By Douglas Miles, For The Crimson Captain
There have been 89 men's basketball coaches inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.
Two more – Division-II wins leader Herb Magee of Thomas Jefferson University (Pa.) and recently-retired Duke legend Mike Krzyzewski – will be enshrined at a ceremony later this month.
If recent efforts by the University of Oklahoma and its men's basketball family are successful, the Sooners' all-time coaching wins leader (333) – the late Billy Tubbs – will be on the ballot for consideration for the 2024 class.
"Everything is ready," Tubbs' son and former player at Oklahoma, Tommy Tubbs, told The Crimson Captain. "I haven't taken this lightly. It has kind of become my mission to honor my dad and our programs and former players and administrators and staff and the fans. Yeah, it's a great honor for my dad and our family, but it is also a great honor for the institutions."
Submissions to the Hall of Fame – established by the National Association of Basketball Coaches in 2006 and located in Kansas City, Mo. – can only come from the schools. In support of his father's candidacy, Tommy Tubbs compiled 37 letters of recommendation from former Oklahoma players, journalists like Berry Tramel of The Oklahoman and a host of coaches such as Bill Self, Roy Williams, a pair of Tubbs' successors at Oklahoma in Kelvin Sampson and Lon Kruger and arguably Tubbs' chief Big 8 Conference rival from Missouri.
"I had a great conversation three weeks ago with Norm Stewart," said Tommy Tubbs, now 61. "We've had three or four conversations since and I wasn't sure what my reception would be like. I hadn't seen or talked to Coach Stewart in like 20 years. ... Once we got through the initial introduction, he told 30 minutes worth of stories and we belly-laughed for 30 minutes. It made my day."
The unlikely pair even discussed one of Billy's more memorable moments. Early in a 1989 Oklahoma-Missouri game – one
that Stewart missed due to illness – Tubbs commandeered the Lloyd Noble Center public-address announcer's microphone to implore the raucous crowd to refrain from throwing items on the floor, complete with a not-so-subtle jab at the game officials.
"Well, I've got to tell you. ... I get asked a thousand times a year about Billy taking that microphone,'" Stewart told Tommy. "I was in the hospital and when he did it, I wanted to come out of that bed."
Once all had been received, Tommy Tubbs submitted the recommendation letters to The University of Oklahoma Department of Athletics and received word on Thursday that everything had been collected and presented to the NABC ahead of Friday's deadline for 2024 consideration.
"Packet has been submitted," Tubbs declared. "Hopefully when they do receive our packet, that they do consider my dad."
The next step in the process is an Aug. 30 meeting of NABC board members, where Tubbs' candidacy would be discussed and if selected for nomination, he would be included on the 2024 ballot. After that, it would be up to a selection panel to vote him in.
It does not take extensive research to gauge Tubbs' worthiness for induction. The St. Louis native and Tulsa Central graduate ranks 42nd in Division-I history with 609 victories (at a .658 winning percentage) at Lamar (1976-80; 2003-06), Oklahoma (1980-94) and Texas Christian (1994-2002), three schools located in football hotbeds. He qualified for the NCAA tournament with all three and 12 times overall, including a stretch of eight-consecutive years (1983-90) with the Sooners that included four "Sweet 16s," two "Elite Eights" and an unforgettable 1988 charge into the Final Four and national championship game.
"He never was really at a place that basketball was considered first on campus," Tommy Tubbs said. "When he took the (Oklahoma) job, (Athletics Director) Wade Walker told him on April 1, 1980 when they hired him that, 'If you go .500 every year and stay out of the way of football, you've got a job the rest of your life.'"
Tubbs far exceeded those meager expectations. Only North Carolina won more games in the 1980s than Tubbs' Sooners, who were the top seed in the NCAA tournament a whopping four times (1985, 1988, 1989, 1990), won four Big 8 regular-season championships and three Big 8 Tournament titles with an inventive, aggressive, high-scoring, maximum-energy style of play – both offensively and defensively – that remains influential to this day and was affectionately known as "Billy Ball."
"He was just a pioneer in the game," said former Oklahoma standout Brent Price, who played for Tubbs from 1990-92 and was inducted into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame Monday night. "With the up-tempo style of game that everybody is playing now, especially in the NBA, he was one of the first coaches that really started pushing the ball up the court, getting up lots threes and trying to score a lot. He really came in with a new style of basketball. An exciting, fun style of basketball. ... Any pioneer of the game that has brought in something new and fresh, especially that catches on, should definitely be honored."
Brent Price and Billy Tubbs. (Photo by The University of Oklahoma)
That "exciting, fun style of basketball" attracted the greatest crop of elite scorers the program has ever seen. Of the top-six career scorers in Oklahoma history, five – Wayman Tisdale (2,661 points), Jeff Webster (2,281), Tim McCalister (2,275), Darryl Kennedy (2,097) and Stacey King (2,008) – played their entire career under Tubbs.
Tubbs and the Sooners were regular recipients of conference and national postseason awards. Tubbs was named Coach of the Year four times by the Big 8 and was a two-Time National Coach of the Year by Basketball Weekly (1983, 1985). Tisdale was an All-American and Big 8 Player of the Year in each of this three seasons (1983-85), while King was a two-time All-American (1988, 1989) and the 1989 Big 8 Player of the Year. Harvey Grant (1988) and Mookie Blaylock (1989) were also honored as All-Americans under Tubbs. Seventeen of his players were drafted by the NBA.
"He was a player's coach," King told The Crimson Captain. "The one thing I liked about Coach Tubbs was that he instilled in us to be who we are. Create your identity, be who you are, don't be who everybody thinks you should be. Create your own lane, basically. Everybody on our team had swag. He had swag. This was a guy that everybody loved to hate. No matter what arena he went into, they didn't just want to beat Billy's Sooners, they wanted to beat him. It was personal. Fans hated Billy Tubbs. Not to mention his teams were always putting a whooping on people. That even made it worse because he'd also tell you before he played that he was going to whoop you. He would just walk in and say, 'Yeah, we're going to beat you by 40.' And then we'd end up beating them by 50."
Tubbs' teams still possess nine NCAA records, including an incredible 97-point half against Division-I U.S. International in 1989 and a whopping 4,012 total points scored by the 1988 national runner-up team that finished with a 35-4 record.
Tubbs was diagnosed with a form of leukemia in 2015 and passed away on Nov. 1, 2020. While a nod from the NCBHOF would be a posthumous honor, his loving family, loyal players and devoted fans are eager to see him recognized in this manner.
"It would mean a lot," King said. "It's sad that he is not here to possibly have this honor bestowed on him. It's a shame, because he should have been in there a long time ago with the things that he has done. But better late than never because he's still got family. He's still got his wife, Pat Tubbs, (children) Tommy, Taylor, a bunch of grandkids and 'Sooner Nation.' He is one of ours. It would mean a lot to a lot of people to have him in there and I know that he is up there with Wayman Tisdale (dec. 2009), smiling down if that honor happens. But he definitely should be in there and hopefully we are able to get him in there."
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