Do you know the name Harry Statham? If you are a college basketball fan, you should know the McKendree legend
Harry Statham was waiting for Mike Krzyzewski on the day in 2015 when “Coach K” won his 1,000th game as a college basketball coach, when the Duke Blue Devils battled St. John’s on a Sunday afternoon at Madison Square Garden and pulled away for a double-digit victory. At that point, the men’s coaches who had achieved that milestone was a mighty select club. They were the only members.
If you’ve turned on a television in March at any point during the past 40 years, you certainly know who Krzyzewski is, even if you still have trouble spelling his name. Only a select few know Statham, even in the basketball community.
I surveyed a small group of basketball experts and asked if they recognized that name. None did. One wondered if I meant the actor Jason Statham, the British action star. Harry has been one of the college game’s titans for decades, and so few in the college game are aware of what he has achieved.
Among men’s basketball coaches, Statham was the only member of the 1,000-win club for a half-dozen years, now joined only by Coach K, Herb Magee of Philadelphia Textile, Danny Miles of Oregon Tech and Dave Holmquist of Biola. Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim will get there soon, though it’s taking longer than he planned given this season’s struggles.
In 2018, when Statham left his position at McKendree University in Illinois after 52 seasons in charge of the Bearcats, he stood as the career leader in victories with 1,122. Coach K passed him in February 2019 and has continued on for three more years.
“We all like those accolades for sure, those kind words, but you’ve got to understand in a game of competitive play, nobody is going to be on top forever,” Statham, 84, told Sporting News. “Somebody is always going to beat them. It’s going to be this year or next year or whenever. When I stopped coaching, I said, ‘Well, it’s going to be a matter of time now before somebody closes the gap.’ Well it couldn’t get any better than Coach K. He’s a great guy.”
Krzyzewski, deservedly so, is in every possible Hall of Fame associated with his achievements: the Duke Athletics Hall of Fame, the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame and the big one, the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. The guy he had to catch has been recognized by neither of the latter two.
There are 92 coaches enshrined in the Collegiate Basketball Hall. Some of them are household names, such as Bob Knight, John Thompson and John Wooden. Some are well known to those who know the game well, such as Pete Newell, John McLendon and Don Haskins. Some are relatively obscure, such as Eddie Hickey, who won the 1948 NIT Championship at Saint Louis, and Frank Keaney, who helped pioneer fastbreak basketball as the coach at Rhode Island. Only one of those honored, however, won as many games as Statham.
“I think I was shocked by how he was so humble, and also committed to every single athlete,” Rick Darnell, a former Statham assistant, told The Sporting News. “He really believes in fundamentals. His offseason program was medicine balls and running. And I thought that was overly simple. But I came from two programs that didn’t have much money, and he didn’t have much money. It was simple but effective. He’d been doing it for decades, and his kids were so well-conditioned.
“Every practice, he had 15 drills that he would do consistently. We did, almost every day, eight to 10 of those all the same. Within a few minutes, he would know how practice was going to go, and he’d get after it.”
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Statham was a senior in high school playing basketball at Brookport High in Illinois when the junior high coach was unable to handle his duties that season. The varsity coach asked Harry if he would mind taking over as junior high coach. That’s right, while he was also playing the game.
“I said, ‘Yeah, I guess so. I loved it,’” Statham said. “We had morning workouts for the junior high team, and we worked out for the high school in the afternoon. Those kids were great. I could still do a few things on the floor, so they were impressed. They listened, and they worked, and they hustled and so we got better and better and had a lot of fun.
“I thought: This is great. I think I’ll be a coach.”
In 1957, when a steel strike at an area mill cost him the opportunity to earn the money he would use to pay for college while enrolled at McKendree, a friend suggested he coach at O’Fallon Junior High and fill that financial void. He did that three years, graduated, then got a gig as a graduate assistant at Illinois. From there, it was five years of high school coaching on top of his three college years coaching junior high, all of that preparing him for the day when the head coaching position would open at his alma mater. He became the McKendree coach in 1966 with the idea of being there the rest of his life.
OK, not really.
“I thought I’d stay there a couple years and try to move up,” Statham said. “I got there, started a program, and just stayed. I learned in those first years of coaching in junior high – those kids just loved it. And they weren’t as enthusiastic in high school – it leveled off. They were all right, but not the same. “So I said: I’m going to choose my players, and the first thing I’m going to do is get good, high-character people. No. 2, I didn’t want anybody who wouldn’t make grades, because having your best player on the bench would hurt the team. And then No. 3, he had to be a player. We did that, and we had great kids. They played together. They were coachable. They were eligible. They played together, and got better and better.
“As time went on, I was getting better and better players. I was getting low D-I players. I’d say: Do you want to come and play for me and go to the NAIA Tournament? Or do you want to go D-I and ride the bench?”
Starting in the 1966-67 season, Statham coached McKendree during what could be considered the prime of the NAIA – the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics – before many of its programs joined the gold rush toward NCAA Division I. It was a time when the national tournament in Kansas City was a week-long celebration of the sport and its diversity, when such players as World B. Free, John Drew, Terry Porter and Slick Watts called the NAIA home.
Statham’s teams reached the NAIA championship tournament 15 times, the first in 1987-88, when the Bearcats won their opening 22 games of the season and finished with 35 victories, including the first-round tournament scorcher over Huron College of South Dakota that set a record for most combined points (the final score was 124-107) that stood for decades. He was inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame in 1998, was the NAIA Coach of the Year in 2001-02 and was the American Midwest Conference Coach of the Year eight times.
The peak of McKendree’s excellence under Statham came in 2002-03, when the Bearcats reached their only NAIA final four. They finished 34-4, were ranked No. 1 in the NAIA for the first and only time and entered the championship tournament as its No. 2 seed. Eventual champ Concordia University (Calif.) beat McKendree in the semifinals.
“Our first game, we’re trying to figure out each other. We’d worked together in practice; now it’s a chance to be in a game,” Darnell said. “What I was asked to focus on was the defense. And I’m a loud encourager. So I’m pretty boisterous. And he immediately, first game, said, ‘Stop. They know what to do.’ That was opening game, within the first minute or two. I even think that was an exhibition.
“As the season went on, I went from that first moment to then seeing how much he worked with his players and listened to them. ‘What are you guys seeing?’ And making adjustments.”
| Name | Wins | Losses | Seasons |
| 1. Mike Krzyzewski | 1,189 | 365 | 47 |
| 2. Herb Magee | 1,149 | 452 | 54 |
| 3. Harry Statham | 1,122 | 515 | 52 |
| 4. Danny Miles | 1,040 | 437 | 45 |
| 5. Dave Holmquist | 1,033 | 418 | 45 |
That was the year Justin Tatum joined what already was an exceptional roster. Tatum had been the second-leading scorer for the Billikens’ Conference USA championship team in 2000. At SLU, he was ineligible as a freshman but earned that season back by completing his degree; however, what was to be his senior season was ruined by injury, and his NCAA eligibility clock lapsed. If he wanted to play more, it would have to be at an NAIA program.
“It worked out in a good way,” said Tatum, who now is more famous as the father of NBA star Jayson Tatum. “It was quite a difference: the style, the talent, the luxuries, the amenities. It was all different, but McKendree was a really high-level, good place for the NAIA. They treated me well. The competition wasn’t as high as Division I, but the fan base, the support, was first-class.”
The top player on that 2002-03 team was a tall senior center named Matt Laur, who became the school’s career scoring leader with 2,874 points and was named NAIA All-American four times and the NAIA player of the year as a senior. Laur’s father had been one of Statham’s players in the early days at McKendree.
“It was awesome being a part of his first final four team. I knew the history coach had. In this day and age, coaches just don’t stay in one place that long, and they typically don’t have the success at one place that he was able to have. You look at a list of guys who have done things like that – Dean Smith, Coach K – he’s in pretty good company with coaches that are able to last that long.
“Obviously, we were extremely disappointed, in that we thought we could have won the thing for him, and I really wish we could have. But that year was a lot of fun. The chemistry was great, and Coach was a huge part of that. He’s an absolute mastermind at building a team.”
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If Statham had been looking to move on, to move up, there were opportunities. None of them moved him, figuratively or literally.
“Our school was getting better and better,” Statham said. “We’d had an old place to play, but we got a new gym. So I thought, ‘We’re doing well, we’ve got a nice place to play. I can’t really beat this. If I went somewhere and gambled, I might have a bad situation, have to start again.’ And I didn’t want to leave the kids. So I just kept going, and it kept getting better and better. I was happy.”
As he went along, he kept piling up successful seasons and adding to his career victories list. Dean Smith had retired from North Carolina in 1997 with 879 victories, just beyond the record established by Adolph Rupp. Statham passed them both in the 2003-04 season.
“To show you how much he is about team, when he passed Dean Smith to become the all-time wins leader – this is the true testament of how humble this coach and this man is – he had every student-athlete have a chair at the press conference,” Darnell said. “In several questions, he said: Why don’t you ask the players? They’re the ones that won the game.
“He just believed very much that everyone is a part of the team and everybody matters.”
That Statham has walked with all of these big names without becoming even a cult hero might be a product of his aversion to the spotlight, or it might be that he never made it all the way to the NAIA championship podium. It’s hard to understand, though, how the person who once was the winningest coach in all of men’s college basketball could be so casually dismissed on a national basis.
Even now, those who cherish him aren’t so much pushing for his induction to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame – which includes all levels of basketball all around the world – as the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. Located in Kansas City, it foremost is a shrine to the influence of coaches on the young men with whom they work. Darnell and others are hoping when the Hall gets around to forming its next class for induction, Statham will not be forgotten this time. He’s had a nomination form submitted on his behalf.
“He’s the gentleman of college basketball,” Darnell said. “I think he’s better than the best.”
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It is a rare December afternoon when Harry Statham and I speak by telephone. It is hotter than 70 degrees where Statham lives in Swansea, Ill., not far across the river from St. Louis, and he is toward the end of his daily 2-mile walk. He is on the junior high school track, obviously in the aftermath of exertion, when he fields my call. Though he will turn 85 in May, it is not an accident of the weather that finds him outdoors. He insists he’ll do this even when the weather turns frigid in the winter.
Since he left coaching, he has enjoyed an active life with his wife, Rose, including regular trips to Las Vegas and Hawaii and holidays often spent with his former players. The Stathams had no children, but that long list of McKendree basketball alumni has been the most wonderful family.
In September, a reunion of former Bearcats alumni was arranged that included scores of former players and coaches.
“Obviously, COVID put a strain on that. It was supposed to be done months and months before,” Laur said. “I wish it would have been during a time that wasn’t under a COVID fog, because I think there would have been a lot more people there. But it was unbelievable. There were guys that played in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s. And all of us have the same respect for Coach, and all of us are always happy to see Coach and Rose, both. A lot of stories were told.
“I told a few. One of them was when Coach and I both got named to the 75th NAIA all-tournament team. And we were talking to a guy from Life University, which was a perennial powerhouse when I played. They came to our place one year, and we beat them. And I brought that story up to the coach from Life, and he said, ‘I don’t think so. I think I’d remember. We didn’t lose many games.’ So I said, ‘Come on, Coach, back me up.’ And Coach didn’t say anything, said, ‘I’m not sure.’
“So I get back to my room and I’m Googling and, sure enough, I find it. We beat them very handily. I think it was 20-plus. That’s the kind of person Coach is. I know Coach knew we beat that team. But he’s just a humble guy.”
Statham never got around to officially retiring. The decision was made for him, after a difficult 2017-18 season that ended at 12-16. McKendree had chosen to leave the NAIA for NCAA Division II in the early 2010s and the transition proved difficult; it was a different level, and Statham had hoped to get more time to deal with it.
At the least, he wanted one more shot to try to go out a winner. He thought retiring after a rare losing season felt like quitting. He was offered the choice to retire or resign, opted for neither and so was out of a job the next day.
“That’s a tough topic. I was not happy,” Statham said. “I don’t want to be critical. I understand when you’re winning 35 games, 32 games for years and years and going to nationals and then you’re not winning those games, it’s different,” Statham said. “I told the president when he decided to go Division II, and we’re in the toughest league in Division II: You’re going to kill the basketball program. He went and did it, anyway.
“So we’re fighting and doing a good job, but we were a player or two short. Fighting that battle is where I was at the time.
“What I gave that school is loyalty and publicity and money. And just to say, ‘Tell me tomorrow if you’re going to resign or not’ – that’s not the way it should be done. I should have been called in, talked about that, had a year to plan and prepare and say, ‘If I don’t do it this year, that’ll be the end.’ It was a move not very smart on their part. I’m a little bitter. I can’t help but be that way.”
At the moment, he has resigned himself to being considered retired.
“Yeah, I guess,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m 84 years old. It would be hard to get another head job. So I’m retired. I’ve done well financially, so that’s not a problem.
“I get phone calls and letters and visits from my former players. They’re around a lot of places. They haven’t forgotten us. We haven’t forgotten them.”
Harry Statham should not be forgotten. He has done too much for the game, even if he did it all quietly.
