By Jim Henry
jhenry@joplinglobe.com
The Iba name gave Gene Iba his first coaching job.
In 1963 he was at the U.S. Naval Supply School in Athens, Ga., when it formed a basketball team.
“I went out to play, and some lieutenant was running things,” Iba said. “He said to me, ‘I don't know anything about basketball, but I do know what your last name is, and we have to have a coach.’ I said I'd coach, and I'd pick out the other four starters.
“I did that for about two games and I figured out I couldn't do both, so I stopped playing. I had a lot of fun. We had a really good team (24-4 record) playing against AAU teams and freshman teams from the ACC. I was one class away from having Roger Staubach on my team.”
From that first coaching position, Iba became a graduate assistant at Oklahoma A&M; (now Oklahoma State) for his uncle, Henry Iba. Gene then became head coach at Roosevelt High School in St. Louis from 1969-72 and an assistant at Texas El-Paso from 1972-77 before starting a 30-year career as a college head coach with stops at Houston Baptist, Baylor and Pittsburg State.
Last Sept. 15, Iba announced his plans to retire as Pittsburg State's coach at the end of this season.
Iba was born in Joplin when his father, Clarence, was head coach at Joplin High School. His first game as Pittsburg State head coach was an 83-73 loss at Missouri Southern on Nov. 18, 1995, and he'll coach at Missouri Southern for the final time Wednesday night when the Gorillas and Lions collide at the Leggett & Platt Athletic Center.
Gene Iba received a business administration degree from Tulsa and did not want to be a coach.
“At the time, my uncle (Henry) was very popular,” he said. “My dad coached. I had two more uncles who coached. It just didn't appeal to me. I had been accepted into Texaco's management training program, and then Uncle Sam called.”
Once he got into coaching, the Iba name was both beneficial and detrimental.
“I got my job at UTEP because of my uncle,” Gene said. “Later there were different jobs that people told me they don't want that kind of (deliberate) basketball (that Henry played at Oklahoma A&M;). They didn't ask if I played that kind of basketball. But the name helped me a lot more than it hurt me without any question.”
Henry Iba
Henry is the most famous of the Ibas. He coached 41 years in college, the last 33 at Oklahoma A&M;/Oklahoma State where he won 655 games and NCAA championships in 1945 and 1946.
He was Mr. Iba to almost everyone who addressed him.
“Byron Bird was his trainer for years,” Gene said. “I was in the Navy, and they're playing at UCLA, so I picked up the phone and called Henry. Byron answered the phone, and I said Byron, this is Gene, is Henry there where I can talk to him? He puts his hand over the receiver, but I could still hear, and he said ‘Mr. Iba, it's Gene, and he's drunk.’ He thought I was drunk because I called him Henry.
“So I talk to my uncle for a while, and after we're done, I asked if I could talk to Byron for a minute. He gave the phone to Byron, and I said Byron, what do you call your uncle? He never missed a beat, and he said ‘If it was Mr. Iba, I'd call him Mr. Iba.’
“He never demanded that. He just got it. I've met Admiral (Elmo) Zumwalt, who was the youngest admiral since John Paul Jones. I've met Oral Roberts — two of the most impressive people I've met. Neither one of them carried the same status as my uncle did. People felt embarrassed if they didn't call him Mr. Iba. I've seen them stop in the middle of their sentence and say 'I mean Mr. Iba.' But he earned it, I thought.”
Henry was the U.S. Olympic coach on gold medal teams in 1964 and 1968 as well as the 1972 team that lost in Munich when Russia was given three chances to score the game-winning basket. Cheated out of the gold medal, the team refused to accept the silver medals that to this day remain inside an IOC vault in Switzerland.
“He hated to talk about Munich,” Gene said. “It's the only time I've seen him get really bitter. He just said it wasn't right. When that happened, I went back and looked at the tape and there were about 12 different things that were done wrong, totally wrong. In addition to that, the crowd came down, and somebody stole his wallet.”
Clarence Iba
Clarence Iba, who went 46-20 as the Joplin coach from 1940-43, became head coach at the University of Tulsa in 1949, and the recruiting process to land Gene on the team was pretty simple and quick.
“I learned I was going to Tulsa one day when I was in the back seat of the car,” Iba said. “Dad was driving and John Dunlap, a sporting goods salesman from Oklahoma City, was sitting in the front seat. They were talking about who Dad was going to take, and he talked about Bill Lucas and Don Morris and three other guys, and Gene's coming. He had never said a word to me about it, but I was happy to get a place to go.”
Gene was a reserve guard on his father's team.
“When I was a sophomore, we were playing Cincinnati,” he said. “There weren't very many traps back then, but as I was coming across halfcourt, Oscar Robertson, who was about 6-5 and strongly built, was coming from one way, and a 6-7 guy was coming from another way. I'm in this trap, and my thought process was not only are they bigger than me, but both of them are quicker than me, too.”
Family feud
Gene said his father's and uncle's coaching styles were similar.
“He was a lot like my uncle but he just had less talented players,” Iba said. “It was hard. When he had talent — Bob Patterson was the third leading scorer in the country — he had good teams, but he didn't get many of those guys. He had some other kids who turned into good players, but relative to Chet Walker and Oscar Robertson, there was no contest.”
Henry's Oklahoma A&M; teams went 16-4 against Clarence's Tulsa teams, and their head-to-head battles didn't set well with their mother.
“My grandmother (Zylfa Dell Iba) was a stately lady who came from a wealthy family,” Gene said. “They came to Easton, Mo., (near St. Joseph) and raised four boys and a girl. After Dad got the Tulsa job, my uncle called her and said Clarence is the (Missouri Valley) conference now and we'll have to play each other twice a year.
“He said there was kind of a pause, and then she said ‘Henry, I don't know what a conference is, but that playing each other twice a year is no good, and you stop it right now.’ And I just can see her shaking her finger back and forth.”
Sandy Iba
Pittsburg State's connection to the Iba family also includes Gene's wife, Sandy. They met when he was a high school coach in St. Louis, and there was not any basketball in her background.
“She had nothing to do with athletics,” Gene said. “It was all a completely new thing. She grew up with girls, had a sister. She had to learn all about coaching the hard way. It was hard on her, and I think it's hard on all young coach's wives. If your husband coaches four months out of the year, you don't expect him to be gone 12 months out of the year. You really have to get used to a lot of things, and you have to get used to some boys that you've never been around.
Sandy became a basketball fan and active in her husband's programs.
“She really enjoys it now,” Gene said, “because since we've been here and our kids aren't in the house any more, she's traveled pretty much all the time when she could. She's gotten pretty used to everything now, and she's really gotten into the swing of things.
“She makes scrapbooks for all the players. Once she took a large interest in what we're doing, she also took over some of the decision making. Every once in a while, I'll say 'I'll take care of that one.’”
However, there will not be any Ibas coaching after this season.
“The entire capsule of all of it is fun to look back on,” Gene said. “It's always the people, of course. It's fun to think back about the guys you've been around.”
