Farewell Spoon

Charlie Spoonhour passed away yesterday at 72 after two years of battling a major lung disease. Spoon was a unique character, part Hee Haw extra, part hero of the underdog, who first built Southwest Missouri into a regional power and then took St. Louis to previously unknown heights.

Spoon came out of an era that did not have mid majors or non-BCS-conference teams. There were just good basketball teams and before UCLA became dominant, schools like Cincinnati, Loyola and Texas Western won titles and even during the great Bruins run, squads like St. Bonaventure, Jacksonville and Memphis enjoyed great runs. Yes the Big Ten and ACC were powerful, and then the Big East emerged, but the less heralded had plenty of opportunity to shine. And so Spoonhour coached a combined 16 years at Southwest Mo (nee Missouri State)and then St. Louis and made those squads winners. At Southwest he went to five NCAA tournaments in his final six years (through 1992), upsetting 4th seeded Clemson in round one of the 1987 NCAA tournament before narrowly losing to eventual champion Kansas in round two. That squad was led by one of the finest players in school history, guard Winston Garland. Spoonhour then took over the awful St. Louis program, which won only five games in the year (1991-2) before he arrived. Although five players bolted the program, Spoon took what was left and taught them the combination that would bring success: check egos at door, play tough defense and shoot threes. The Billikens won 12 games in year one and then 23 in year two, becoming as popular (by 1997-98 they were ranked 6th nationally in attendance) as they were successful. Suddenly Spoon's famous turtlenecks became Midwest fashion statements. In 1994, in year two of the Spoonhour turnaround, St. Louis took 23 three pointers a game and hit enough to reach its first NCAA tournament in 27 years and in the following season's tourney upset Minnesota in round one before losing to top seeded Wake Forest by five points. The stars of that team, Erwin Claggett, Scott Highmark and H (yes, just H) Waldman were great lower round picks in those early years of the tournament stat league I help run. Claggett remains the second leading scorer in school history.

A few years later Spoonhour coached perhaps his finest player when St Louis native Larry Hughes stayed home to run the Billikens offense. Hughes scored 21 pts per game as a freshmen in leading St. Louis to an at large bid to the tournament. As a 10th seed, St. Louis knocked off UMass in round one before running into a team they could not match up with, eventual champion Kentucky. The Wildcats were basically a bigger, deeper and more talented St. Louis and so the Billikens were blown out of the tourney. Hughes then stunned Spoonhour and the community by bolting for the pros. Spoonhour then coached only one more season before temporarily retiring. In 2001 he went to UNLV for three solid but unspectacular seasons. The expectations were amped up for the fun-loving Spoonhour and "Spoonball" was not what Rebel fans wanted. He retired for good and became a popular speaker and broadcaster. His lifetime record in Division One (Spoon also coached juco ball before taking Southwest Missouri) was 373-202.

Unique, fun-loving coaches like Spoonhour do not seem to exist anymore. And that is a shame as his lessons of teamwork and remembering that basketball is just a game are more needed than ever.