Another
of KU’s basketball giants has died.
Ralph “Cappy” Miller, was a star athlete and coach who was named to
the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1988.
Miller
was from Chanute, Kansas, where he earned four letters each in football and
track, three in basketball, and one each in golf and tennis at Chanute High
School. While in junior high, Bob
Allen (Coach Phog Allen’s son) informed his father that he had just scrimmaged
against the finest player he’d ever seen.
It was the first of several meetings between Ralph and the Allens.
In a state tournament contest, Chanute High played a game right after Bob
Allen’s Lawrence High game. Miller
had injured his hip during the first half and Phog, an osteopathic physician,
was asked to examine Ralph. Phog
fixed him up and Miller scored 26 points in the second half to lead Chanute to
the state championship.
“I
knew many schools were angling for Miller’s services, but I did not use my
advantage to endeavor to entice him to KU,” Phog wrote in 1937.
He didn’t have to, as he had every indication that Miller was coming to
Kansas, including the word of Miller’s father, Harold.
Phog had also coached Ralph’s Uncle Howard.
Over 70 colleges heavily recruited Miller, including Stanford which
promised that his transportation costs to and from home would be handled.
Stanford was coached by John Bunn, a former KU player and assistant
coach. A wealthy Stanford alum flew
Miller to Palo Alto where he stayed at Bunn’s home.
Under pressure, Miller agreed to attend Stanford.
When
Phog Allen heard of it, he arranged a summit meeting with Bunn and the Miller
family at the Miller home, where Bunn had been waiting for two days to escort
Miller back to Stanford. In the
Miller house, the friendship between Allen and Bunn was severely tested.
Allen not-so-tactfully reminded Bunn that while he was coaching the
Kansas freshmen team in the 1920s, Phog had paid for part of his salary from his
own pocket after the chancellor had cut the basketball budget, and that it was
he who had got Bunn the Stanford job.
“I told Bunn it was hardly sporting of him to come into Kansas and have
Stanford men try to persuade Ralph to leave the state,” Allen wrote in a 1937
letter. “I am pretty frank to say
that I didn’t handle him very easy in the last few minutes.”
Allen
got his man though, and Miller, a 6’1 forward, went on to become one of KU’s
greatest athletes. He was the
starting quarterback on the football team for three years, where he set school
and conference passing records. His five touchdown passes against Washburn (then
a Div. I school) during his sophomore season still stands as a single-game
record at KU.
In basketball, he was a three-year starter for Phog,
leading KU to the national championship title game in 1940, where the Jayhawks
lost to Indiana. After sitting out
the 1941 year with a terrible knee injury, he came back in ’42 to lead the Big
Six in scoring with 13.4 ppg, taking the Jayhawks to the conference title and to
the NCAA tourney, where KU went 1-1. In
a game that year against Wichita, Miller scored 30 points, setting the mark for
most points ever scored in a Kansas game. Overall, Miller played in 59
basketball games and had a 10.2 scoring average.
During
his junior year at KU, Miller approached Coach Allen mid-season with the
suggestion to install an offense with a post man. Miller said that Phog didn’t jump at the idea,
but subsequently had Miller play post in a scrimmage against Allen’s
traditional offense. They
scrimmaged for two hours, with Miller’s team winning.
After a loss to Oklahoma, Allen called Miller to his office and informed
him that he had decided to switch to the post offense.
“We hadn’t practiced it all season.” Miller said, “but we used it
the rest of the year.”
In
1941, while sitting out the year with a knee injury, Miller coached basketball
at Mt. Oread High School, as a part of his practice teaching.
The school was located on the KU campus and was attended mostly by
children of KU professors. “There were perhaps 40 or 45 students in the place,
maybe 15 or 16 boys. As
professors’ sons, they tended to be highly intelligent, but not endowed with
an abundance of physical talent. I
don’t recall that we fared very well,” Miller wrote in his book Spanning
the Game.
“I became a coach because I had a wife and two children and I was unemployed.” – Ralph Miller.
Following
his graduation from Kansas in 1942 with a degree in physical education, Miller
served three years in the U.S. Air Force during World War II and was discharged
at the rank of first lieutenant. He
played semi-pro football and coached an AAU team, but had no intentions of
becoming a coach on a permanent basis. He
tried several jobs that didn’t work out. So when Wichita East High School called in February, 1948,
Miller began his coaching career where he won 63 of 80 games and a state title
in 1951.
He
went on to coach at Wichita State University where he compiled a 220-133 record
in 14 seasons, and achieved his master’s degree. “I just have tremendous admiration for what he
accomplished,” WSU athletic director Jim Schaus said.
“He embodies everything that is good about college athletics.
He’s one of the great coaches, if not the greatest, in the history of
Wichita State basketball.” Dave
Stallworth, former Shocker All-American, said “He was a teacher, a motivator,
everything a coach should be.”
Miller
then took over the program at Iowa and finished there with a 95-51 mark in six
years, winning two Big Ten titles in
1968 and 1970 and taking the Hawkeyes to one NCAA tournament. His Hawkeye stars
included John Johnson, “Downtown” Freddie Brown and Sam Williams.
In
1971 Miller went to Oregon State, where he coached for 19 years, compiling a
record of 359-186. He coached the
Beavers to four Pac-10 championships and eight NCAA appearances. His 1981 team
was ranked No. 1 for nine weeks. He
was twice named Pac-10 Coach of the Year, and coached Gary Payton, who now stars
for the Seattle Supersonics. “Coach
Miller is someone who believed in me and helped make me the player I am
today,” Payton said. “He always
stressed defense and rewarded players who worked hard on the defensive end.
That type of system gave me the confidence to succeed on both ends of the
court.”
In
1988, he became the first active coach ever to be inducted into the Naismith
Basketball Hall of Fame. Miller retired in 1989, ended his coaching career with
the sixth-most victories for a Division I coach, accumulating a record of
674-370 (64.6%). His teams only had
three losing season in 38 years as a major college coach.
Miller
died May 15 at his home at Black Butte Ranch near Corvallis.
“This is a sad day for college basketball.” Beavers coach Ritchie
McKay said. “Ralph had a huge
impact on the game and in young peoples lives.”
At the Missouri Valley Conference baseball tournament this past week,
former Shocker player Leonard Kelley recalled “He was a hero to me.
Sometimes you think heroes will live forever but nobody does.”
That may be the case, but his memory will live forever in basketball
annals.
Ken Johnson