No school dominated Texas basketball like Bowie High School in the 1950s. During that decade, the Bowie Jackrabbits won four Texas High School crowns and reached the title game in Austin twice more. The centerpiece of those great Bowie teams was 6’11” Temple Tucker (uncle of Austin College Kangaroo Margaret McMahen!), who later earned All-American honors for Rice University alongside future Los Angeles Laker great Wilt Chamberlain. The last Bowie title game appearance for Bowie took place in 1959.
1959 was a pretty good year for Austin College men’s basketball too. The 1958 NAIA District 8 champion Kangaroos were looking for a repeat in 1959, alongside another trip to the NAIA national tournament in Kansas City. Led by guard Gayno Shelton, the Roos earned that repeat while defeating much larger schools such as Sam Houston State and Stephen F. Austin along the way. In the District 8 tournament, AC topped Texas Lutheran and Midwestern State to win the crown and the trip to Kansas City. The Roo season ended with a loss to Minnesota-Duluth at the 1959 NAIA tournament.
Your 1959 NAIA tournament MVP was guard Dick Barnett of Tennessee State, who led his Tigers to the title. Barnett would later lead the New York Knicks to the 1970 NBA title. The 1970 Knicks season came down to a deciding Game #7 of the NBA Finals against Wilt Chamberlain and the Los Angeles Lakers, and an injured Knicks Center Willis Reed was doubtful. But Reed miraculously emerged from the Madison Square Garden tunnel before tipoff, scored the game’s first two buckets (the second off of a Barnett assist), and inspired his teammates to victory. Walt Frazier led the Knicks with 36 points. Dick Barnett finished right behind Frazier with 21 points. Injured Willis Reed’s Game #7 heroics are NBA lore.
As Frazier, Barnett & Reed were leading the Knicks to victory in 1970, Gayno Shelton was reloading the basketball program at Bowie (TX) High School as their new head coach. Hired in 1965, Shelton had molded a true champion by 1974. His Jackrabbit squad was full of the sons of the great Bowie teams of the 1950s; they marched through district and regionals to earn a trip to the state tournament in Austin on the University of Texas campus. With a defeat of Friona HS at Gregory Gym, Shelton & the Jackrabbits earned Bowie HS their 5th state crown. From the Austin American Statesman:
“Lead by what seemed to be a generation, the Bowie Jackrabbits kept the Class AA state championship all in the family and they did it with a team that includes three players whose fathers were on the Bowie championship clubs [from the 1950s]. ‘Those fathers have been nothing but help,’ Bowie coach Gayno Shelton said. ‘It was about time we got another championship.’”
Shelton retired from Bowie HS basketball in 1990, after a quarter century of devotion to the program. 621 coaching wins (against just 249 losses) made Shelton one of the most successful basketball coaches in the state. His accomplishments were numerous: 15 district championships, 18 playoff appearances, 11 regional tournament showings, 3 state tournament appearances, and the one state title in 1974. His accolades were equally impressive: The Texas High School Coaches Association (THSCA) Hall of Fame, the Texas High School Basketball Hall of Fame, the Austin College Joe Spencer Award for Meritorious Service and Lifetime Achievement in Coaching, and of course the Austin College Athletic Hall of Honor.
Willis Reed, the iconic Knicks star who played alongside 1959 NAIA tournament MVP Dick Barnett, passed this week. Gayno Shelton, the Kangaroo who played in the 1959 NAIA tournament that featured MVP Dick Barnett, also passed this week. The New York Times wrote a wonderful article about Reed, while Gayno Shelton’s daughter Jarae Scruggs wrote a wonderful obituary about her father. See the comments. That obit came to my attention after being shared by Claude Webb Jr., whose favorite player & team as a kid was Walt Frazier & the 1970 New York Knicks and who also coached a small Bowie-like school in north Texas (Melissa HS) to the state tournament in Austin.
The Wichita Falls Times Record said it best in March of 2018 about little Bowie, TX: “Jackrabbit basketball? It’s a Bowie Thing. ‘It’s just a tradition,’ said Todd Airington, a lifetime Bowie resident with deep roots in the basketball program. ‘I think it goes all the way back to when they won the championships in the 1950s. It’s small-town basketball. The community loves it.’” Just weeks after that 2018 article was written, Bowie HS won its 6th basketball state title in the Alamodome. I’m betting Coach Shelton was there.
An Austin College Kangaroo salute to Coach Gayno Shelton and the Hoosiers-like basketball community of Bowie, TX.
https://www.nytimes.com/…/basketball/willis-reed-dead.html