Evaluating former Jayhawk great Darnell Valentine’s NBA legacy

Darnell Valentine was hailed for greatness early in his basketball career. Before his high school senior year, Five-Star director and basketball guru Howard Garfinkel simply said Valentine was the best guard he had ever seen in the camp history, even superior to stars Phil Sellers (Rutgers) and Butch Lee (Marquette).

The hosannas and rave reviews kept coming at Kansas, where he became a second-team All-American his senior year. Boston Celtics president Red Auerbach scouted Valentine during his sophomore year and thought he’d be a great pro, maybe even better than former KU and Celtic great Jo Jo White, who is enshrined in the Naismith Hall of Fame.

“Valentine is quicker than Jo Jo and he penetrates better,” Auerbach gushed to The Sporting News.

My dad and I, who were huge fans of D.V., were hoping Valentine could have an NBA career like White as soon as he was drafted with the No. 16 overall pick in the first round by the Portland Trail Blazers.

Blazers coach Jack Ramsay even thought Valentine was destined for stardom after his rookie season in 1982.

“Darnell Valentine may be the best point guard in the NBA, you’ll see,” Ramsay told Sports Illustrated.

Sadly, it never happened.

Valentine played well for Portland during his first four and half seasons, assuming the starting role in his second year. But Valentine’s skills didn’t ideally fit Ramsay’s extremely structured offense. Valentine didn’t have much freedom and Portland didn’t run the fast break enough, which was Valentine’s specialty.

He was also a below average outside shooter, although he could knock down the open jumper. Valentine, too, was not a great ballhandler, despite being a point guard, something then-KU coach Larry Brown talked about on his radio show.

But he was very quick with the ball and at his best penetrating the lane and either scoring a layup in traffic over big men or dishing to a teammate for an easy bucket.

And there were few better defensive guards than Valentine and any players who worked harder.

“He was a warrior,” Larry Drew told me years ago, who played against D.V. at Missouri and in the NBA, while also teammates with the Los Angeles Clippers.

"He's a fierce competitor," Ramsay added. “He never stops. He's never going to be outplayed."

Valentine was devoted to the game and also played selflessly in the pros, unlike at KU where he thought me-first and hurt the team at times by trying to do too much.

This all changed in the NBA, when Valentine likely had the revelation that he was no longer the best player on the team, and to have a long and successful career, he had to blend in as a role player, pass the ball and get his teammates involved like Jim Paxson, Calvin Natt, Mychal Thompson and later Clyde Drexler and Kiki Vandeweghe.

Ramsay paid Valentine the ultimate compliment when he said he “was perhaps the most self-disciplined player I ever dealt with ... (and) one of the best team players I ever coached.”

High praise, indeed, from the Hall of Fame coach.

Valentine had a rough break after four and half seasons with Portland when he played in obscurity for the futile Clippers for two and a half years before moving to Cleveland to finish his career. When he first became a Cav in 1988-89, I remember reading that Valentine — who was always known to have a big ego — said that he had never been around a guard and teammate in Mark Price who was so much better than him.

At that time, Valentine was in the twilight of his career, while Price made his first All-Star team in his third year. Price starred with averages of 18.9 points and 8.4 assists per game, while shooting 52.6 percent from the field and a scorching 44.1 percent from beyond the arc and 90.1 percent at the charity stripe.

Price’s career 40.2 percent marksmanship from three-point range ranks No. 37 all time, while his 6.7 assists per game ranks No. 30. Price was the far superior shooter to Valentine and also a better ballhandler. However, Valentine was quicker than Price, better at stealing the ball, and a more complete defensive player.

While he was no Mark Price and certainly no Jo Jo White — make no mistake — Valentine still had a solid NBA career during his nine seasons. To me, he ranks as the third-best former Jayhawk guard with the top NBA career behind White and Kirk Hinrich and the No. 11th-best former Jayhawk with the top NBA career overall (not countng current Jayhawks in the pros).

The 6-1 guard boasts career averages of 8.7 points (5,400), 5.0 assists (3,080), 2.1 rebounds (1,318), 1.5 steals (910), and 23.2 minutes in 620 games (345 starts). He shot 43.7 percent from the field, 26.1 percent from three-point range, and 78.7 percent at the free throw line. He always elevated his game in the playoffs with career averages during four postseasons of 12.0 points, 6.8 assists, 1.5 steals, 1.9 rebounds in 27.2 minutes per game over 26 contests. 

He shot 46.0 percent from the field, 50.0 percent from beyond the arc, and a sizzling 88.4 percent at the free throw line. His finest playoff performance came in 1984 in a five-game series loss to Phoenix in the first round, when Valentine starred with 18.4 points and 8.4 assists while shooting 50 percent from the field and and a blistering 91.4 percent at the free throw line in 35.6 minutes per game. He exploded for a game-high 29 points in a Game 3 loss to Phoenix and recorded 15 assists (tied for team playoff record) in a Game 2 loss to the Lakers in 1983. Valentine ranks No. 5  in Blazers history for career assists (161).

During the regular season, the former KU All-American scored a career-high 30 points versus Houston during the 1987-88 season with the Clippers, dished out a career-best 15 assists three times, had three games with eight steals, and four games with eight rebounds. He also posted a career-high 50 minutes in a triple overtime loss to Phoenix on Nov. 1, 1984 with the Blazers.

A tenacious defender with extremely quick feet and hands, Valentine ranks No. 90 all time in the NBA with 1.5 steals per game. He ranked No. 9 in the league in steals per game (1.9) during 1984-85 and No. 13 in total steals (143) that year. He also ranked No. 20 in total steals (122) in 1986-87. Valentine ranked in the top 20 in steal percentage during five seasons, including a career-best 3.6 (No. 5) in 1987-88.

Unlike at KU, he always thought pass first in the pros, ranking No. 15 in assists per game (7.0) during 1984-85 and No. 18 in total assists (522) that year. He ranked No. 17 in the NBA with 6.9 assists per game in 1986-87 and No. 20 in total assists (447) that season. He had three seasons where he ranked in the top 20 in assist percentage, including a career-best 37.3 (No. 6) in 1986-87.

I asked Valentine before his jersey retirement in Allen Fieldhouse on Jan. 1, 2005 how he felt about his NBA career. He was quite candid and didn’t seem to have regrets.

“I think it could have possibly been better, and it could have possibly been a lot worse,” Valentine replied. “I’m just thankful that it was what it was. I think I had some tough breaks. ... I’m proud of what I was able to accomplish.”

No, he never became an All-Star or averaged even 9.0 points per game over his career (career-high 12.5 ppg his second season), but Valentine made his mark with his outstanding defense and fierce work ethic, endearing himself to his coaches, teammates, and fans.

Lafayette Norwood, his close friend, mentor, high school coach and assistant at KU, thought Valentine caught a tough break by not catching on with the Chicago Bulls. Norwood actually told me several years ago that Chicago signed him to an offer sheet while Valentine was with the Clippers before the Clips matched it. But it was actually New Jersey which made the offer before the 1986-87 season. The Bulls, however, nearly traded for Valentine from Portland before the 1985-86 season, but the deal never happened.

“I thought that was the turning point in his life,” said Norwood, who added the Bulls didn’t have a point guard at the time. “I thought if the Bulls could have got him, he could have been able to experience some things I thought we had in mind at the beginning of his career. Chicago was in the process of beginning to evolve as far as being a championship final team. If he could have gone to Chicago, obviously with Michael (Jordan), he could have made that happen and become a critical (part to their success).”

As I wrote in a previous blog on D.V., Norwood thought Valentine could have elevated Jordan and his Bulls’ teammates’ games with his defense and become one of the best NBA point guards.

Still, like Valentine, Norwood was quite proud of what he was “able to accomplish” in the NBA.

“Oh, he had a great career,” Norwood said.

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.”

Former Jayhawk standout Rodger Bohnenstiehl make his mark as a scoring machine

Rodger Bohnenstiehl might not be a name the young KU fan knows about, but Rodger was one of the better players of his era and a member of the 1,000-point club. He was All-Big Eight in 1967, where he led KU in scoring at 16.4 points per game. The 6-6 scoring machine also set a Big Eight career record of 56.6 percent field goal shooting that stood for many years. He finished as the school’s No. 9 all-time leading scorer.

Bohnenstiehl was part of the great and memorable 1965-66 team as a sophomore, serving as backup to All-American center Walt Wesley as KU marched to the Midwest Regional final before losing to eventual NCAA champion Texas Western. KU went 23-4 that season and again the next year, where Rodger led the ‘Hawks to their second straight Big Eight championship and berth in the NCAA Tournament, where KU lost to Houston in the first round. He was even the leading scorer that season ahead of future Naismith Hall of Famer Jo Jo White, a sophomore who averaged 14.8 points per game.

Voice of the Jayhawks Tom Hedrick, someone I loved to listen to on the radio growing up and one of the most positive, kindest and genuine people I’ve ever met, called Rodger “The Machine” for his lethal turnaround jump shot. Hedrick also coined Bohnenstiehl “quick as a hiccup.”

I had a wonderful and memorable Where Are They Now? interview with Rodger in 2001 for Jayhawk Insider, where he talked openly about his recruitment to KU and how instrumental KU assistant Sam Miranda — a fellow Collinsville, Ill., native — was to luring him to Mount Oread. Rodger also spoke of practicing that sweet turnaround jump shot for endless hours in high school and his favorite memories of being a Jayhawk.

Thanks Rodger for the time you gave me. I will forever be grateful.

...

“This is what happened. I originally had visited the University of Missouri, Evansville and Indiana. Sam Miranda called me. He was in New Mexico. I flew out to New Mexico and I really liked it. While I was there, I signed a conference letter of intent because I liked Sam and I liked the school. When I got back home, my father got real ill, I mean really, really ill. My mother and I talked. We decided that was too far to go. It was two and a half hours by jet. She thought I should stay stay somewhere closer to home. So I was going to call Bob Vanatta, who was the head basketball coach at Missouri and ask him if the scholarship there was still good. While I was in the process of thinking about doing that, Sam Miranda called. He said, 'I’m leaving New Mexico and going to Kansas.’ I said, ‘Well, that's great Sam, because I’m not going to New Mexico either because my dad is very, very ill, and my mother wants me to stay close. I’m going to call Bob Vanatta and see if he’s still got a scholarship. He said, ’No you’re not. You come out to Kansas. I want you to see that before you do anything,’ so I flew out and fell in love with the place.’ This was like early June when I went out there, and there were a bunch of guys around there, Riney Lochmann, Wesley Unseld, and guys like that. I hung around with them. They were great guys, people I wanted to be with and a part of.

“In high school, that’s all I did was turnaround jump shots. It was quite an adjustment to play facing the basket. The offense that was designed put me in position where I could use the turnaround jump shot quite a bit. A lot of times, I’d get the opportunity to post up inside, and that’s where I was able to use it.”

“We had a guy when I was in high school named Bogey Redmond. My freshman year in high school, they won the state. They were 32-0. I kind of idolized him as a player.  He was 6-6 and 220, and I was about 6-6 and 180. He was kind of my idol. I always wanted to be like him, but better. I think in order to be a player, I think you got to have somebody that you kind of idolize. You got to kind of mimic after him. I didn’t like the pros.  At that time, there wasn’t any college basketball on TV, but it was on the radio. I used to listen to the Cincinnati Bearcats.

“As an eight grader, I was cut from the team, so I wasn’t go to try out as a freshman. I wasn’t going to get cut again. I was playing in PE, and Coach Fletcher asked if I was coming out for basketball. I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you come out and try it. If you like, you can stay, if you don’t, you can go ahead and go.’ So that’s how I got my start in basketball. I liked it, I stayed with it. He worked with me. We had some great teams there. We were 75-14 for three years in high school. It’s a lot like my college career. My sophomore year, we were ] 26-8, my  junior year we were 26-3 and lost in the super sectional, which was one game before state. My senior year, we were undefeated all year and lost in the super sectional by five points, just one game before state. I’ve always been close, but no cigar so to speak.

“I spent a lot of my time at the gym in the summer, a lot of time by myself practicing that shot. I go by and get the key from his (Coach Fletcher) house and practice it. I’d go by at 8 a.m. and get it, and give it back at noon. Every morning during the week. That’s the only way you get better is by working at it and working hard at it.”

Here is that 2001 Where Are They Now? story.

...

Rodger Bohnenstiehl’s jump shot didn’t exactly set the world on fire his eighth grade year in Collinsville, Ill. In fact, he was cut from the team and didn’t even plan on trying out again the following season.

 

Bohnenstiehl, however, had a change of heart when the basketball coach approached him one day in physical education class.

“Coach (Virgil) Fletcher asked if I was coming out for basketball,” Bohnenstiehl recalled recently from his home in Crete, Ill. “I told him, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you come out and try it. If you like it, you can stay. If you don’t, you can go ahead and go.’”

Bohnenstiehl stuck with the sport and eventually blossomed into a high school standout. He worked conscientiously with his coach after practice, as well as spending endless hours by himself each morning during the sweltering summer months perfecting his turnaround jump shot.

“I’d go by and get the key (to the gym) from his (Fletcher) house at 8 and give it back to him at noon,” Bohnenstiehl said.  “That’s the only way you get better is by working hard at it.”

Recruited by KU assistant coach and fellow Collinsville native Sam Miranda, Bohnenstiehl (6-6) brought his sweet turnaround jumper to Mount Oread in 1964. He substituted for All-American Walt Wesley at center his sophomore season (1965-66) before starting at forward his junior and senior campaigns. Bohnenstiehl, who was All-Big Eight as a junior (16.4 ppg) and finished his career as the No. 9-leading scorer in Jayhawk history (1,006 points), set a Big Eight field goal percentage record (56.6 percent) that stood for many years.

“Voice of the Jayhawks” Tom Hedrick was so enamored by Bohnenstiehl’s uncanny shooting accuracy and trademark jump shot that he nicknamed him “The Machine.” Hedrick coined he was “quick as a hiccup.”

“That (turnaround jumper) was the only way I could score because I played against people that were a lot bigger than I was,” Bohnenstiehl said. “You had to do something to get your shot off. I just tried to be as quick as I could. I wasn’t fast, but I was quick.”

Bohnenstiehl played an instrumental cog in some of the most successful years in KU basketball.  Kansas won two Big Eight championships and went 23-4 in both 1965-66 and 1966-67. The ‘66 squad with Wesley and Jo Jo White lost to Texas Western (eventual NCAA champs) in the Midwest Regional finals, while the ‘67 team got beat in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in Allen Fieldhouse. Bohnenstiehl led KU to the NIT finals in Madison Square Garden his senior year (22-8) before falling to Dayton.

“It seemed like even though we had a lot of success, we could never get the big one,” he said.  “We just came so close.”

Despite not winning the “big one,” Bohnenstiehl and his teammates enjoyed every second of the ride.

“We loved it,” he said. “It’s always great because teams were shooting for you and you know you had to be at your best. We went to some places like Oklahoma and Nebraska where it was just brutal. Nebraska had that small gym where the out-of-bounds lines were right at the bleachers. When you stood there and took the ball out of bounds, people would pull hair off your legs.”

After concluding a scintillating career in 1968, Bohnenstiehl was drafted by both New York (NBA) and the Pittsburgh Pipers (ABA). He made it to the Pipers’ last cut.

“I broke my nose and ring finger,” Bohnenstiehl said. “I guess it wasn’t to be.”

He then played AAU basketball in Lawrence before returning to native Illinois in 1970 and embarking on a high school teaching and coaching career. From 1985 to 1997, Bohnenstiehl served as head basketball coach at Rich South High School. Bohnenstiehl, who still teaches P.E. and driver’s education at Rich South, received great satisfaction from coaching and shaping young men.

“The biggest joy is watching kids improve and being able to put a team together and make it jell,” he said.

 “The Machine” certainly made remarkable improvement himself since those days of yesteryear when he was cut from his eighth grade basketball team. Bohnenstiehl is thankful his basketball skills and turnaround jump shot allowed him the opportunity to play at such a tradition rich university as Kansas, and treasures the lifetime friendships he built with teammates and coaches.  

Asked now about his feelings in breaking the 1,000-point barrier his final college game, Bohnenstiehl speaks from the heart.

“I wasn’t much for stats or watching how many points I scored,” he replied. “I just loved the game and tried to play it my hardest.”

A Closer Look at Rodger Bohnenstiehl:

Years at KU: 1964-68

Career Notables: All Big Eight in 1967 (led KU in scoring at 16.4 ppg)...Captain of ‘68 team...Paced KU in field goal percentage 1966-68 (set a Big Eight career record of 56.6 percent that stood for years)...Finished career as No. 9 all-time leading scorer.

Family: Wife, Gail, and children — Michael, 20, Katie, 17.

Education: 1969, B.S. Physical Education; 1991, M.S. Educational Administration (Governor’s State University in Illinois).

Since Leaving KU: Bohnenstiehl played AAU basketball in Lawrence before returning to native Illinois in 1970 and embarking on a high school teaching and coaching career. He taught and coached at four schools (Kankakee, Rich East, Bradley, and Rich South). In 1997, he quit his job (12 years) as head basketball coach at Rich South. 

Currently:  Bohnenstiehl lives in Crete, Ill., and teaches physical education and driver’s education at Rich South High School.

Hobbies: Handyman work, golf, painting.

Favorite Memories: The 1965-66 squad. “We had a lot of talent there. We had some depth. Things really jelled for us. It was just an outstanding year.”...Final home game on March 9, 1968 (Bohnenstiehl went 10-11 from the field as KU thrashed Iowa State, 91-58, in a nationally televised contest). “I had my family there.  It was something special.”

On The Jayhawks Today: “It’s fun to watch them. There are a lot of people in the area that know I went to Kansas. They watch the games, and we talk about them...He’s (Roy Williams) kept the tradition going. That’s not always easy to do, especially with the pressures.”

Former KU standout Ron Franz helped propel Jayhawks back to national prominence

.                                                         KU Libraries Digital Collection
Ron Franz was a rangy and rugged 6-7 forward from Kansas City, Kan., who was heavily recruited out of Ward High School. Attracted to the KU business school and wanting to stay close to home, Franz became a Jayhawk and was a three-year starter from 1964-67. He was a pivotal part of the rebirth of KU basketball, helping Kansas to a 63-16 record during his standout career, which included two Big Eight titles and three Big 8 Holiday Tournament championships. Franz was part of one of the greatest teams in KU history in 1965-66, when KU advanced to the Midwest Regional final and finished at 23-4. The Jayhawks were also 23-4 the following year, when Franz posted career highs with 12.4 points and 6.9 rebounds per game while serving as senior captain.

He finished his career with averages of 9.3 points and 6.0 rebounds while scoring 737 points. Franz remains grateful he helped KU return to national prominence.

“We brought KU back to where it had been,” Franz told me from his home in Germantown, Tenn., in 2001 for a Where Are They Now? interview for Jayhawk Insider. 

“Knowing I had some small part in KU coming back from when they were down and knowing we helped get it reestablished playing with some really good quality guys, that’s what I’ll remember. He (Ted Owens) came in when a time KU basketball was down, and he put it on a path again. He got the enthusiasm going again.”

After concluding his KU career, Franz played six years in they ABA and thrived in the up-tempo, fast-break style. He guarded the likes of Dr. J (Julius Erving), and even had some success against the future Hall of Famer.

“He was phenomenal,” Franz said. “I know he scored a lot on me, but I think I scored a few on him, too. ... Man, it (ABA) was a hoot. If they had cable then, it would have pushed the NBA off the map. It was the game they play now. The speed of the game was the ABA. It was an interesting league. You didn’t really know if your check was good every day. You took your check and ran to the bank right away to make sure it was good.”

In this blog, I recall Franz’s high school days, where he starred at Ward High School, his battles on the playgrounds playing against star players, and his recruitment to Kansas. I also republish my Where Are They now? story. It was a very enjoyable interview and something I will always remember.

...

“My senior year, they used to send the letters to the high school coaches, and then they would give them to you. I remember my coach at Ward High School, Bill Samuels. He said, ‘You got some letters here to go to some schools. I think they’re recruiting letters.’ I said, ‘Gosh coach, I can’t afford to go to those schools.’ He said, ‘Hello, they’ll give you a scholarship.’ I’m going, ‘What, to play basketball?’ (laughs). I actually was naive. I didn’t think someone would give you a scholarship to play basketball. That wasn’t anything you thought about. You didn’t have the media hype that you have with the kids today. We knew about some scholarships, but you just didn’t think you’d get a scholarship. I certainly didn’t think I’d ever have one offered. Heck, I didn’t even play basketball unil my junior year of high school. I suited up, let’s put it that way. And then the Lord made a really neat thing happen. He grew me. I went from like 6-0 to 6-4 in a little over a year. I went, ‘Ok, now I can play basketball.’ We went to the state tournament my junior year and I think that’s where I got noticed a little bit. Then, my senior year, other than the one young man named Lucious Allen at Wyandotte, we had a very good team. When you have a good team, you obviously get looked at. My senior year, I think I was the leading scorer in the Kansas City area. No, they had a guy named Bob Bowers over at Rockhurst. I think he beat me. He went to Colorado. When you get that kind of notoriety and all of that, then you get people trying to recruit you, that was something I didn’t realize was available until my senior year. I finally realized, ‘Shoot, this is a good deal. Let me score a lot of points and see where I can go.’ (laughs).

"I played a little at the CYO. When I went to Ward, I was on the freshman team, but didn’t play. When I was a sophomore, I was on the JV team, but didn’t play. I grew that summer and started as a junior. When you got a guy who’s 6-4 at that time, that was pretty big for that era. By my senior year, I was 6-5. And by my freshman year at KU, I was 6-7. And by my sophomore year, I was, unfortunately only 3/4 more of an inch, a little under 6-8, and it just stopped. I really didn’t play until my junior year.

“Kansas City wasn’t really known for any great basketball players at that particular time frame when I grew up. There was a guy from my high school that played professional baseball named Ray Sadecki. He pitched for the Cardinals. As far as basketball was concerned, there were some guys that I know that I watched play over at Wyandotte. Harry Gibson, a friend of mine that was a captain of the KU team my senior year. He was about three years older than I was. The Ellison boys, Nolen Ellison, they played at KU. Wyandotte High School was the best high school program in Kansas. They had a coach named Walt Shublom. He’s still alive, and I saw him last when I was up at KU. He lived up the street from Mark Twain School in Minnesota Avenue or whatever the case might have been. All of the people would go there in the summer time and play on the asphalt. That’s where I really learned to play. I played against these guys from Wyandotte High school. There would be guys from Missouri that would come over. Warren Armstrong played at Central. His name in the old ABA was Warren Jabali. He played down at Wichita State. He’d bring his crew over there in the summer time and we’d play until it got dark. That’s really where I learned the game was on the playground there on the asphalt, sort of like being in the inner city. The brothers would come over and we’d just play. In that particular time frame, that was unusual for black and whites playing together. You just didn’t have a lot of that. You’d have a black school that would play a white school, but you didn’t have too many guys that would be on the playground playing on the same team with each other. I think that’s where my game developed, playing with these guys in the summer time before my junior year, and before my senior year. Of course, in the summer time after that, we’d play there, even when were were all in college. Or we’d used to play over at Rockhurst college. They used to have a summer league thing that we’d play at. 

"As far as remembering anybody as far as basketball was concerned, they had an old ABL team called the Kansas City Steers, and they had a guy named Bill Bridges who played at Kansas. He was pretty unique in the fact for his size, he was probably one of the toughest rebounders. He played in the NBA for quite a few years. I guess if anybody that I would recall or remember or think about in that particular time frame, it probably would have been him because I did go to the old Kansas City Steers game. He was an interesting player."

Franz talked about Sports Illustrated interviewing him about the “horrors of recruiting.”

“I was being recruited by K-State, which was very good then and (head coach) Tex Winter. I had already been to Michigan, Notre Dame, Michigan State, Colorado, I think I got letters from 50 or 60 schools — small and large. Notre Dame, of course, as a good catholic boy, you had to go to Notre Dame or the nuns wouldn’t let you back in school. Then I went out to Colorado. They were good. They had just won the Big 8 then. Any way, I was going to go out to dinner with coach Winter, and he asked if they could bring a SI guy to dinner named Frank Deford. You have to remember, I didn’t know you could get a scholarship to play basketball I was that naive. By about the fourth trip and the offers of free airline and free this and free that, I’m going, ‘Hum, something’s interesting there.’ I thought this was just another guy for a recruiting thing. I went, ‘Sure, yeah, bring him along.’ So I met him and we went to the Golden Ox and had dinner. At the end of the night, they dropped me off, my mother and myself at my house. Tex, which I still have to this day, gave me an autographed, it may be worth something, the triple post offense. ...That fall, somebody came in the athletic dorm (at KU), it use to be JRP. The guy says, ‘Hey you’re in SI.’ I went,’Yeah, right.’ He goes, ‘No, you’re in SI.’ It was probably in October or November of ‘63. What it was, they did a thing on recruiting, I think with four people across the country, and I was one of them. He was just talking about how K-State was recruiting me. He wasn’t talking about the other schools and what their recruiting tactics were. Lord knows what these kids go through now. I mean, it’s just got to be phenomenal. Plus these AAU guys who have their handouts for everything. In my particular time, it was just a lot of phone calls and letters. And of course, alumni could contact you. They’d show up at games. They’d come by the house. You’d get covered up with people who were alumni of the various schools that were recruiting you. They were calling you, coming up to the games, dropping by the house, seeing if you needed anything. They cleaned that up and got the alumni out. It was an interesting article. I got it around here in one of my things somewhere. It’s always interesting to kind of pop out.

“Actually, (KU) did a damn good recruiting job on my family. Mr. (Roy) Edwards, a fine man, one of the finest families I ever had the pleasure to come across, an avid KU man. At that time, KU basketball was down. K-State basketball was big. Colorado basketball was big. Michigan basketball was big. Kansas basketball was going down the tubes. I guess it was the proximity for one thing, I just didn’t want to be that far away from home. I had a good family support group. Again, KU recruited my family very well. I went up for one weekend on my own. I enjoyed it. I liked the campus. I think one of the first things I was impressed by the fact, my recruiting weekend, of course, it also happened at K-State. They took me, the first thing they did, they took me to the business school, which was what I wanted to major in. I thought that was pretty good because the other schools, that was a secondary thing. When I went to Michigan State, I was interested in hotel management, and they were one of the only schools in the country at that time that had a hotel management school. That was like later, the primary thing was basketball. (At) KU, Keith Wetmore was my advisor and he was a gentleman. We met at the B-School. He took me around the B-School. I thought that was pretty cool, because that’s what I wanted to major in, and that’s what I was going to school for, to get a degree and play basketball. Not to play basketball and hopefully get a degree. That was something. All the guys I played with got a degree. I got a call from coach Winter when I announced I was signing with Kansas. He called and wished me the best of luck, and was sorry that I didn’t go to Kansas Sate. And he would try everything he could to show that I should have gone to Kansas State. I think we were 6-1 against them my three years. I thought that was really classy of him, too.” 

Here is my Where Are They Now? story on Franz from 2001 in Jayhawk Insider.

...

Ron Franz still gets chills when recalling one of the most thrilling moments of his life. It was the 100th-year anniversary reunion of Kansas basketball on Feb. 7, 1998. Franz was back in Allen Fieldhouse playing the game he loved with former teammates and legends from yesteryear.

“You went out on the court, and it was like time had stood still,” Franz said. “The place was sold out. When you started to warm up, 30 years had passed but it just didn’t seem like that. The band was playing. People were cheering. You saw some of the old guys not only on the floor, but in the stands. That was probably one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.”

For Franz, it was an opportunity to relive his glory days. A rugged and rangy 6-7 forward from Kansas City, Kan., Franz played a prominent role in the rebirth of Kansas basketball in the mid-1960s. Franz was a three-year starter who shined on teams that went 63-16 from 1964 to 1967. In the three preceding years, KU stumbled to a 32-43 record under Dick Harp. With coach Ted Owens taking over in 1964, Franz was a part of  two Big Eight championships and three-time winners of the Big Eight Holiday Tournament. Moreover, KU advanced to the Midwest Regional Finals in 1966, and was ranked in the top four during the 1965-66 and 1966-67 seasons.

“We brought KU back to where it had been,” Franz said recently from his home in Germantown, Tenn. “Knowing I had some small part in KU coming back from when they were down and knowing we helped get it reestablished playing with some really good quality guys, that’s what I’ll remember. He (Owens) came in when a time KU basketball was down, and he put it on a path again. He got the enthusiasm going again.”

Franz has especially fond memories of the 1965-66 team (23-4) that lost in double overtime to Texas Western in the Midwest Regional finals. With guard Jo Jo White joining the team at mid-semester, KU became one of the elite squads in college basketball. Joining White and Franz (9.6 ppg) were All-American center Walt Wesley, crafty point guard Del Lewis and second-leading scorer Al Lopes.

“That was probably one of the better teams that Kansas has had in its history,” Franz said.  “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. ... Coach Haskins (of Texas Western, which eventually went on to win the NCAA title) said that was the toughest game (against KU) they played all year.”

Franz said White added a lethal dimension of speed and quickness to a balanced and patterned KU offense.

“He was very quick, very agile,” Franz said. “He brought a fluidness to the game that we probably hadn’t had prior to that. ...We got up and down the floor. We ran a pretty doggone good fast break. He created the speed that we needed. We were all pretty fast guys.”

Franz was both fast and tough. He demonstrated a physical presence who played the game with high energy and passion.

“I was the guy that did the dirty work so to speak,” Franz said. “If I could kind of push you out of bounds and not get caught, I kind of liked it.”

 

A senior captain in 1966-67 (KU went 23-4 again), Franz led Kansas in rebounding (6.9 rpg) that season and finished third in scoring (12.4 ppg). Franz, who had been accepted into KU Law School, said he had no illusions of playing professional basketball. After playing in a postseason All-Star game in Albuquerque, N.M., Boston Celtics coach Bill Russell asked Franz if he was interested in playing in the NBA.

“I went, ‘Huh,’ Franz said. “That was not a job or career then. Those guys weren’t getting paid anything.  It was nothing I was concerned about.”

Franz was eventually drafted by both the NBA’s Detroit Pistons and ABA’s Oakland Oaks. After negotiating a lucrative $16,000 contract, Franz had a change of heart about professional basketball and joined the Oaks. He played just one season in Oakland before he and Steve Jones were traded to New Orleans for Larry Brown (future KU basketball coach and current head man of Philadelphia 76ers) and Doug Moe.

“I can always get tickets from Larry. That’s always good for a free something with Larry if I say, ‘Do you really want people to know I got traded for you? How many tickets can I get?’” Franz said, laughing.

In all, Franz played six seasons in the ABA for Oakland, New Orleans, Floridians, Memphis and Dallas. Franz, who thrived in the fast paced, open-court game of the freewheeling ABA (career averages of 11.7 points and 5.3 rebounds), loved playing against such superstars as Julius Erving and Rick Barry.

“He (Dr. J) was phenomenal,” Franz said. “I know he scored a lot on me, but I think I scored a few on him, too. ... Man, it (ABA) was a hoot. If they had cable then, it would have pushed the NBA off the map. It was the game they play now. The speed of the game was the ABA. It was an interesting league. You didn’t really know if your check was good every day. You took your check and ran to the bank right away to make sure it was good.”

After concluding his ABA career with Dallas in 1973, Franz played a year in Europe before opening his own home building contracting business (R.S. Franz Construction) in Memphis, Tenn. Franz builds large custom homes in Tennessee, Florida and Arkansas.

 

“I sell dreams,” he said. “That’s a dream house. That’s what I do. I try to fulfill the dream that they have of the house that they want. ...Wherever they want me to build, that’s where I go and build.”

Franz says he has no regrets about not going to Law School after graduating from KU in 1967.

“I’m able to do something that I enjoy,” he said.  “Every house that  I do, that’s a part of me in that house. ... I met a lot of wonderful people through basketball and still have continuing relationships with those people from basketball as well as the building business I’ve been in for 30 years. It’s something the Lord has blessed me with. I’ve been very fortunate.”

Franz feels blessed to be a Jayhawk as well. He remains in awe of the 100th-year anniversary reunion of Kansas basketball in 1998 and talking to such childhood heroes as B.H. Born and Clyde Lovellette.

“It was a neat, neat deal,” Franz said. “KU basketball is very special in my heart and I know to all the guys that I played with in my era. We’d all like to put our shorts on and play again.”

A Closer Look at Ron Franz:

Years at KU: 1963-67

Career Notables: Three-year starter...Captain of 1966-67 team and led squad in rebounding (6.9 rpg)...Career-best 23 points and 17 rebounds vs. K-State on Feb. 20, 1965.

Family: Wife, Georgia, and two daughters — Tara, 30, and Shawna, 28.

Education: 1967. B.S, Business Administration.

Since Leaving KU: Franz spent six seasons in the ABA and one year in Europe before opening his own home building contracting business in Memphis, Tenn.

Currently: Franz is the owner of R.S. Franz LLC. Construction.

Hobbies: Golf and following Kansas basketball.

Favorite Memories: “I think it was the camaraderie of all the guys that I played with and how I’m still in touch with all of them. ... Every one of those guys that I played with, they may not have got their degree in four years, but they got their degree. That’s what you went to school for.”...Beating K-State seven out of eight games. “In that particular era, that was THE game because both teams had a lot Kansas natives on the team.”  

On the Jayhawks Today: “He (Roy Williams) gets young men that represent the university..."

 supposed to be about. He’s somebody that I respect and I think all the former players respect. He’s brought quality to the program and quality to the university.”

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.”

Sam Miranda was one of the best assistant coaches in KU basketball history

I had the good fortune to interview former KU assistant coach Sam Miranda in 2000 for a Where Are They Now? story for Jayhawk Insider. We had a wonderful conversation as Miranda mesmerized me with stories of recruiting the likes of Jo Jo White, Rick Suttle, Dave Robisch and Tom Kivisto.

A Collinsville, Ill., native and former standout guard at Indiana who was inducted as a player into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame in 1973, Miranda was responsible for recruiting the Illinois pipeline. Seven of the eight top players on the 1974 Final Four team hailed from Illinois, my heroes like Suttle, Kivisto, Roger Morningstar, Dale Greenleee and Norm Cook.

Miranda, who served for 13 years as KU head coach Ted Owens’ loyal assistant and was part of two Final Fours and five Big Eight championships, was voted by a Jayhawk blue-ribbon panel in 2000 as the best assistant coach in KU history, an honor that deeply humbled him.

“There’s been a lot of fine, fine coaches, and whoever that panel was, I appreciate their thoughtfulness very much,” he said. “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.”

I was very saddened when he passed at age 78 in 2009 and thought of him constantly. However, I also felt some comfort knowing I got a chance to interview him and hear his favorite KU memories and how his life turned out during our talk in 2000. I still have very fond memories about our interview. 

Sam was a very demanding and tough coach, but his players deeply loved and respected him. Miranda cherished the lifelong relationships he built with his players, including White.

After his jersey retirement ceremony at Allen Fieldhouse in 2003, where Miranda and Owens stood next to Jo Jo at midcourt as White’s No. 15 jersey was unfurled in the rafters, I asked Jo Jo how he felt about Sam and Ted.

“Ted is like a second father to me, he and coach Miranda,” White told me. “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 mentioned Miranda at his Hall of Fame induction in Springfield, Mass., in 2015 as being a very influential figure for him at KU, along with Owens.

In this two-part series, I first recall my Where Are They Now? story on Miranda in 2000. Then, in Part II, I will include my heartfelt tribute story about him when he passed in 2009.

Sam, thanks for the memories and recruiting so many of my childhood heroes, players that brought me so much joy and wonder growing up in Lawrence and attending KU games with my dad with our season tickets since 1973 before I began covering KU hoops in 1998 for 20 years.

...

When Sam Miranda became the assistant basketball coach at Kansas in 1964, he soon made a call to a high school coach in St. Louis, Mo.

“I asked him, ‘Who do you think is the best player in St. Louis?’  He said, ‘Sam, the best player in St. Louis by far is Jo Jo White. You don’t even have to see him. If you can can get him, take him.’”

Miranda immediately launched a recruiting blitz on this phenom guard from McKinley High School. He called White three or four times a week and visited his family at home in the summer.

“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 (White’s high school coach) was sitting there and he said, ‘Jo Jo, that sounds good to me.’ And that was it. That kind of sealed it.”

White, of course, eventually signed with Kansas and became arguably the best guard in Big Eight history. For Miranda, he was just  beginning. Throughout his 13-year tenure as Ted Owens’ top assistant and chief recruiter, Miranda was instrumental in signing countless high school standouts. Names like Rodger Bohnenstiehl, Dave Robisch, Tom Kivisto, Roger Morningstar and Rick Suttle still dance in his mind.

A native of Collinsville, Ill., Miranda had especially good success recruiting in the Illinois and St. Louis area (seven of the top eight players on the 1974 Final Four team hailed from Illinois).  

“I enjoyed recruiting,” Miranda said recently from his home in Lawrence, Kan. “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.’”

 

Regarded as one of the most honest, knowledgeable, and talented assistants in the collegiate ranks, Miranda was recently selected by a blue-ribbon Jayhawk panel as the top assistant coach in Kansas history.  

 

“There’s been a lot of fine, fine coaches, and whoever that panel was, I appreciate their thoughtfulness very much,” he said. “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 has many warm feelings about his KU days, including the great 1966 team. He can’t possibly forget the NCAA tournament regional finals that year against Texas Western, when the officials ruled that White had stepped out of bounds just before a game-winning shot in OT.

“I don’t know if KU’s ever had a better team,” Miranda said. “We had four or five guys who played NBA and ABA (White, Walt Wesley. Riney Lochmann, Ron Franz and Bobby Wilson). The ones who didn’t — Bohnenstiehl, Delvy Lewis and Al Lopes — were all outstanding college players. I honestly believe we would have won the national championship.”

After the 1976-77 season and 23 years in the coaching profession (eight in high school and 15 at the college level), Miranda left KU and went to work for Maupintour Travel. He was an outside sales manager for 17 years before retiring in 1994. 

Miranda admits now that he might have erred in not going after a couple head-coaching positions during his tenure at KU.

“You got to do what you think is right at the time,” he said. “I just thought at the time I would stay at KU. It was probably a mistake.”

However, Miranda loved his job at Maupintour and is at peace with himself living in Lawrence with his wife, Polly.  

“It’s been a very satisfying life,” he said. 

It’s a life made richer with the lasting relationships built with so many former players that he recruited to Mount Oread. Miranda’s voice becomes more lively now as he reflects back to the late 1960s and his recruitment of Robisch, a standout center from Springfield, Ill. who had just broken all of the scoring records in the Illinois state tournament. 

“Everybody in the country wanted him,” Miranda said. “We (Miranda and Owens) go back to see him just to make sure we’re in the picture, still fighting for him. So we sit down and visit quite a while. His dad, who was a Lutheran minister, said, ‘Coach, I’m going to excuse ourselves. Dave and I are going to go out on the back porch and talk a little bit. We’ll be right back.’ They came back in 10 minutes or so and his dad says, ‘Well, Dave and I have talked, and we’ve decided he’s going to come to Kansas.’” You could have knocked us over with a feather because we’re back there just to stay in the picture, and he commits that night!”

And Miranda’s reaction that moment?

“We felt pretty darn good about it, naturally,” Miranda said, laughing. “We kept our composure and congratulated him.”

A Closer Look at Sam Miranda:

Years at KU: 1964-1977

Career Notables: Member of two Final Fours and five conference championships...instrumental in recruiting the Illinois and St. Louis area pipeline...selected best assistant coach in KU history by blue-ribbon Jayhawk panel.

Family: Miranda and his wife, Polly, have four daughters (Joanna, Sueanna, Sarah, and Laurie) and seven grandchildren.

Education: 1952, B.S. Physical Education, Indiana University (Miranda earned second-team All-Big 10 basketball honors as a junior and was a member of the College All-Star team his senior year in its annual tour against the Harlem Globetrotters). 1956, M.S. Education, Southern Illinois.

Since Leaving KU: Miranda worked for Maupintour Travel for 17 years as an outside sales manager before retiring in 1994.

Currently: Miranda is retired and lives in Lawrence.

Hobbies: tennis, yard work, and spending time with grandchildren.

Favorite KU Memories: 1966 squad and 1971 and ‘74 Final Four teams...Whipping No. 4 Long Beach State at halftime, 32-8, on Dec. 1, 1970 (KU won 69-52). “They couldn’t even get a shot off...The crowd was screaming and yelling. We just played tremendous.”

On the Jayhawks Today: “I think they’re outstanding. Roy Williams does a fabulous job. He’s probably the best coach Kansas has ever had — on and off the floor.”