Former KU coach Dick Harp dearly wanted to win, but he sought a higher calling and purpose in coaching. He believed strongly in sportsmanship, racial equality, and playing the game the right way.
On Feb. 17, 1958 during a Border War game against Missouri in Allen Fieldhouse, Harp made a stand on principle that was actually a detriment to his team. It happened with 5:35 remaining in the game and Kansas leading 77-66.
This was an important game for KU, which entered the game tied with Colorado in second place in the Big Seven at 7-4.
When MU guard Jerry Kirksey went to the foul line for his one-and-one, the crowd madly protested the call. The Lawrence Journal-World reported the “crowd started the feet stomping, shouting routine. ... The most obvious noise was the stamping of feet on the metal floor of the balcony, primarily on the west side of the arena.”
Upset and unable to concentrate with the noise, Kirksey handed the ball back to the referee. The noise persisted. After a third try and after assistant coach Jerry Waugh stood and tried to silence the crowd “to no avail,” Harp asked the referee to give KU a technical foul.
Afterwards, the noise “was quelled sufficiently” and Kirksey made the three free throws. “Later whenever MU boys were at the charity line, there were volleys of ‘shushes’ from the irate audience.”
KU went on to win the game, 84-69. Afterwards, MU coach Wilbur Stalcup commended Harp for asking for the technical. Stalcup told the Journal-World that Harp showed courage and that he admired him. It was “a great act of sportsmanship by a great sportsman.”
Harp, who won three Big Eight Holiday Tournaments and two conference championships while leading KU to the 1957 NCAA title game during his eight-year tenure, explained his actions.
“These people were our guests,” Harp told the Journal-World. “We sometimes find ourselves complaining about crowds on the road and yet how can we point the finger of guilt when we’re as bad as they are - maybe even worse? I kept waiting for the noise to die down so the Missouri boy could get his shots, but it didn’t. I finally decided that the only thing that would do it was a technical, so I asked for it.”
Even after losing the national championship game in 1957 to UNC — a defeat that would pain him the rest of his life, Harp — called the “fiercest competitor of all” by the Journal-World’s Bill Mayer — was a class act who put the game into perspective.
"We started out this year with two main goals," Harp told his players, as reported by the Journal-World. "We wanted to learn how to play basketball well and we wanted to learn how to be better people. You've done a wonderful job of both, regardless of tonight's outcome. Everyone in Kansas is proud of your behavior, and I'm the proudest of all. I think we've all learned what is right and wrong and that's more important than basketball. If you work hard, do your best and try to be gentlemen, you'll generally win and succeed. That didn't quite work out tonight, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep right on trying for those goals. Because it's been proved they're the best ones in the long run."
Like any good coach with honor and integrity, Harp took full responsibility for the loss.
"If anyone is at fault for losing, it is I, for I'm the one who told you what to do and when to do it,” Harp told his team. “The plays were my choices. You did all anyone could do to carry out the assignments and I'm the proudest man in the world. You musn’t waste time blaming yourselves. I know all of you feel that you might have lost it. That's foolish. No single play won or lost this game. If you feel you made an error, think of the times you've done good things this year and tonight, things that got us this far and kept us in it right up to the finish. Each of the 16 boys on our squad has contributed greatly to our success this year. Losing is painful, but you did the best you could. You're the greatest kids I've ever known and No. 1 in the world to me!"
Despite his remarks, Harp spent the rest of his life wondering what might have been.
“It was a disappointment to, of all people, Dick Harp,” Harp’s former assistant Jerry Waugh told the Kansas City Star in March 2010 about losing to North Carolina. “He really suffered with letting Kansas basketball down. It really hurt him. In his eyes, he had failed to keep the torch burning.”
But to Waugh and many of his players, Harp was a giant in his profession.
"Dick was one of the most underrated coaches the college game has ever seen," said Bill Lienhard (he was a member of the 1952 NCAA title team when Harp was an assistant under Phog Allen) after Harp died in 2000 at age 81.
"He developed the defensive scheme which led us to the national championship and which Dean Smith took and refined so productively at North Carolina after learning it as a KU player under Dick and Doc (Allen). John Wooden at UCLA used the same principles in his long run of championships.
"Dick never got enough credit for all the things he developed and he was a top-notch citizen and Christian gentleman along with all of it. You can't imagine the long list of players and students who believe Dick added countless positive things to their lives."
Waugh also speaks with reverence towards Harp. Waugh was also a player at KU when Harp was assistant coach.
"Dick was first my coach, then my head coach but most of all my friend,” Waugh said. “There is no way to describe how my life was enriched by my association with him. I was saddened by the way his health deteriorated (in his latter years) but I can bypass that by remembering the many great times we had. I never got up to go to work with Dick that I didn't feel excited and blessed. There were laughs, heartaches, successes and failures but he made my life so much better than it would have been without him. His sense of humor was inestimable.
"In my opinion, Dick was a basketball genius who never got enough credit as a strategist and innovator. He was ahead of his time in many, many respects and made a far greater impact on coaching than most realize. He was a key figure in the middle years of Kansas basketball. Dean Smith carried away a lot of good things from Dick, and passed them on to Roy Williams, so in a sense, we have seen a full circle from Dick to Dean to Roy. There is no way to express how my life was enriched by Dick Harp.”
“Dick had a great coaching mind,” Waugh added in “What it Means to be a Jayhawk.”
“As a technician, there were no superiors. ... But Dick didn’t have total control of recruiting at KU, and that troubled him. Dick wanted to exclude the involvement of alumni in the recruiting of athletes. He went to the administration at the time and asked for their support. He was turned down. They were people of great influence, not only in athletics, and keeping them away would be a hot potato the administration didn’t want to touch.
“In his own eyes, I think Dick saw himself as a failure. I don’t think he walked away from all of this feeling fulfilled.”
But to Waugh and the people that knew Harp well, he was a great coach and human being who made a huge impact on people’s lives. Floyd Temple, a former KU athlete, KU assistant football coach, and longtime KU baseball coach, said Harp was a superior person.
"Dick was one of the great people I've ever known,” Temple once stated. “There's something special about KU that turns out folks like that, and I've been blessed to know a lot of them like Dick. He was one of the most impressive, God-fearing guys I ever met and I often used him as a role model. So did a lot of others around the campus, athletes and otherwise.
"Dick seemed to have a good word for just about everyone even if they weren't too favorable to him. I only regret that he had some difficult times near the end. It had to be tough, but he surely left a great legacy for KU and KU athletics."
Mayer stated he left a great legacy to not only KU, but to society.
“He long has had one of the keenest basketball minds extant and is recognized for that. But like most of the great ones, Harp's best contribution to society is as a strong moral and ethical citizen,” Mayer wrote in 1994.
Al Correll, who played for Harp in the late 1950s and early 60s, said his former coach cared passionately about KU basketball.
“To Dick Harp, wearing the Kansas uniform has a special significance,” Correll told “Max and the Jayhawks.”
“One night we had finished practicing, and we were not doing very good. It was my senior year and I was the last one out of the locker room. As I was leaving, I looked out on the floor. The whole court was dark and there was one light on above the big scoreboard and it shined down on the big K on the floor.
“Coach Harp was sitting there in a chair by himself on the big K with the light over his head. It was kind of an eerie thing, and I walked out to check on him. I looked at him and asked, ‘Coach, are you all right?’ He said he was fine, but he just couldn’t understand why a player wouldn’t give his all and realize how important this game is and what it means to wear a Kansas uniform. He was real serious. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as strange as I did at that moment. It really hurt him.”
Harp had countless admirers, in addition to Waugh, Lienhard, Temple, Mayer and Correll.
Just listen to Bob Kenney, who who played on the 1952 national championship team. He said Harp taught the players about basketball and life.
“If Harp had a fault, he was too nice a guy. The only thing I can tell you is he was as close to a father as I’ve ever had,” Kenney told “Kansas Basketball: Legacy of Coaches.”
Just ask Bill Hougland, who also played on the 1952 title team.
“He was happy to do what he was doing (as an assistant) and let Doc take all the credit,” Hougland told “100 Things KU Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die.”
“Dick scouted (opposing teams). He’d go to games, come back, and have it all written up. Dick was really good at that. Doc was the motivator. Dick was the one who really got us playing the way we had to play to win.”
Just listen to Everett Dye, another member of the 1952 championship team.
“He knew what he wanted, he knew how to communicate it and he did in such manner as you wanted to listen. I have all kind of affection for that man, always have, always will,” Dye said.
And just ask Dean Smith, the legendary Hall of Fame coach and still another player on the ‘52 title team.
“Dick had the brightest basketball mind of anyone I’ve ever known,” Art Chansky quoted Smith as once saying about Harp in his book, “Dean’s Domain.”
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