Tramel's ScissorTales: Oklahoma's strangest HS basketball game was Sumner-Coyle in 1964
Jim Dobson remembers the boos. The boos from the home crowd at Sumner High School, but even the boos from his own fans at Coyle.
“More people booing as we were getting back on the bus,” Dobson said. “Their fans were upset, our fans were upset.”
The root of the anger? A 2-0 basketball game.
Three weeks ago, the Weatherford boys beat Anadarko 4-2, and much of the state was outraged at the travesty of Anadarko stalling most of the game.
I don’t know how much angst swept the state in January 1964, after Sumner beat Coyle 2-0, but I know the emotions ran high that night in the crackerjack gym in Noble County.
More:Why do Oklahoma HS basketball coaches keep advocating for a shot clock? 'Change is good.'
The Monday ScissorTales look at the seasons-long slumps of OSU and OU basketball, salute the conference champion Southern Nazarene hoop teams, and ponder another idea on how to shorten college football games.
But we start with surely the lowest-scoring high school basketball game in state history.
Full disclosure. On Jan. 24, 1964, I was four days past my third birthday, and the Sumner superintendent was J.L. Tramel. Yep, my dad. We lived in a district-owned house on school grounds.
That old house burned down later that year, and we never moved back to Sumner. The school lasted just one year after.
But all my life, my dad had told me about Sumner’s 2-0 victory over Coyle. Then in 1993, Pond Creek-Hunter beat Frontier 5-2 in a stall-marred girls game. So I wrote a column about Sumner-Coyle.
That was 30 years ago, but Jim Dobson remembered. And a few weeks ago, on the concourse of Gallagher-Iba Arena before the OSU-Kansas game, a man walked up to me, introduced himself and hit me with the news.
“I played in the Coyle-Sumner game,” Jim Dobson said.
Dobson was a Coyle junior in 1964. Now he’s 76; still lives in Coyle, where he’s got a farm that backs up to the high school, and Dobson still teaches math at Guthrie High School.
The Sumner-Coyle game was 59 years ago. And Dobson remembers much of it still.
More:Tramel: A decade after iconic tornado photo, Hezekiah Darbon still hasn't met a stranger
Sumner sits 10 miles east of Perry and two miles north, about 17 miles north of Stillwater. Sumner’s post office opened in 1894. The town once had a bank, two churches, a grain elevator and a train stop. But the post office closed in 1957, and Sumner’s school consolidated with Morrison in 1965.
All that’s left of Sumner are some farms, two church buildings and lots of memories.
But in 1963-64, Sumner had itself a basketball team. Coach Jerry Reece — “quite a character," my dad told me years later — liked to play uptempo, reminsicent of then-OU coach Bob “Go-Go” Stevens.
Coyle beat Sumner at Coyle early in the season, and my dad always said the referees were lousy. I was 3; I can’t confirm.
Later in December, Sumner routed Coyle 78-52 in the 89er Conference Tournament at Orlando. That’s a lot of points for a 1964 farming community.
So the rubber match was set for Sumner’s quirky gym. Tiny. Bricks jutting up from the concrete floor. A crack in the surface near midcourt.
Dobson says Coyle didn’t go to Sumner with the intention of stalling, though my dad told me that the Coyle superintendent had warned him weeks earlier that a freeze might be in store.
Dobson said it was a strategic standoff: Sumner played a zone defense, and Coyle wanted Sumner to come out of the zone. Sumner never did.
“We get the (opening) tip, holding the ball past the midline, and they just stood there,” Dobson said. “No shot clock, no penetration rules, so the clock just ran down. All eight minutes.”
More:Who will win Super 5 girls basketball Player of the Year? These 10 stars make their cases.
Near the end of the first quarter, Coyle got the ball inside to Dobson, the team’s center. He shot and missed; 0-0 after one quarter.
The second quarter was a repeat. Dobson won the tip, Coyle held the ball, Dobson got a last-second shot and missed.
That’s when Dobson noticed even the Coyle fans booing, as the Bluejackets retreated to their locker room. He didn’t much blame them.
“Who would want to drive an hour and see that?” Dobson said.
The Coyle coach, Earl Smith, was new. A baseball man, fresh out of Central State University, and Dobson believes Smith left for the insurance business after two years. Dobson remembers Smith saying little in the Coyle halftime locker room.
To start the third quarter, Sumner controlled the tip, and Gary Voise scored. He eventually set a record that never will be broken — biggest percentage of a game’s points scored by one individual. One hundred percent.
Down 2-0, Coyle held the ball again. This time, someone else shot, other than Dobson. Another miss.
Fourth quarter, Coyle won the toss, held the ball, got it to Dobson as the clock wound down, he shot, he missed and this time thought he got fouled. But no whistle. Only a final buzzer, ending a 2-0 game.
The whole thing was surreal. Sumner clearly was a high-scoring team, but the previous night over at Crescent, Coyle itself had scored in the 80s.
“We had a pretty good team, but we weren't as good as Sumner,” Dobson said. “Sumner had a really good team that year.”
You wouldn’t know it from the Jan. 24, 1964, game. You wouldn’t know anything from a 2-0 game.
And almost 60 years later, Dobson still marvels at his role that night.
“I'm standing at the top of the free-throw line, just standing there,” he said. “Just waiting for them to come out and get us. They never did.”
More:Who will win Super 5 boys basketball Player of the Year? These 10 stars make their cases.
Big 12 rankings: OU, OSU struggles nothing new
OU beat Iowa State 61-50 Saturday in Ames, one of the most stunning results of the Big 12 basketball season. The Sooners were down 14-3 early, then dominated the rest of the way to place some balm on a rather disappointing season.
OSU lost 73-68 at home to Kansas State, sending the Cowboys straight back to the bubble, with a four-game losing streak after a five-game winning streak. The NCAA Tournament is in peril for the Cowboys.
And it’s time we step back and take a broader view of the Bedlam basketball rivals. We analyze games and we deconstruct seasons. But the basketball malaise at both OSU and OU is a long-running problem.
From Billy Tubbs’ second year through Kelvin Sampson’s 12 Sooner seasons, OU had two losing conference records in 25 years. Tubbs went 5-9 in 1991 and 6-8 in 1994.
In the 17 years since then, the Sooners have had just seven winning Big 12 years. And that’s courtesy of Lon Kruger’s rebuild. From 2013 through 2016 — Buddy Hield’s four seasons — Kruger’s teams went 11-7, 12-6, 12-6, 12-6. That kind of quality consistency is long gone.
Since Hield’s departure, OU’s only winning Big 12 record was 9-8 in 2021, and if the pandemic hadn’t canceled a game against Baylor, the Sooners might have finished 9-9.
But OU has been a powerhouse in the Big 12, compared to OSU.
Eddie Sutton had one losing season in 15 full conference seasons, 1991 through 2005. Since then, in 18 years, OSU has had four winning Big 12 seasons.
Travis Ford had back-to-back 9-7 seasons to open his eight-year run. The Cowboys went 13-5 with Marcus Smart in 2013, then 11-7 with Cade Cunningham in 2021. That latter year is Mike Boynton’s only winning Big 12 record.
Let’s get to the rankings:
More:Oklahoma State basketball's tailspin has Cowboys' 'backs against the wall' against Baylor
1. Kansas (12-4, 24-5): Jayhawks could be the first repeat NCAA champion since Billy Donovan’s Florida teams, 2006 and 2007.
2. Texas (11-5, 22-7): Some tout Longhorn interim coach Rodney Terry as a coach of the year candidate. I don’t buy it, but he’s done a heck of a job.
3. Kansas State (10-6, 22-7): Jerome Tang is your Big 12 coach of the year and maybe your national coach of the year, too.
4. Baylor (10-6, 21-8): Bears could finish strong — at OSU, home vs. Iowa State — but to retain any Big 12 title hopes, Baylor needs Texas Tech to win at Kansas on Tuesday night.
5. Texas Christian (9-7, 19-10): The Horned Frogs will have a good case for NCAA Tournament seeding, since the Horned Frogs were 1-5 without injured star Mike Miles. That’s 18-5 with him, and TCU is 2-1 since his return.
6. Iowa State (9-7, 17-11): Funny team. Routed Kansas in Ames, but lost to both OU and OSU at Hilton Coliseum.
7. Oklahoma State (7-9, 16-13): The Cowboys miss Avery Anderson, but it doesn’t look like he’ll be back.
8. West Virginia (5-11, 16-13): I don’t really understand the NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool) rankings. The Mountaineers are 26th in the NET. OSU is 46th. In the NET’s measurement of game quality, Quad 1 games are the best. OSU is 5-10 in Quad 1 games; WVU is 4-12. In Quad 2 games, OSU is 3-2, WVU is 5-1. In Quad 3 and 4 games, OSU is a combined 8-1, WVU is 7-0. So how are these teams, with identical records except the Cowboys are two games up in conference, 20 spots apart in the NET, with WVU on top? Does OSU’s 61-60 home loss to Southern Illinois back on Nov. 10 matter that much? The Salukis are 119th in the NET.
9. Texas Tech (5-11, 16-13): The Red Raiders might have squandered their hopes for an NCAA Tournament berth when they let TCU escape 83-82 Saturday.
10. Oklahoma (4-12, 14-15): The Sooners are Saturday specialists. On three of the last five Saturdays, OU has routed Alabama, lost in overtime at Texas and won at Iowa State.
More:How Austin Stogner orchestrated a return to OU football in under 24 hours
SNU sweeps Great American titles
The Southern Nazarene men’s basketball team was on the bus, en route to the 2020 NCAA Division II regional tournament in Maryville, Missouri, when Black Thursday struck. The night before, the Rudy Gobert Game hit in Oklahoma City, and less than 24 hours later, virtually every sport shut down.
The Crimson Storm hasn’t been back to the NCAAs since. But Southern Nazarene figures to return next week, and its women’s team could join them.
SNU’s squads swept the Great American Conference titles this season, becoming the first school since 2011 to win both the men’s and women’s titles.
The Great American Tournament starts Thursday at FireLake Arena in Shawnee. The SNU women play Southern Arkansas at 5:45 p.m. Thursday; the SNU men play Ouachita Baptist at 8 p.m. Thursday.
The semifinals are Saturday, with the championship games Sunday.
The Southern Nazarene women likely need to win the GAC Tournament to make the NCAA Division II national tournament. But Trent May’s team is 23-4 overall and has won 13 straight.
Adam Bohac’s SNU men seem assured of an NCAA berth. The Crimson Storm is 24-3 overall and has won 14 straight. The SNU men are ranked 13th nationally and are No. 3 in the Central Regional. Eight teams from each region make the D-II tournament.
“It’s been awesome,” Bohac said. “Had a great group. One of those kind of runs where it’s all kind of fell together.”
In this transient era of sports, on every level, how does a coach return his top 10 players?
SNU lost in the Great American Tournament finals a year ago, keeping the Storm from the NCAAs.
“The guys just kind of have an unfinished-business-type mindset,” Bohac said.
On top of that experience, SNU added freshman Javon Jackson, from Houston, who is averaging 15.3 points a game.
Other top SNU scorers are 6-foot-5 sophomore Tyler McGhie (17.3) from Denton, Texas; 6-9 junior Nick Davis (12.5) from Arlington, Texas; and 6-3 graduate student Adokiye Iyaye (10.5) from Putnam North. Bohac also has graduate students Manny Dixon from Trenton, New Jersey, and Mo Wilson, from Northwest Classen, both part of that 2020 season that ended on a bus.
“Losing in the conference championship game was disappointing,” Bohac said. “We had some wind-in-our-sails motivations this year.”
The Southern Nazarene women also finished 21-1 in the GAC.
The female Crimson Storm is led by 5-10 junior Georgia Adams (14.9 points per game); 5-8 senior Cassandra Awatt (13.5); 6-2 junior Hannah Giddey (11.6), who transferred from Oral Roberts and is the sister of Thunder star Josh Giddey; and 5-9 senior Emily Monaghan (9.9). Awatt is from Lubbock, Texas; the others are Australian.
This is the SNU women’s first GAC regular-season title, though the Storm won the 2021 conference tournament.
More:Tramel's ScissorTales: Will OU-Texas draw the large crowd Jennie Baranczyk is asking for?
Mailbag: Length of games
My ScissorTale on the length of college football games continues to resonate with fans.
David: “My wife does not like to sit in a stadium for the duration of many football games. I agree with your opinions for shortening game times. One thing I noticed on the PGA coverage was the ‘play-through commercials’ (think that's what they are called). At first, I didn't like them, but now I have gotten used to the idea and it does not bother me. Football is a completely different sport to watch but possibly some type of play-through in football broadcasts might help. It would not reduce my watching of college football games. Honestly, I record most games and fast forward through commercials. The play-through might force viewers like me to ‘accept’ commercials. I'm sure TV execs have toyed with similar ideas.”
Tramel: If not, they should. I, too, tape a bunch of games and fast forward through commercials. But I do less of that with golf, because of the play-through.
I’ve often wondered if sports would migrate to shorter commercial breaks. Instead of a three-minute break with five or six commercials, go to more 30-second commercials. More interruptions, but shorter in duration.
More:Tramel: A decade after iconic tornado photo, Hezekiah Darbon still hasn't met a stranger
The List: Big 12 scoring leaders
The Big 12 scoring leader is Kansas’ Jalen Wilson at 19.9 points a game — but Kansas State’s Markquis Nowell is the leader in conference games.
Big 12 play can make or break a player. Here are the conference’s top 15 scorers, based on Big 12 play:
1. Markquis Nowell, Kansas State, 19.8: Nowell is averaging 17.0 overall. Amazing. Nowell averaged 13.6 points a game in non-conference, an uptick of 6.2 points per game.
2. Jalen Wilson, Kansas, 18.8: Wilson is the Big 12’s leading scorer for all games, at 19.9.
3. Keyontae Johnson, Kansas State, 17.9: Johnson was a budding star at Florida when he was sidelined most of two full seasons by a heart condition. Now he’s better than ever, with excellent efficiency — .519 field-goal percentage, .409 3-point shooting.
4. Marcus Carr, Texas, 16.4: What a career. The sixth-year senior, who has played five full seasons, has scored 2,234 career points, across three schools.
5. Keyonte George, Baylor, 16.3: Quite a freshman season. Few freshmen score like this anymore, even the lottery picks.
6. Adam Flagler, Baylor, 15.8: Flagler made 48.5 percent of his non-conference 3-pointers, at a high volume, but has cooled way off in conference play.
7. De’Vion Harmon, Texas Tech, 14.8: Productive season, but not as efficient as he was at OU.
8. Gradey Dick, Kansas, 14.5: When conference play started, Dick was averaging 15.4 points and shooting 48.6 percent from deep. His production has mostly held, but he’s shot 37 percent on 3-pointer since.
9. L.J. Cryer, Baylor, 14.2: The Bears have three of the league’s top nine scorers. This one has made 47.6 percent of his 3-point shots in Big 12 games.
10. Grant Sherfield, OU, 14.2: When conference play started, Sherfield was averaging 18.0 points and shooting 56.5 percent on 3-pointers. Since then, he’s averaged 15.1 points and made 32.5 percent from deep.
11. Gabe Kalscheur, Iowa State, 14.1: Kalscheur was averaging just 9.5 points a game when conference play began.
12. Erik Stevenson, West Virginia, 13.6: The ultimate mercenary — averaged 11.1 points a game at Wichita State in 2019-20, 9.3 at Washington in 2020-21, 11.6 at South Carolina in 2021-22 and now 14.9 at WVU in 2022-23. Stevenson’s production in conference play has slipped some.
13. Sir’Jabari Rice, Texas, 13.6: Should be the Big 12’s sixth man of the year. No starts in the Longhorns’ 29 games.
14. Kalib Boone, OSU, 13.6: Another member of the stepped-up-his-game club; Boone was averaging just 9.5 when Big 12 play started on New Year’s Eve.
15. Kevin Obanor, Texas Tech, 12.9: Obanor’s scoring went up after Big 12 play began last season, but not this year.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma's strangest HS basketball game was Sumner vs. Coyle in 1964
