Owens remains extremely grateful for everything Harp did for his life.
“I remember him as the man who gave me an opportunity to coach at this level,” Owens said during his press conference before the 60 Year Celebration of Allen Fieldhouse in 2014. “He not only was a great mentor for me in the game of basketball, but personally. He shared his faith with me, a faith I’ve carried for the rest of my life. He made an enormous impact in my life. I’m really grateful I had the opportunity to spend four years with coach and many years after that with our association when he was with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.”
Owens replaced Harp as head coach in 1964 when Harp resigned after two straight losing seasons. Owens was the winningest coach in Allen Fieldhouse history (206 games) before Bill Self broke his mark in 2016, led two teams to Final Fours in 1971 and ‘74, while his ‘71 team went 14-0 in Big Eight play.
He also won six Big Eight titles and advanced to NCAA postseason play seven times. Also, in 1968, Owens’ Jayhawks lost to Dayton in the NIT finals. Owens was named Big 8 Coach of the Year five times and named National Coach of the Year in 1978 by Basketball Weekly. He coached five All-Americans, including Darnell Valentine, Jo Jo White, Dave Robisch, Bud Stallworth and Walt Wesley.
His 1966 team was arguably his best team and one of the top squads in KU hoops history with the likes of White, Wesley, All-Big Eight guard Delvy Lewis, Al Lopes, Riney Lochmann and Ron Franz, all of whom played in the NBA or ABA, except Lewis and Lopes. Reserve forward Bob Wilson also played in the ABA.
That magical team, which Owens inserted White into the starting lineup at semester break when he became eligible, went 23-4 and lost in the Midwest Regional Finals in a heartbreaking game KU appeared to have won in overtime.
White swished a 25-footer by the sideline at the buzzer that should have won the game for Kansas, but the official ruled him out of bounds.
“We were celebrating. We were out on the court, we’re on the the way to the Final Four and a chance to win the national championship and I think a very good chance to win the national championship,” Owens said.
“The official called it pretty late. Today, with all the camera angles you have, there would be no question whether he was in or out of bounds. Based on the sequence of shots, it looks like he pivoted but his heel never came down. It was above the plane, but his heel never came down and he never was out of bounds.
“But what the sequence of shots shows clearly that Rudy March, the official, never saw. His vision was up all the time. The whole sequence of shots shows his vision. Quite frankly, I think he saw where he landed. He floated after he landed, and he called it based on that.
“You only have so many chances to win national championships,” Owens added, “and we had a really great opportunity to do that.”
Texas Western won the game in double overtime, 81-80, and eventually won the national title over Adolph Rupp’s Kentucky team (“Rupp’s Runts”), a KU squad that would have overpowered inside.
“We felt like if we had won against Texas Western, we would have gone on and won the national championship,” Lochmann told me in 2003. “It took me about a week to get out of shock. I was really down in the dumps afterwards, from the standpoint to being totally depressed knowing that was your last college game. You don’t dwell on those things after a while, but that was a hurtful game. We kind of left our heart and soul out on on the court.”
Franz agreed. He said that was a magical team.
“That was probably one of the better teams that Kansas has had in its history,” Franz said in a 2001 interview. “We’ve had a lot of great teams, but that team could do a lot of different things and knew the fundamentals of basketball. We could shoot from the outside, rebound, and get up and down the floor. (Don, Texas Western) Coach Haskins said that was the toughest game they played all year.”
Despite the heartbreak, Owens and KU rebounded from that loss as the Kansas coach led the ‘Hawks to another 23-4 season, a Big Eight title and a No. 3 national ranking. However, Kansas lost in the first round to Houston in the NCAA Midwest Region.
Then, in 1967-68, KU got hot at the end of the year, winning 11 of 13 games, including six straight, before falling to Dayton in the NIT finals, 61-48. KU finished at 22-8 and ranked No. 19 nationally.
After two straight seasons of again failing to win the Big Eight championship, KU had a magical season in 1970-71, posting a remarkable 27-3 record, a 14-0 record in Big Eight play and Final Four berth, where the Jayhawks lost to John Wooden’s UCLA team, 68-60. KU, which entered the Final Four at 27-1, won 21 straight games before its loss to the Bruins. Kansas then lost the Final Four consolation game to Western Kentucky
That team had great talent, size, quickness, rebounding and true chemistry, led by Robisch (19.2 ppg), Stallworth (16.9 ppg), Roger Brown (11.2 rpg), Pierre Russell (10.3 ppg) and point guard Aubrey Nash (6.7 ppg).
“We were a good team because we won tough games,” Brown told me in 2001. “We won on the road.”
“We just jelled as a team,” Brown added. “Everyone pretty much got along with one another and we wanted to win. We all played hard. Everybody seemed to be on the same page. I think our team was about business. We knew we were going to win if we went out and did what we were supposed to do. And that’s what we did.
“Everything fell into place.”
Stallworth agreed that was a very special team.
“We were awesome,” Stallworth told me during a three-hour interview in 1990. “I thought we were the best team in the country. We were the cockiest team I had been around in a while. We felt we had a legitimate shot to win it all. ... We thought we were one of the best teams KU had ever put on the floor.”
Owens was so proud of that team, especially for unifying a campus and town in Lawrence that was going through political and racial unrest.
“The 1970-71 season was incredible, with the first Final Four for members of the team and the coaches, an undefeated conference season, and a winning streak of 21 games,” Owens wrote in his 2013 book, At The Hang-Up.
“As I look back, though, the team’s most remarkable achievement was unifying a campus and city in a common cause. Our players demonstrated that people from divergent backgrounds and ethnic groups can set aside their differences and, by loving and respecting one another, can exceed expectations. Today, the team continues their special bond, and they held a touching reunion in 2011.
After two down seasons (11-15 in 1971-72 and 8-18 in 1972-73), Owens’ Jayhawks made one of the best comebacks in college basketball history by going 23-7 in 1973-74 and advancing to the Final Four again. The pieces fit, the chemistry was superb, and this was a balanced attack with no true star.
With the addition of high school All-American Norm Cook and junior college standout Roger Morningstar, they helped propel the Jayhawks to the Big Eight championship and Final Four, where they lost to Marquette 64-51. KU finished the season ranked No. 7 nationally.
Center Danny Knight led five players in double-figure scoring (12.4 ppg), followed by Morningstar (12.3), Dale Greenlee (11.8), Cook (11.4) and Rick Suttle (11.3), my first KU basketball hero who sacrificed his game as “Super Sub” after leading KU in scoring the previous year at 16.3 points per game.
After a nailbiting win over Creighton (55-54) in the first round of the NCAA Tournament Midwest Region, KU faced ORU on its home court, the Mabee Center. A sign painted on the court read:
“Expect A Miracle.”
And KU definitely did.
KU trailed 77-68 with 4:49 left in regulation and then by seven points with 3:19 left before rallying and sending the game into overtime and a 93-90 victory. Knight led six players in double figures with 19 points, while Kansas shot a scorching 55 percent from the field.
“Teams just didn’t come back like that,” Greenlee said of the era without a time clock and no three-pointers. “I’d look at (Tom) Kivisto. He’d look at me. We’d look at Roger and Danny and Rick and Norm. We didn’t feel we were out of the game. We figured we’d do what we had to do to get back in it.”
“The Comeback Kids” had a great habit of overcoming big deficits in winning games all year.
“We pretty much had a season when we’d come back a lot,” Greenlee said.
This team had a very strong identity and what Greenlee called a “really tight group. We kind of watched out for each other. Coach once said, ‘We played like brothers.’ No one really cared who scored.”
While the Marquette loss was painful, it was a season to remember for KU and all Jayhawk fans. Kansas also lost the consolation game to UCLA after up eight points at halftime.
“They finally worse us down,” Owens wrote in his book, “and we lost the last game of a miraculous season.’
KU returned to the Big Dance the following year, winning the Big Eight yet losing in the first round of the NCAA Midwest Region to a talented Notre Dame led by superstar Adrian Dantley, 77-71.
After two more down seasons (13-13 in 1975-76 and 18-10 in 1976-77), Owens again felt the hot seat with pressure to be fired.
But John Douglas, nicknamed “The Franchise” by voice of the Jayhawks Tom Hedrick who led KU in scoring in 1977 at 19.2 points per game (he scored 46 points at Iowa State on Feb. 16, 1977, which remains the third-most points in a game by a Jayhawk behind Wilt Chamberlain and Bud Stallworth), felt this criticism was extremely unfair.
“He’s the best coach in the Big Eight,” Douglas said in a wire story. “He shouldn’t be fired.”
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