Clete Boyer, the former slick fielding third baseman who will be remembered today at a memorial in Suwanee, Ga., also stood Southwest Missouri on its collective ear as a basketball player.

The landscape in Missouri prep basketball was vastly different in the mid-1950s (Boyer graduated from Alba in 1955).

Forget four classes. It was Class A and B that season with the MSHSAA three-class system scheduled for delivery the following campaign.

The 6-foot Boyer, a two-time Class B all-stater, averaged some 32 points for the season and was at 35 through seven games after scoring 40 against St. Peter’s (now McAuley) at Joplin North in late December. Boyer poured in 48 at Sarcoxie later as a senior.

“He’s one of the best I’ve seen,” Wendell Redden, a retired sports editor of the Globe, said Friday. “I realize, too, Alba was a small school.

“But Boyer could shoot lights out. He had a good jump shot. He was so smooth. He was a college prospect.”

A highlight of watching Alba, Redden said, was seeing a shootout between the Wildcats’ Boyer and Diamond’s Jack Armstrong.

Alba, whose coach in 1954-55 was Francis Book, was a member of the Little Ten Conference. Its other members were Carl Junction, St. Peter’s, Carterville, Diamond, Duenweg, Jasper, Liberal, Pierce City, Sarcoxie and Seneca.

Seneca, naturally tough in football at the time, was Little Ten champion in basketball at 10-0 under Jack Wallace and also won the league tournament held at Carterville.

Larry Garman, who’s recognized for his successful coaching career at Pittsburg High School, was a sophomore in 1954-55 with another underclassman, Morris Watts, among the key Indians.

“He (Boyer) was the best high school player around at the time,” Garman said. “Coach Wallace would put two players on him and he’d still get 30-35 points. We were able to beat Alba because we had more good players.”

Jerry Runnels and Marvin Wescott, both of Jasper, were Boyer’s opponents.

“Clete had a soft touch shooting the ball and took good shots,” Runnels, who lives in Liberal, said. “He could handle the ball and he shot from anywhere. He wasn’t all that fast but he was smooth.”

Runnels, laughing, admitted he yielded a home run to Boyer that helped beat the Eagles 2-0.

That homer was witnessed by several major league scouts, Wescott, who lives in Carl Junction, said.