Ted Owens restored the glory to the rich Kansas basketball tradition in his first seven years from 1964-71, leading the Jayhawks to three Big Eight titles, one Final Four, and five Big 8 Holiday Tournament Championships.
Owens’ 1965-66 team and 1970-71 squad were two of the finest in KU basketball history; his ‘71 team was the first team in Big Eight history to go 14-0 en route to Owens’ first Final Four.
In seven years, Owens posted a stellar 149-43 record (.776). He had gained national respect among his peers and the future seemed very bright at Mount Oread.
But during the 1970s, his teams struggled with consistency. He and his staff were very inconsistent recruiters, as Owens found himself on the hot seat after repeated two straight down seasons, followed by a berth in the NCAA Tournament.
After the 1971 team reached the Final Four with a 27-3 record, his next two teams went just 11-15 and a dismal 8-18 (worst record in KU history). So Owens found himself on the hot seat, only to be rescued by a dramatic turnaround in 1973-74, when KU went 13-1 in Big Eight play, won the league championship, and advanced to the Final Four. Kansas won the Big 8 again the following year, yet lost to Notre Dame in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Suddenly, it looked like Owens had turned the corner. But he didn’t. After losing four of his top five scorers, KU faltered to just 13-13 in 1975-76 with two sophomores and one freshman in the starting lineup. The 1976-77 team improved to 18-10, but KU just finished fourth in the Big Eight at 8-6.
Max Falkenstien wrote about Owens being under pressure in his 1996 book, Max and the Jayhawks:
“Kansas had demonstrated progress, but the memories of KU’s 13-13 record two years earlier still lingered. Fans were growing restless for another conference championship, and there was a faction of KU supporters who thought it was time for a coaching change. They made their feelings known to (athletic director) Clyde Walker.
“With his job on the line, Ted shook up his staff.”
Owens’ loyal and great longtime top assistant Sam Miranda resigned under heat.
“Ted was a super nice guy. But Ted listened to everyone,” Miranda said in Falkenstien’s book. “He would listen to all the alums who would raise hell. Clyde Walker was the athletic director at the time, and he wanted Ted out of the job. He had tried to get him earlier, but as long as Odd Williams was on the athletic board, Clyde would never be able to fire him. After the 13-13 season, Clyde wanted him gone. He couldn’t get rid of Ted. Well, the next guy down the line was me. When I coached at KU, I recruited my rear end off and coached hard. I didn’t glad-hand the alums or rub noses with them. If I had been more of a diplomat, I might still be here today. But I wasn’t. It was either I was going to resign, or be fired. So I resigned. It was strictly the alums that put the heat on Clyde, and Clyde put the heat on Ted.”
Owens replaced Miranda with new assistant coach Lafayette Norwood in a package deal to land Wichita Heights phenom Darnell Valentine, who Norwood coached in high school. Owens saved his job by going 13-1 and winning the Big Eight title, yet lost to UCLA in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. KU was ranked as high as No. 5 nationally that season.
Owens then had two down years again, going 18-11 and just 15-14 in 1979-80, before climbing out of despair and advancing to the Sweet 16 in 1980-81 (24-8). That team was led by Valentine and super junior Tony Guy.
Little did Owens know that his long coaching career, where he had withstood so much heat, was soon coming to an end.
Forced to rebuild and rely too much on Guy and David Magley, Owens went just 13-14 in 1981-82 (4-10 for 7th place in the Big Eight). He followed that year with another losing season in 1982-83 (13-16 and again 4-10 and tied for 7th place in the Big 8).
On Feb. 18, 1983, The Oklahoman’s Jim Lassiter wrote about Owens’ future with the headline: ”KU’s Owens Has Survived Some Storm-Filled Years.”
“One Jayhawker has observed that Owens may be the only coach in America who has never had next year to count on. Every December through March you can hear rumblings from the Sunflower State that Owens is history. His teams have either not won enough games, not won enough big games or not been exciting enough.
“Rumors flew through Kansas like sunflower seeds in January when Kansas lost to Oral Roberts University a few days after the Titans had fired their coach in a midnight, mid-season sacking. The gossipers said that if the Hawks didn't turn around and beat Evansville, Owens would join ORU's Ken Hayes in the unemployment lines.
“The Jayhawks saved Owens that test of fire, but the rumors persist. A Denver newspaper reported last Sunday that the Kansas coach will not be around next year. The unattributed report said there is ‘racial tension’ on the squad and a ‘rift on the coaching staff.’ Reportedly, sales in Kansas of that issue of the Denver paper shot out of sight.”
Asked about the report, Owens just smiled. After all, through his 19 years at Kansas, the Kansas coach was known as “Smiling Ted.”
Lassiter soon continued:
“The Kansas coach has always felt he could count on his athletic department administration for backing. But if there's any reason to believe that Owens may truly be in trouble this time, it's because that home support has eroded. Last fall Kansas named Monte Johnson as its new athletic director. Johnson comes from Wichita. That area of Kansas has never been an Owens stronghold, as indeed, it had never been one of Don Fambrough's bases of support. To now, Johnson's most noteworthy action was to fire Fambrough, who had been at KU for 31 years.
“Without Johnson's backing, Owens has only his record and the promise of the future to plead his case. This Kansas team may be one of the youngest of all time. The Jayhawks' starting lineup includes three freshmen and two juniors and turnovers and poor shooting have made this team a chore to watch.
“It's a chore many Kansans are avoiding in record numbers. The irony of Ted Owens' most troubled season ever is that he is finally enjoying a pleasant personal life again. Three years ago he went through a messy divorce, but since then has remarried and at age 52 has started a new family. He and his wife have two babies under the age of two. One Jayhawk says he has never seen Owens happier, or seen him work any harder. The KU coach is confident this young Kansas team will get better and maybe measurably so when 6-11 Greg Dreiling joins it next season. Dreiling started his career at Wichita State, but transferred this season. In practice he has seemed to be Kansas' answer for a big man in the middle.
“After all these years, Ted Owens can't imagine Kansas not giving him the chance to develop Greg Dreiling and this team,” Lassiter added. “And reluctantly, the university will probably give him just one more season as its been doing for the last 19 years.”
Three weeks after that article was published, Owens’ Jayhawks had their game of the year when lowly KU upset heavily favored No. 19 Oklahoma, 87-77, in the first round of the Big Eight Tournament at Norman on March 8, 1983.
Freshman guard Calvin Thompson caught fire, scoring a career-high 30 points. a KU also held OU superstar and All-American forward Wayman Tisdale to just 13 points on 6-of-18 shooting. Owens walked out of his alma mater victorious and feeling grand.
“It was a great victory, and the players carried me off the court,” Owens told Jeff Bollig and Doug Vance in their 2008 book, What It Means To Be A Jayhawk.
“As they carried me up that ramp to the dressing room, I looked up in the crowd, and there was my coach at Oklahoma, Bruce Drake, and his wonderful wife, Myrtle, smiling and waving at me. That made it an even more incredible night.”
Thompson said that was one of the most favorite memories of his KU career.
“I couldn’t miss in warm-up, and so I just knew I was going to have a good one,” he told me during a 90-minute interview at his home in 1999.
Jeff Dishman, a member of that team, also described that magical night to me in a 2003 interview.
“We kept running a play for Calvin to get open,” Dishman said. “We kept running the same play over and over again, and they never could get it stopped. And, of course, our whole deal on the other end was stopping Wayman Tisdale. I think we held him to his lowest season total. He went for 50 a couple of times that year. I remember it being a total team effort, and Calvin stepped up and hit some big shots. Carl Henry (19 points) had a pretty good game. We pretty much knew if we could close down on Wayman a little bit, we’d have a shot. Nobody expected us to do that, I didn't think, have a shot against them at that point in our season. It was a good memory.
“Calvin really played well,” Dishman added. “We had a specific play to get Carl the ball. He was our first option and Calvin was the second. They kept covering Carl, and hitting Calvin on the second option. He shot a lot of 15-17 foot jumpers at the top of the key. He kept doing it over and over again. They never did figure it out.”
KU, though, stumbled the next night against Oklahoma State, which featured a point guard named Bill Self (3 points), losing 90-83. Kelly Knight led KU with 26 points and 14 rebounds.
The long season, was at last, over.
There was hope for the future, though, with three talented freshmen in Thompson, Kerry Boagni and Ron Kellogg, and former McDonald’s All-American Dreiling, a 7-foot center with huge potential, was redshirting after transferring from Wichita State.
Owens and lead recruiter, assistant coach Jo Jo White, had also secured a verbal commitment from Curtis Aiken, a great shooter and one of the top high school guards in the country.
The past two years were more seasons of turmoil and losing, and new athletic director Monte Johnson, who had just been on the job for four months and already had fired the loyal Jayhawk football coach Fambrough, had a big decision to make regarding Owens, the second-longest tenured KU basketball coach in history behind Phog Allen of 19 years.
Owens recalled what transpired in his 2013 book, At The Hang-Up.
“Feeling that we were positioned to be a dominate force in the following season, I hoped that the new athletic director, Monte Johnson, would honor the remaining year on my contract and allow me to coach the team,” Owens wrote.
Before Johnson went on vacation with his son to Florida for a week, he called Owens into his office and “wanted me to prepare an evaluation of my program compared to the history of Kansas basketball. ... It was the longest week of my life. ... In my time as head coach at Kansas, we had won 15 Big Eight titles (a combination of regular-season and tournament titles) and advanced to the NCAA Final Four in 1971 and 1974. Fitting Dr. Allen’s criteria for a successful team, the players’ graduation rate was high and they had gone on to successful careers.
“Monte must have known that if he was going to make a change, the timing was ideal, since we were coming off of two seasons that were below the Kansas standards in terms of wins and losses. It was a perfect time to give a new coach the reins to a talented team and allow him to become immediately successful. And that was the decision Monte made.”
So, after 19 years, winning six Big Eight Conference championships, eight Big 8 Holiday Tournament titles, one Big Eight Tournament championship, advancing to the NCAA Tournament seven times, earning Big Eight Coach of the Year five times and named National Coach of the Year in 1978 by Basketball Weekly, Owens was fired.
The embattled KU coach had simply run out of lives. He left KU as the second winningest coach in school history behind the legendary Allen with a record of 348-182 (.657).
Owens was candidly bitter by his firing at the time. But as the years passed, he’s now at peace with himself.
But not then.
“I was absolutely devastated,” he wrote in his book. “I had hoped Chancellor Gene Budig would block the move, but he had been at the university for only the last two years, when our teams weren’t as strong as in previous years. Years later, at the 2009 memorial service for longtime KU athletic director Bob Frederick, Gene told me that if he had taken the time to look at my overall record, he wouldn’t have allowed me to be removed as head coach. Even if it was far too late to change matters, I respected Gene and felt good about what he had said.
“...I fault no one, and I take full responsibility for the decline of the program during the two years that followed our NCAA regional participation in 1981. In the spring of 1983, I had felt that we were positioned to restore the program to its rightful place as a conference power and national-title contender, had they decided to honor the last year of my contract. But we can only speculate about what might have been, and those who have followed me--Larry Brown, Roy Williams and Bill Self--have certainly done great things at the helm of Jayhawk basketball.”
Owens would deeply miss coaching at Kansas, where he formed lifelong relationships and friendships with his players and staff.
“So after 23 years, I was no longer a part of Kansas basketball. Those years were a wonderful time in my life. I loved every minute of it, from the joy of successes to the pain of disappointments. I dearly loved the University of Kansas, and I continue to do so today.”
Owens then wrote sentimentally and emotionally:
“I did something some say a coach shouldn’t do. They’ll say that a coach shouldn’t fall in love with the fans and the players. But I did. I loved the University of Kansas. I loved my players. My biggest fault was that I didn’t want to disappoint people. When we lost a game or experienced failure, I was really hard on myself. I never blamed anyone else.”
At the postseason banquet that year after he was fired, Owens spoke from the heart while also able to deal with his pain by cracking a joke about he and his wife being late that evening.
“We went down to pick up our unemployment checks and the line was a little longer than we expected,” Owens said.
“I won’t say there’s no anger and bitterness — honestly it come and goes, but there is so much to be grateful for,” Owens added. “I have four wonderful children and a wife who supports me. That’s what really matters. Only history will determine what kind of job we did here, but know this ... no one loves this place more than I do.”
The former KU coach had a message at the banquet for the returning Jayhawks.
“I hope you’ll have a great team,” he said. “I hope you’re almost as good as you could have been if we had been there with you.”
KU went 22-10 in 1983-84 and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament with new coach Larry Brown, who Johnson lured from his previous job as New Jersey Nets head coach.
Owens' former players would miss him being a part of KU basketball. They were quite fond of him, including guard Lance Hill, who played at KU from 1981-83.
“He opened the door for a lot of players here,” Hill told the Lawrence Journal-World. “I won’t forget what Tony Guy said at last year’s banquet. ‘He was a father to me.’”
Finally, Owens looked like a prophet when he said these words at the banquet:
“This team has laid the foundation for greatness in Kansas basketball.”
Indeed, it did.
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