Rick Suttle was my first KU basketball hero, the first player to give me chills and truly capture my imagination. My first memories of him center around the 1972-73 team or the 1973-74 Final Four team. To this day, I cannot completely remember the exact moment he entered my consciousness as wonder-eyed 6 or 7-year-old growing up in Lawrence about five minutes from Allen Fieldhouse.
But make no mistake, he left an impression on me that has lasted a lifetime.
Suttle, a 6-10 high school All-American from East St. Louis, Ill., made an immediate mark on the freshman team in 1971-72, averaging 22.3 points and 12.5 rebounds per game while shooting a scorching 54.5 percent from the field.
Then, in his first year of eligibility as a sophomore, he led KU with 16.3 points and 8.2 rebounds per game. He was one of the bright spots on that team, which struggled mightily with an 8-18 record. Suttle scored a career-high 28 points against Iowa, tying Dale Greenlee’s 28 against Oklahoma State for the best single-game mark for KU that season. He also grabbed a career-high 19 boards against Notre Dame.
Suttle was awarded for his accomplishments by being named Second-Team All-Big Eight by the Associated Press.
The following year in 1973-74, Suttle was relegated to sixth man as he became one of the top Super Subs in KU history and helped lead KU to the Final Four. If I remembered Suttle from the previous season, there’s no doubt he truly emerged on my radar this year, the Final Four dream team which gave me pure joy and excitement seeing my heroes like Suttle, Danny Knight, Roger Morningstar, Norm Cook, Dale Greenlee and Tom Kivisto displaying their magic in Allen Fieldhouse.
With their remarkable turnaround from the previous season en route to the Final Four, and just how they made a dramatic comeback in the final minutes against Oral Roberts in the Midwest Regional Final, that team made me believe in miracles, that anything in life was possible.
Above all, they made my childhood a whole lot sweeter and brighter.
While all those Jayhawks were my heroes, Suttle stood out the most. At 6-10 with a huge 70s style afro, Suttle was hard to miss. He was regal looking, like a Greek God on the basketball court, long, lean, agile and sinewy, one of the best big man shooters (along with Cook) in the country. I fondly recall watching him swish jumpers from the free-throw line, or just inside the charity stripe.
It was one of the prettiest sights I had ever seen to that point, and I wanted to hold on to Suttle and that Final Four team forever.
As I learned over the years interviewing his former teammates, Suttle was also a very unselfish player. While he came off the bench in 1973-74 and his scoring average dipped from 16.3 points to 11.3 (KU had five players average in double figures that season with Knight top scorer at 12.4 ppg), that didn’t matter to Suttle.
KU was winning games, and he was enjoying the ride.
“Rick Suttle might have been our best player, but he came off the bench,” Morningstar once told me. “He did that willingly. He just said, ‘Hey, if I’m more effective coming off the bench, that’s what we’ll do.’ It was that kind of (unselfish) attitude that everybody had.”
Despite coming off the pine, Suttle still played plenty of minutes.
“Danny Knight would start, but Rick would actually play more minutes during the game, and sometimes, coach (Ted Owens) would play both at the same time,” Greenlee said in a 2000 interview. “We’d run our double low post. Back in the 70s, it was a pretty nice luxury to have two 6-10, 6-11 people in at the same time.”
On and off the court, Suttle kept everybody loose with his joking and eccentric nature.
“I roomed with Rick. He was funny,” Greenlee said. “I can still see Rick. He was late for a practice. To punish him, we had a pre-game meal and Rick was supposed to sing his school song as the punishment. He didn’t know his school song. I remember him going, ‘I don’t know it.’ We said, ‘So pick a song.’ He leaves the room and came in singing “Hello Dolly.” Here’s Rick, 6-11. He actually left the room, came in waving a handkerchief like Louis Armstrong. He had us roaring. Probably every one in the room remembers that. Things like that, he was always good for something. He always kept you loose.”
Morningstar agrees. He loved being around Suttle.
“Rick was goofy, real eccentric,” Morningstar recalled. “In those days, we had a dress code. We had the same ties, the same shirts, the same coats, same pants, all that stuff that everyone wore. As a team, you walked around. I think it was on our way to Oral Roberts, Rick comes down. We had the option of wearing a tie or wearing those blue turtlenecks with a Jayhawk on them. We all chose for that game and that trip to wear the turtlenecks. Rick comes out with his turtleneck, one of those clip-on bow ties that you slit a spot and put it in. He was always doing goofy stuff like that.
“Our last couple of games, I believe it was our senior year, in the introductions, everybody was on the bench and you just ran out from the bench all by yourself and the crowd was going crazy. Rick stopped and did this goofy dance, he stopped about half way out and put his hands in the air, running in place and spinning around. The crowd went nuts. Coach was just rolling his eyes, shaking his head, ‘What are you doing Rick?’”
Maybe that dance was something Suttle learned in his fraternity.
“Him and Tommie Smith and a couple of other guys were all in this fraternity (Kappa Alpha Psi),” Morningstar said. “They had all kind of trinkets around their room. Tommy actually was one of my other roommates. He had more (Kappa Alpha Psi) paraphernalia in our room, and Rick had a table full of it.
“... (Suttle) was a legendary Illinois basketball player,” Morningstar added of his former teammate who averaged 26.6 points and 15 rebounds his senior year at Assumption High School. “He was down just across the river from St. Louis. Those players, northern Illinois and southern Illinois were two different worlds from a basketball standpoint. They’d usually meet somewhere for a state tournament. I knew of Rick, how great he was, but I hadn’t watched him play.”
Morningstar was elated to play with Suttle for two years at KU. In their last year together in 1974-75, that team suffered some growing pains early dealing with the loss of their floor general and leader, Kivisto. Still, KU went 19-8 and won the Big Eight championship before falling to Notre Dame in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
Suttle became a starter again that season, pacing the squad with 14.6 points per game and earning All-Big Eight honors. He currently ranks No. 37 in school history in career points (1,166), and is tied with Greg Ostertag for fourth all time on the single-game blocked shots chart (eight against K-State in 1975). Suttle is also tied for No. 20 on the school’s all-time double-doubles chart with 11.
After concluding his KU career, he was drafted in the seventh round of the NBA Draft by the Los Angeles Lakers before embarking on an extremely long and successful pro basketball career in Argentina.
It was 2005 I believe when Suttle came back for the 1974 Final Four team’s 30-year reunion. After the team was introduced at halftime, I walked over to the south end zone behind the goal where Suttle stood (I saw him taking video during the game) and introduced myself to him.
“Hi Rick, I’m David Garfield. You were my childhood hero.”
“Thank you,” he said politely with a deep voice.
I then asked him what he was doing these days, and he said he was coaching ball in Argentina.
It was a very brief conversation, but a very fulfilling one for me. He was gracious, and I know he was reveling in his first time back in the fieldhouse since he left KU and catching up with his former teammates so I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. But I felt at peace talking to him and knowing I had introduced myself to my first KU basketball hero, someone who meant so much to me during childhood.
I walked back to my seat on press row, smiled and took a deep breath.
And whenever I want to see Rick Suttle swishing buckets, grabbing rebounds, or blocking shots like he did in the 1970s, I can pop in the DVD Dale Greenlee (as classy and positive a guy as you’ll ever meet) sent me a few years ago on KU’s 1974 and ‘75 teams and relive part of my childhood, when I was innocent and young and believed everything was attainable.
It was a simpler and carefree time then as I could forget about any problems in school, and cheer for Suttle and his teammates and get lost in the moment in my own KU hoop dreams.
For that, Rick Suttle and the entire 1974 Final Four team, I thank you for those magical memories. You are in my heart, spirit and soul forever.
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