A Heartfelt Tribute To Former KU Basketball Head Coach Ted Owens

Ted Owens grew up on a cotton farm in Hollis, Oklahoma, where he was raised by his parents to know right from wrong, to treat people with kindness and deep respect, to always listen to others, to show great empathy, to have profound faith, to have a strong work ethic, to treat people of color on the basis of their character and performance, and to always be a good person.

Owens carried these invaluable life lessons throughout his life, reinforced to him by his Oklahoma Hall of Fame basketball coach, Bruce Drake, and then KU head basketball coach Dick Harp — a man of impeccable values and strong moral fiber —when Owens served as a loyal assistant to Harp as an assistant coach from 1960-64.

In his nearly 91 years on Earth, Owens has learned from these instrumental people in his life and touched and impacted countless people, beginning as head basketball and baseball coach of Cameron Junior College in Lawton, Oklahoma, from 1956-60, and then as a KU assistant for four years before serving as KU head basketball coach for 19 years, still the second-longest tenured coach in the rich Kansas basketball tradition.

After KU, he continued impacting people’s lives as Oral Roberts head coach, Fresno Flames coach, Tel Aviv Maccabi coach, development director and basketball coach at Metro Christian Academy in Tulsa, athletic director at St. Leo University near Tampa, Florida, and all his other jobs and pursuits.

Above all, Owens has been a true loving and consummate family man, devoted to his wife, Michelle, and his children. He has also stayed in close contact with those players he coached decades ago, including many from Cameron and at KU, and those he also mentored like Joey and Stephen Graham, former Oklahoma State basketball players from 2003-05.

Owens’ daughter, Taylor Owens O’Connell, talked about her dad’s love and influence of people in his 2013 book, At The Hang-Up.

“I am beyond blessed to have a father who loves me endlessly. It’s amazing that a little boy from Hollis could grown up to have such an impact on so many lives,” Owens-O’Connell said.

Owens’ former players deeply love him, just as he loved them.

“The most important thing to my dad today is his meaningful relationships with his players. Every July 16 when 7 a.m. hits, Tommie Smith calls to wish him a happy birthday,” Owens’ son, Teddy, said. “Shortly afterward, David Magley will call, or Bud Stallworth, or Roger Morningstar, or Al Lopes. They call every year, never missing his birthday, because he loved them and believed in them. He continues to do so, and anytime they achieve something he always calls me and update me on their success off the court.” 

As soon as he became KU head coach, you knew Owens would be something special—as a person and as a coach.

After Harp resigned under pressure in 1964, the KU players petitioned for the popular Owens to take over the head-coaching job. Owens had great admiration and respect from his players and KU alumni.

“Owens is the best basketball coach I know for talking to high school boys and recruiting them,” a top KU booster said. “He and Jack Mitchell (then-KU football coach) are in a class by themselves in the field. Owens has also had a hand in recruiting most everybody now in the KU basketball program and they like him and respect him a great deal.”

Owens, who coached at Mount Oread 19 years until being fired in 1983, won six Big Eight Conference Championships, eight Big Eight Holiday Tournament titles, one Big Eight Tournament Championship, advanced to the NCAA tournament seven times, and earned Final Four berths in 1971 and 1974. He was named Big Eight Coach of the Year five times and selected as National Coach of the Year in 1978 by Basketball Weekly.

 

Owens, who also coached five All-Americans, ranks as the fourth-winningest coach in Kansas basketball history behind Phog Allen, Bill Self and Roy Williams with a 348-182 (.657) record.

But beyond the wins is the many lives he influenced and impacted. Just listen to former star forward David Magley, who played at KU from 1978-82 and then briefly with the Cleveland Cavaliers as a rookie. Magley and his wife, Evelyn, have always been very close to Owens; they used to babysit Owens’ kids when Magley was in college.

Magley truly admired and loved Owens.

“Of all the lives that Coach Owens has touched over the years, I have to believe that I am the most fortunate,” Magley said in At The Hang-Up.

“He taught me how to compete. He encouraged me and rewarded when I earned it. He showed me how to be a champion with grace.”

Just listen to countless other Jayhawks and coaches, including Riney Lochmann, who played at KU from 1963-66 and then in the ABA.

“The bottom line is that I would run through a brick wall for Coach Owens,” Lochmann said. “I have nothing but great memories from my time there. Kansas has retired many jerseys that hang in the rafters of Allen Fieldhouse. My hope is that Coach Owens will also be honored so his name can hang up in Allen Fieldhouse with the rest of his players.”

Just listen to Dave Robisch, the high-scoring forward and All-American who starred at KU from

1968-71.

“Coach Owens is more than a coach. He has been a part of my life since 1967,” Robisch said. “Our relationship has grown stronger over time. I look back now and understand so much more about what went on at KU than I did when I was going through it. He has been there through 42 years of my marriage. He has watched my kids grow up and I have watched his kids grow up. This type of thing does not happen very often. We have a very special friendship that continues to grow as we both get older.”

Just listen to Delvy Lewis, who was a star KU guard and All-Big Eight in 1966.

“I just have nothing but great words to say about Ted Owens as a coach,” Lewis told me in 2003. “He was a gentleman. I just feel badly, because I think he’s kind of gotten a bad rap, as far as perception.  He still has a tremendous winning record. I just hope he gets some credit for what he did, because I think he did a lot more than people realize. To this day, I have the greatest respect for him. He’s just a neat, neat man.”

“I think Riney and I were his favorites on that (great 1965-66 squad, which won the Big Eight title and lost to Texas Western in the Midwest Regional final) team, because he just appreciated the ‘roll up your sleeves and work,’ and that’s pretty much what Riney and I did,” Lewis added. “I hustled and gave it all I had every game. Everybody did. We had a group that pretty much got after it. We were pretty no-nonsense. “

Just listen to Bud Stallworth, who starred at KU from 1969-72 and is another of the five All-Americans (also an Academic All-American) Owens coached at Kansas.

“What I first noticed is that Coach Owens cared about his players beyond just playing sports,” Stallworth said. “He was more like a parent, wanting his players to be more than successful basketball players. He emphasized that we had to be well-rounded on the court and even better better people off the court.”

Just listen to Jo Jo White, still another KU All-American who is enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

“Ted is like a second father to me, he and coach (former longtime KU assistant Sam) Miranda,” White said after his jersey retirement at Allen Fieldhouse in 2003. “They were more than just coaches. They were friends to us, they were our confidant. Our relationship continues on, far beyond the KU days.”

White also raved about Owens in www.celtic-nation.com on April 7, 2003, just hours before KU played Syracuse in the national championship game.  

“He was a very astute coach, and a great teacher of the fundamental,” White said. ”He was also politically involved within the college basketball community and well-versed when it came to the issues surrounding the game. Coach Owens contributed greatly to my growth as a basketball player. I enjoyed playing for him and I learned a lot from being a part of his program.”

And then listen to what White said about Owens in At The Hang-Up:

“Coach Owens was always open to sit and talk with individuals about how to be a better player and a better team. He wasn’t concerned about players approaching him to talk about the team. To me, he was a great coach—always sincere, honest and open with all of us. I absolutely adored the man and my time at KU.”

Owens not only had great respect from his former players, but from his peers in the coaching profession. Just ask Washington Wizards head coach Scott Brooks, who played under Owens with the WBL Fresno Flames in 1988.

“Coach Owens is a man of integrity; he is a sincere, honest person who treats everyone with a great deal of respect—which is something that I’ve carried with me throughout my life on and off the basketball floor,” Brooks said. “Coach Owens has had a great impact on me as a person and a coach. To this day, every time Coach Owens is around it seems that a memory is made.”

Just listen to Hall of Fame Kentucky coach John Calipari, who received his first coaching job under Owens as a graduate assistant at KU in 1982.

“He gave me an opportunity to coach at one of the greatest programs,” Calipari said. “Coach Owens has always handled himself with class. Whether we won or lost, he was just a classy, upstanding gentleman, and he did it at a hard place to coach, but a great place to coach. I will always be indebted to him, and Coach Owens knows that.”

Just listen to Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown, who succeeded Owens at KU for five seasons.

“(Owens) told the players he’d been here 23 years, 19 as head coach,” Brown said after the Legends of the Phog exhibition game at Allen Fieldhouse in 2011, during which he and Owens served as honorary head coaches. 

“He was in tears talking to everybody about his love for the school.”

Owens recruited players like Ron Kellogg, Calvin Thompson and Greg Dreiling (Owens coached Kellogg and Thompson for one season), who became vital senior cogs on Brown’s 1986 Final Four team.

“Ted left me with a pretty good group,” Brown said. “I was blessed with a really good team. And the values those kids have because of their relationship with him was pretty neat. He (also) left me with some good coaches. I was fortunate to have Bob Hill, Calipari ... It was a remarkable staff. Ted had a lot to do with this program, and to see his feelings about it is pretty remarkable.”

At age 82 then, Owens still had a strong competitive fire.

“He wanted to beat my (butt), I can tell you that,” Brown said in reference to the exhibition game, where Owens’ White team tied Brown’s Blue squad, 111-111.

Just listen to KU coach Bill Self, who has endless admiration for Owens.

“He comes back (to Lawrence and KU) all the time,” Self once said. “We take golf trips together every summer. We bunked together in Scotland (in 2009) for a week. I’ve gotten to know coach real well. He’s been really good to me and my family. When you’ve (coached here) 19 years, he’s kind of the coach that sometimes get lost, but he went to two Final fours and won an awful lot of games.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been around a coach that takes more pride in what his ex-players are doing than what he does,” Self added to the Lawrence Journal-World on July 16, 2019 when Owens turned 90.

“But it’s also easier to do that because he’s older and he’s seen his guys grow up to be 60-year-old grown men.”

“He’s an amazing guy,” Self said.

Even the legendary Hall of Fame UCLA coach John Wooden greatly admired Owens. Wooden won 10 NCAA titles in 12 years, including a record seven straight.

Owens wrote about his friendship with Wooden in his book:

“Toward the end of John Wooden’s unparalleled career at UCLA, Wooden and I had established a strong-enough friendship that we exchanged notes at the beginning of each season. Wooden sent this note to me in his first year of his retirement.”

It was dated on March 2, 1976.

“Thanks Ted,

Keep your chin up. Our profession needs more men like you.”

Sincerely,

John Wooden

One of the highest compliments, indeed, from arguably the greatest coach in basketball history.

As the Journal-World reported in 2019, Owens has taught the “games he loves” at such faraway places as Japan, China, Spain, Italy, Belgium, France, Switzerland, the Philippines, Korea, England and Israel.

During a speech in Oklahoma around that time, which the Journal-World wrote that The Oklahoman's Berry Tramel called “one of the best speeches he had ever heard” and “refers to Owens as a American treasure,” Owens spoke about his life in basketball.

“I had some time to dream while I was hoeing cotton back on that farm in southwest Oklahoma,” Owens said. “But my dreams were never so great as to imagine what I have been privileged to do during my lifetime, playing college basketball for the great Hall of Fame coach Bruce Drake at OU, coaching at the University of Kansas, where James Naismith was the first coach and Phog Allen coached and promoted the game, and to coach in the St. Andrew’s of college basketball, Allen Fieldhouse.”

“I have learned that as a coach, your success will be measured by the productive and successful lives of those young men and women for whom you were responsible,” Owens added with great meaning. “A chaplain at the NCAA Final Four was speaking to the coaches at a Sunday church service (years ago) and he said it best: ‘You should always remember that you are not using young men and young women to win a game but that you are using the game to win young men and young women.’”

Owens, who is enshrined in the KU Athletics Hall of Fame, Cameron University Athletics Hall of Fame, the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame and Oklahoma Sports Hall of  Fame, did just that with young men in his long and storied coaching career. From humble beginnings in Hollis, to playing at OU, coaching at Cameron Junior College, to then getting the biggest break of his life as head coach at KU for 19 years, Owens has touched countless lives beyond measure.

While his KU coaching career ended on a bitter note with his firing in 1983, Owens still revels in returning to Allen Fieldhouse and seeing KU basketball games while catching up with former players and close lifelong friends. He has such fond memories of his time at Mount Oread.

“Coaching in Allen Fieldhouse is like no other experience I have ever encountered,” Owens told Jeff Bollig and Doug Vance in their 2008 book, What IT Means TO Be A Jayhawk.

“Just running out onto the court before the games — and the anticipation of a noise level unknown to most places — was electrifying. Our fans are pretty knowledgeable about basketball and pretty fair about recognizing the great plays of opponents. It isn’t just a game, but an event — the ‘Rock Chalk Chant,’ the pep band, the pompom squad, and the cheerleaders all add significantly to the game. When I go back to games, I can still sing the same songs and chant the same chants as if it were yesterday. That is tradition.

“It is something that stays with you forever. You can walk into a sports apparel store in almost any city and buy a Jayhawk cap. There aren’t any other Jayhawks. It is a unique name with a unique history. I live in Tulsa, and I see people wearing Jayhawk caps and shirts all the time. You can be proud of being a Jayhawk because it represents more than athletic victories. It represents great academics, great tradition, from Dr. Naismith and Dr. Allen and so many great achievements in politics, aerospace, and other professional areas. Being a Jayhawk fills you with pride.

“I stay as close (to the program) as I can while living in Tulsa. ... I love to come back every time I can and see my former players and coaches. It is one of the great joys of my life.”

My tribute to former great KU assistant coach Sam Miranda

In Part II on Sam Miranda, I write about my tribute to him after he passed in 2009. This was published in Jayhawk Illustrated.

...

The news hit me hard and sharp, jolting me wide awake in the late night hours on May 29.

It was near 3 a.m. when I went online and read that former KU assistant basketball coach Sam Miranda had died of cancer the previous day at age 78. I stayed awake the rest of the evening and the next day with Miranda occupying all my thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

Miranda was not just a Jayhawk assistant under Ted Owens from 1964-77. He was a legendary recruiter and master teacher who won over recruits and players with his supreme salesmanship, enthusiasm, persistence, tireless work ethic, honesty, and demanding tough love.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Miranda in November of 2000 for a Where Are They Now? feature for Jayhawk Insider magazine. I’ve often thought of that interview the last decade and how much fun I had hearing Miranda’s recruiting stories. And I thought Sam enjoyed reminiscing about his KU days maybe just as much.

He was full of energy that night, full of life, full of love and passion for his family and Kansas basketball. While he was no longer affiliated with KU after he resigned in 1977, Miranda never once stopped believing, cheering, and supporting the school he gave his heart and soul to for 13 years.

He laughed some while recalling his recruiting stories of former Jayhawks like Rick Suttle, Roger Morningstar, Tom Kivisto and Dale Greenlee — four of my first KU basketball heroes and stars on the 1973-74 Final Four team.

These were players I put on a pedestal; they became larger than life to me as a very impressionable 7-year-old boy growing up in Lawrence. They could simply do no wrong. At the time, I gave no thought as to how these players arrived at KU or who was responsible in recruiting them. Heck, I was too young to think about that. I just watched in awe and wonder as Suttle and company drove KU on a magical ride to the Final Four. 

Years later, I became a diligent student of KU basketball history and read voraciously every book and article I could find about the Jayhawks’ past. That’s when I learned about Miranda’s influence on KU basketball, how he started the Illinois pipeline to Kansas and got Jo Jo White to sign with Kansas without ever seeing him play in person. 

Then I had the good fortune to interview Miranda and many of his former players in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and learned even more about this unsung hero of Kansas basketball.

In 2000, he was voted by a blue-ribbon Jayhawk panel as the best assistant coach in Kansas basketball history.

 “There’s been a lot of fine, fine coaches, and whomever that panel was, I appreciate their thoughtfulness very much,” Miranda told me in our interview in 2000. “That’s a fine honor when you think of 103 years of Kansas basketball, and to be selected as the top person, that’s quite a good feeling.”

Miranda’s basketball roots were planted in Collinsville, Ill., where he was Prep Player of the Year for the St. Louis metro area his junior year of high school in 1947 and named first-team All-State in 1948. Miranda, who was inducted as a player into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame in 1973, became a star guard at Indiana under legendary coach Branch McCracken. He earned second-team all-Big Ten honors as a junior in 1951 and was named first-team Little All-American in 1951 and 1952.

Miranda’s dribbling ability gained national acclaim; in 1950, he was selected to demonstrate ball handling skills in a General Mills educational sports film. After his senior year in 1952, Miranda toured against the Harlem Globetrotters as a member of the College All-Star team.

 He spent two years in the U.S. Army before embarking on a coaching career in the Illinois high school ranks for eight years, where he built lasting relationships and contacts with his players and fellow coaches. Miranda then became an assistant coach at New Mexico for two years before new KU head coach Ted Owens hired him as his top aide in 1964 after taking over for Dick Harp.

Miranda actually first met Owens (KU assistant at the time under Harp) for about five minutes when he was an assistant at New Mexico during a trip to Lawrence, where he was scouting the Jayhawks in preparation for the Lobos game with Kansas in Albuquerque on Dec. 19, 1963.

New Mexico won, 59-54.

“That was the biggest game and biggest win the University of New Mexico ever had up to that point by far,” Miranda said.

After that 1963-64 season, Miranda stopped at an interstate restaurant north of Chicago on a recruiting trip and picked up the paper and read that Harp had resigned and Owens was the new KU head coach.

“I just thought at the time, ‘Man, what a great break for Ted. A relatively young person to get that kind of job,’” Miranda said. “And then about four or five days later, I got a call from him in regards to (joining his staff). He wanted to recruit the Illinois and St. Louis area, where I had some success recruiting. He came out to Albuquerque and we visited a night or so. I came back the next weekend (to Lawrence) and looked around and decided to come to KU.”

Miranda went right to work, securing a commitment from fellow Collinsville native and high school All-American Rodger Bohnenstiehl, and then soon lured White from St. Louis.

He was just beginning. 

Focusing primarily in the Illinois and St. Louis area, Miranda brought in a boatload of talent from Illinois the next 13 years. In fact, the 1974 Final Four team comprised 10 players from Illinois, including seven of the top eight.

"I was from Illinois and knew it was a great basketball state," Miranda once told writer Taylor Bell of the Chicago Sun-Times. "I knew a lot of high school coaches. I figured we had to outwork people. I was on the phone every night from 7 to 10 talking to players in Illinois. We had practice on Friday afternoon. Afterward, I'd catch a flight in Kansas City, fly to Illinois, see a game, visit with parents, 

go to dinner, then fly back on a 12:45 flight to Kansas City."

Miranda simply outworked his competition. He was quite passionate about recruiting. 

“I enjoyed recruiting,” Miranda told me. “It’s a challenge. You go in a home the summer time prior to their senior year. You’re in there with all the big schools and you’re trying to be one of the five to come out and visit your school. When you walk out on a summer evening, you know if you’ve done a good or bad job. It’s an exhilarating feeling when you walk out and you’ve done a good job of recruiting and get the kid to commit and say, ‘Yes, I’ll come visit Kansas.’”

Bell said Miranda was peerless in his profession.

“Since I began covering high school sports in the 1950s, I've become acquainted with the process and some of the best football and basketball recruiters who ever persuaded a highly impressionable teenager to leave his family, friends and hometown for a name on a map that the youngster didn't know existed. In some cases, there wasn't even a name,” Bell wrote.

“Sam Miranda was the best of all. ... Miranda built Kansas into a Final Four program in the 1970s by recruiting many of the best high school players in Illinois, including Springfield's Dave Robisch, East Aurora's Tom Kivisto, Collinsville's Rodger Bohnenstiehl, Kenwood's Donnie Von Moore and Kewanee's Tommie Smith. He set the standard for recruiters who followed him. He wrote the book. Nobody worked harder. In an era where there were virtually no restrictions on recruiting, Miranda literally camped out on a recruit's doorstep. Before anyone else, he understood the two most important axioms of recruiting: 

“1. The first coach in the door usually is the one who signs the kid.

2. You must learn who will make the final decision—athlete, father, mother, grandmother, uncle, high school coach, AAU coach—and form a close relationship.”

Miranda spoke to me about that recruiting philosophy.

“In recruiting, I always thought in any family, there’s basically one person who is the key person in recruiting the youngster,” Miranda said. “You recruit the young man and then you recruit the person who is going to help (him) make that decision.”

In Suttle’s case, Miranda won over his mother’s respect. Suttle was leaning towards Jacksonville, which had been to the Final Four in 1970, before eventually signing with KU.

“I recruited him hard for three years,” Miranda said. “Finally in the end, (Suttle’s mom) said, ‘You’re going with Sam. That’s it.’ ... She just had confidence in us.”

Miranda landed White through the confidence and trust of his high school coach, Jodie Bailey.

“About the third or fourth time I was back to see Jo Jo, we’re at a restaurant talking and I’m going over why I thought he should come to Kansas and everything,” Miranda said. “Jodie Bailey was sitting there and he said, ‘Jo Jo, that sounds good to me.’ And that was it. That kind of sealed it.”

There was another reason why White signed with Kansas.

"I went to Kansas because I couldn't talk to any other coaches. I was always on the phone with Sam," Bell reported White once saying.

While Miranda was instrumental in recruiting and signing countless prospects over the years, he selflessly credited Owens for KU’s recruiting success.

“Of course, the head coach is naturally the vital guy because he’s got to make an impression,” Miranda said. “I don’t care how good an assistant coach is in recruiting, if the head coach doesn’t make a great impression, it’s going to be hard to get the kid. And Ted always did a great job recruiting.”

With his fierce coaching personality, Miranda was the perfect blend to Owens. As former Jayhawks like to say, Owens was the nice “good cop,” while Miranda played the “bad cop” role.

“Owens was the nice guy that tried to be mean,” Morningstar said. “We all kind of laughed at. Coach Miranda, you never looked at crosswise. He had the fear of God in all of us.”

But he also had the unyielding respect and love of all his players.

Just ask Morningstar.

“He was a great guy and meant so much to a lot of us,” Morningstar wrote me in an email after Miranda’s death.

Just ask former KU center Roger Brown.

 

Brown was one of countless post players who made huge strides under Miranda’s tutelage. Brown credits Miranda, who worked primarily with KU’s big men — as a key factor in his development.

“He said (during the recruiting process) he was going to be out there every day working with me,” Brown said during an interview in 2002. “I didn’t take him seriously. I just took it in passing, but when I got there and realized how intense he was as a coach and that he was true to his word, I said, ‘OK, then.’

“He spent a lot of time with me and Dave (Robisch) every day. I think that was a big factor in my development. I think that was a major thing that he gave attention to all the players, especially the big men.  I think that was instrumental.”  

Just ask Von Moore.

“If it wasn’t for Sam I would not have ever gotten off the bench at Kansas,” Von Moore commented last April in Suntimes.com after a story on Miranda. “I can still hear those familiar words: ‘Don't you think we should put Donnie in the game.’ Every time he said it Ted would put me in the game. He taught me how to play the game and believed in me. But most importantly he taught me honor, dignity and respect. He was my role model and I carry a part of him with me to this very day. When I coach and when I teach. 

“What a gift. Thanks Sam.”

Just ask Greenlee.

“Sam Miranda is one of the finest men I have ever known,” Greenlee commented in Suntimes.com in May. “I had broken my ankle my senior year of high school playing football, so all of the colleges that had been recruiting me for basketball backed off. My high school football coach in Rockford, Illinois, Bill Swaby, grew up with Coach Miranda in Collinsville, and got Sam to take a look at me. Coach showed faith in me and allowed me to come to KU for a fantastic four years of my life. Best break I ever had. Thanks Coach Miranda, for everything. 

“You're the best!”

Just ask Bohnenstiehl.

“Sam was a great man to play for,” Bohnestiehl said during an interview in 2003. “He made you work. He was very disciplined. You had to work hard.”

Just ask White.

“Ted is like a second father to me, he and coach Miranda,” White said after his jersey retirement ceremony at Allen Fieldhouse in 2003. “They (Miranda and Owens) were more than just coaches. 

They were friends to us, they were our confidant. Our relationship continues on, far beyond the KU days.”

Indeed, many of Miranda’s former players kept in touch and met with him when they visited Lawrence. Miranda cherished the lifetime relationships he built with his players and was so proud of their post-KU accomplishments.

 “I think the association with the players is probably the most important thing for any coach, really, particularly after your finished coaching,” Miranda told me. “The players that you do get and how they perform and how they work hard and how they do a great job for the university and their teammates is always something to reflect and look back on.”

“(It’s a) good feeling to see the guys go on and be successful in sports and out of sports.”

After the 1976-77 season, two Final Fours (1971 and ‘74) and 23 years in the coaching profession, Miranda left KU and went to work for Maupintour Travel. He was an outside sales manager for 17 years before retiring in 1994. 

He lived in Lawrence ever since with his wife, Polly.

“It’s been a very satisfying life,” Miranda said in 2000.

Miranda left an indelible impact with everyone he met along the way. One reader of the Respublica.com captured the sentiments of all who knew Miranda with a comment on the Illinois community blog’s website after Miranda’s death.

“Every basketball town, every town, deserves a Sam, but too few have them.”

The 1970-71 KU team had it all in reaching the Final Four

The 1970-71 KU Final Four team had it all--size, speed, quickness, chemistry and talent. Led by high-scoring forward Dave Robisch and sweet shooting guard Bud Stallworth, KU appeared in its first Final Four since the 1957 team lost the national title game to North Carolina. The Jayhawks were also the only team in school annals to sweep the Big Eight conference, going 14-0. It would be 31 years until 2002 when KU would go unbeaten again in league play.

Kansas only lost one game heading into the Final Four when UCLA (eventual national champs) beat the 'Hawks.

Here is a story I wrote for Jayhawk Illustrated in 2009 on that tremendous 1971 Final Four team, which went 27-3 and remains one of the best teams in school history.

It was head coach Ted Owens’s first Final Four at Kansas.

“We were awesome,” Stallworth told me 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.”

By David Garfield

When Ted Owens replaced Dick Harp as head basketball coach at Kansas in 1964, he aimed to rebuild the KU tradition, get fans believing in Jayhawks’ hoops again, and return KU to the Final Four.

Kansas had just suffered two out of three losing seasons and had not been to a Final Four since the Wilt Chamberlain-led team lost to North Carolina in the 1957 NCAA championship game.

In Owens’ second season (1965-66), his Jayhawks came just short of the Final Four, losing to Texas Western in the Midwest Regional Final and finishing 23-4. KU then posted 20-plus wins the next three seasons before going 17-9 in 1969-70.

Returning the next season included nine lettermen and seven players who had been starters at one point, including senior center Roger Brown, senior forwards Dave Robisch and Pierre Russell, and junior guards Bud Stallworth and Aubrey Nash.

This was their time, their chance to shine.

“It was all or nothing,” Brown said in a 2001 interview. “Four years had gone by so quick. You turn around and the last year is right here. We had the nucleus. ... I think the overall impression is everybody felt good about that year. We had a lot of confidence.

“We just went out and played.”

KU made a huge statement in its first game against No. 5 Long Beach State at Allen Fieldhouse on Dec. 1, running to a 32-8 lead at halftime en route to a 69-52 victory. The Jayhawks’ imposing 1-3-1 zone gave LBSU fits.

“They couldn’t even get a shot off,” the late KU assistant Sam Miranda said in 2000 about that first half. “The crowd was screaming and yelling. We just played tremendous.”

Kansas continued to play tremendous basketball, winning its next five games, including victories over Saint Joseph’s and Houston to capture the Jayhawk Classic. Brown dominated the title game against Houston, posting 23 points and 21 rebounds while blocking numerous shots.

In John Hendel’s 1991 book, “Kansas Jayhawks: History Making Basketball,” the author reported that Houston coach Guy Lewis was extremely impressed over KU after the game.

“I can only say,” Lewis said, “we’ve never been intimidated in the inside like we were tonight since we played against (UCLA’s Lew) Alcindor.”

However, two days later, KU suffered a tough loss at Louisville, 87-75.

“(We) gave them all they wanted,” Stallworth said in a 1990 interview.

KU wouldn’t lose again until the Final Four.

“I blame myself for the one loss we had that year,” Owens told Hendel. “It was just poor scheduling. We had (the Jayhawk Classic) on Friday and Saturday against really good teams. Then we traveled on Sunday to Louisville to play on Monday night.

“We full-court pressed all the time and our team was just very tired and emotionally wrung out.”

The Jayhawks rebounded from the Louisville loss to win 21 straight games. They won the Big Eight title for the first time since 1966 with a perfect 14-0 record, one of two squads (K-State in 1959) to run the table in the eight-team league schedule. Kansas would go another 31 years before the Jayhawks swept conference play in 2001-02 with a 16-0 record.

KU’s final four wins in Big 8 play in 1971 were decided by five or less points, including consecutive overtime victories against Oklahoma at home and Missouri at Columbia. In all, KU won seven regular-season games by five points or fewer.

“We were a good team because we won tough games,” Brown said. “We won on the road.”

This team had the heart of a champion which meshed together both on and off the court. Above all, each player knew their role. Brown (11.2 ppg) was the defensive-minded rebounder who could block shots with the best; Robisch (19.2 ppg) was the scoring machine inside and out; Russell (10.3 ppg) was the hustling, defensive specialist; Stallworth (16.9 ppg) was the sweet outside shooter; and Nash (6.6 ppg) the playmaking, ball-hawking point guard.

“We just jelled as a team,” Brown said. “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.”

This team was big with Brown and Robisch at 6-10, Stallworth at 6-5 and Russell at 6-4 Yet they could press and run.

“Defensively, that was our main part,” Brown said. “We were huge, but we could move.  Back then, a lot of teams that would have that type of size I don’t think would be as mobile. We could get up and down the floor and put the ball in the basket.” 

Owens said that was, indeed, a great defensive and rebounding team.

“We only had two extraordinary shooters — Dave Robisch and Bud Stallworth— but we had a great team of athletes,” Owens said. “We held our opponents to 37 percent shooting from the field. ... As a team, we only shot 44 percent ... but we dominated the boards.”

Stallworth told author Doug Vance in his and Max Falkenstien’s 1996 book, “Max and the Jayhawks: 50 Years on and off the air with KU Sports,” that the 1970-71 team had it all with “size, speed, quickness and confidence. ... just all the components.”

As the Jayhawks kept winning, they won over fans and the Lawrence and KU community in a time of great political and social unrest on campus.

“It was a campus that had a lot of disruption,” Owens told ESPN Regional TV’s “Kansas Basketball: A Century of Tradition” in 1998. “That team pulled that campus together.”

The student body was fully behind Kansas after it won the Big 8 championship and now one of 25 teams in the NCAA tournament aiming to cut down the national title nets in Houston.

 

The Jayhawks’ road to the Final Four began in Wichita, where they survived and won their rematch with Houston, 78-77, before holding off Drake, 73-71. Robisch and Stallworth led the way against Houston with 29 and 25 points, respectively, while Robisch was top scorer again vs. Drake in the Midwest Regional final with 27.

“It ranks right up there with everything,” Brown said about beating Drake to advance to the Final Four. “It was definitely a big moment.”

Stallworth said the Drake game was a battle.

“It was a lot of give and take,” Stallworth said. “We felt we were supposed to win, but they played us.”

And KU came on top.

“Everybody focused in,” Stallworth said. “To be one of the final teams out of all the teams in the country, you got to get there to understand what that accomplishment is. A lot of people don’t understand that. When a lot of people criticize Ted (for his coaching record), I know great coaches who’ve coached for 40 years and never been to the Final Four. We were there, 27-1, 21 straight victories and in the Final Four.”

Kansas next had a date with UCLA in the national semifinals, the No. 1 team in the land which had won six of the last seven NCAA titles and featured Henry Bibby, Curtis Rowe, Sidney Wicks and Steve Patterson. 

Both the Bruins and Jayhawks entered the game with 27-1 records.

Owens and his players couldn’t wait to take on Goliath. 

“I think every coach dreams about playing UCLA,” Owens said three days before the matchup, according to “The Crimson and Blue Handbook: Stories, Stats and Stuff about KU Basketball."

 

“Every time I’ve seen them on television, I’ve wondered how to play them.”

The players certainly weren’t in awe of legendary coach John Wooden’s Bruins.

“It was our belief that we could win,” Stallworth told Vance. “We thought we had the right kind of team and given the opportunity at the end, we would find a way. We had three seniors and two juniors in the lineup — guys that had been through the wars together. The mystique of UCLA didn’t bother us.”

Unfortunately, KU hit a setback when the Final Four’s opening game between Western Kentucky and Villanova went into two overtimes.

“We were ready to come out of the tunnel, the adrenaline was going,” Stallworth recalled about the first overtime. “We had to sit back down. (And then there was) another overtime. I thought we kind of lost our edge when we didn’t get to play right when that game ended and come on the court and had to sit out and get hyped and focused (again).”

KU, indeed, opened the game cold and was down by seven at halftime. While the Jayhawks rallied to tie the game, UCLA pulled away and won, 68-60. Robisch led KU with 17 points. The Bruins would go on to win the national title.

“It was an excellent team but it was a team that could be beaten,” Owens told Hendel. “We were behind and they had their famed full-court press. We full-court pressed them and tied the game. Then Dave Robisch hit a shot to put us two up but they called him for traveling, and it kind of cracked our momentum a little bit. I think we had them on the ropes.”

The questionable traveling call was definitely the turning point of the game. UCLA scored the next four points on goaltending calls by Brown.

“After that, we could never make up the difference,” Brown said. “A couple of bad calls here and there took us right out of it.”

KU’s cause was also hurt when Stallworth (12 points) suffered a leg injury just five minutes into the game.

“It just took a step away from what I wanted to do,” Stallworth said.

With their national championship dreams dashed, KU lost to Western Kentucky, 77-75, two days later in the Final Four consolation game.

Still, it was a magical season. Kansas went 27-3, winning the most regular-season games at that time in school history. Owens accomplished what he set out to do upon taking over for Harp in 1964 — restore the KU tradition and lead the Jayhawks to a Final Four.

Kansas would return again to the Final Four three years later in 1974. But it was that ‘70-71 team which put the Jayhawks back on the national map with one of the greatest teams in school history.

“That was great basketball,” Brown said. 

“We were awesome,” Stallworth added. “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.”