'Nobody could stop Ryan Minor': How the small-town star became an Oklahoma legend

When Kelvin Sampson was hired as the Oklahoma men’s basketball coach in the spring of 1994, he called his predecessor, Billy Tubbs, to ask about the Sooners’ roster.

“Billy was always really good to me, gracious, very helpful,” Sampson said on Friday. “He just went down the roster and said some good things about some guys and maybe some not so good things about other guys. But when he got to Ryan (Minor), he said Ryan has a chance to be your best player.”

Not only did Minor turn out to be the Sooners’ best player, he became the Big Eight Conference’s best player as a junior in Sampson’s first season at OU.

Sampson, the current head coach at the University of Houston, has been a head basketball coach for 35 years at five different schools. He has coached players who were NBA lottery picks but says Minor was the best offensive player he has ever coached.

“Nobody could stop Ryan Minor,” Sampson said. “He could score on just about anybody. He could get to the rim. He was an 83% free throw shooter. He is a 40% 3-pointer shooter, and he shot well over 50% from two.

“There is a lot of guys that can shoot 40 (percent) from the 3 but they shoot 38 (percent) from the 2 because they can’t finish around the rim. Ryan, at all three levels, the best college player that I ever coached.”

Ryan Minor died Dec. 22 at age 49 from colon cancer, two weeks shy of his 50th birthday. He left behind his wife Allyson, daughters Reagan and Finley, and legions of OU fans who are grateful for the memories he and his twin brother, Damon, created for them on the basketball court and the baseball diamond.

A two-sports star

Ryan was a two-sports star at OU in basketball and baseball. He and Damon were teammates on OU’s 1994 national championship baseball squad.

In basketball, Ryan was a two-time Big Eight scoring champion and was named the 1994-95 Big Eight Conference Player of the Year by The Associated Press and the U.S. Basketball Writers Association. The Big Eight coaches split their votes for player of the year between Ryan and Oklahoma State’s Bryant Reeves.

That season, Ryan led OU to a 23-9 record and a No. 4 NCAA Tournament seed. At 6-7, Ryan averaged 23.6 points and 8.4 rebounds his junior season, then returned for his senior year despite being projected as a possible NBA lottery pick.

He averaged 21.3 points per game his senior season as the Sooners compiled an 18-12 record and received another NCAA Tournament bid.

“Ryan’s jersey, in my mind, probably should be hanging from the rafters at Lloyd Noble,” said Alex Brown, who retired in 2019 after 32 years as the OU men’s basketball trainer.

Ryan was drafted professionally in both basketball and baseball. The Philadelphia 76ers selected him in the second round of the 1996 NBA Draft. In baseball, Ryan was drafted out of high school by the Baltimore Orioles in the 15th round but didn’t sign, and then in the seventh round of the 1995 MLB Draft by the New York Mets. Ryan opted to return to OU and he was drafted again by the Orioles in 1996.

After OU, he tried professional basketball and played seven preseason games with the 76ers before being released. He then played two years for the Oklahoma City Cavalry of the Continental Basketball Association before signing with the Orioles.

A week into his big-league career, Ryan replaced Cal Ripken Jr. in the starting lineup which ended the Hall of Famer’s streak of 2,632 consecutive starts. After three seasons as a player for the Orioles and one with the Expos, he became a minor league coach and manager in the Orioles’ organization and lived in Maryland.

Choosing OU

The Minor twins were legendary prep athletes in Oklahoma. They grew up in the small western Oklahoma town of Hammon, where their parents, Ronald Dale and Nancy, had settled after moving from Ohio.

Ronald Dale Minor played football at Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford and was a star linebacker, but Damon said his father did not want his sons to play football, so he chose to live in Hammon, a small school that only offered baseball and basketball.

The elder Minor was an assistant coach for both the Hammon baseball and basketball teams where Ryan and Damon would become stars.

“We really enjoyed living in a small town,” Damon said. “Sports was the main thing out there. As soon as one sport was over, you were playing the next. That was our life.”

In baseball, Hammon was a perennial state tournament qualifier when the Minor twins were in high school. Hammon reached the state championship game in their senior season but lost to Asher.

During the summers, Ryan and Damon would play for the Woodward Travelers, a youth baseball team that would travel and compete in Oklahoma and other states.

“We played 80 some games in the summers,” Damon said. “That was our practice by playing. We learned how to play the game that way.”

In high school basketball, Hammon won the state championship twice during the Minors’ four prep years and finished as the state runner-up and semifinalist the other two seasons.

“(Ryan) didn’t miss much so I didn’t get to shoot much,” Damon said.

Both were being recruited to play college baseball but Ryan also was being heavily recruited by major college basketball programs.

“He had everyone from Eddie Sutton to Bobby Knight to Billy Tubbs, everyone was coming out to watch him, which helped me because it helped my recruiting,” Damon said. “They would come out and watch him, and it’s like, ‘Oh, we got a twin brother here that could play a little bit.’ I always thanked my brother for getting me recruited.”

It was Damon who first chose to play baseball at OU. Ryan followed.

“OSU was so good I was actually working my way to go there at the time,” Damon said. “They were obviously recruiting Ryan in basketball as well. I ended up going on a recruiting visit and one of the coaches on the baseball side didn’t show up to show me around, so the next week I went down to OU and enjoyed it down there and decided to sign there. Ryan decided to come to OU because I was going there.”

Choosing baseball

Sampson thinks Ryan could have had a 10- to 12-year NBA career had he chosen to continue on that path.

“That is not an opinion. That is a fact,” Sampson said. “Ryan is one of those guys that would have probably bounced around to eight or nine different teams, but he would be instant offense off the bench. He is a great teammate. Coaches would love him. He had the one thing that translated in every game on any team he played. He could score.“

Sampson marveled at how good Ryan was in basketball, considering that he split time between basketball and baseball during the year.

“I think he was better at basketball but his passion was baseball,” Sampson said. “He was a seasonal basketball player. He only played basketball from October to March and from March to October it was baseball. He was a part-time basketball player and was the best offensive basketball player that I have coached in my 35 years as a (college) head coach.”

Russ Ortiz, a member of that ’94 national championship baseball team at OU, looks at it from the other side of the coin. He wonders how good Ryan might have been in baseball had he played that sport full-time.

“It’s one thing to come to the team (after basketball season is over) and play first base and hit, but he also pitched, and he pitched at a pretty high level sometimes,” said Ortiz, who pitched 12 seasons in the major leagues. “We felt a lot stronger as a team once we got him.”

Damon said his brother loved both sports, but felt pro baseball would offer more longevity and take less of a physical toll on his body.

“It really turned out to be good for his career, especially when he moved on from playing and to managing and being in player development,” Damon said. “He really loved it.”

Damon followed a similar career path. He was drafted in 1996 by the San Francisco Giants and spent parts of four seasons playing in the major leagues. He also played a year in Japan.

Damon is now the hitting coach for the Sacramento River Cats, the Giants' Triple-A affiliate.

‘A humble hero’

A month before his death, it was announced that Ryan would be a member of the 2024 class of the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame.

“Give credit to OU for helping get him inducted,” Damon said. “It was really special for him.”

The induction ceremony is not until August, but the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame was able to expedite production of Ryan’s plaque and sent it to him.

“Once he saw it, he was very emotional,” Damon said.

Brown thinks of Ryan as a humble hero.

“He was a hero to a lot of people, especially small-town Oklahoma kids,” Brown said, “They loved seeing him excel.”

During his fantastic junior basketball season at OU, Ryan seemed to wonder what the fuss was all about, Brown said.

“For as talented as he was, and for as successful as he was, he was incredibly humble,” said Mike Houck, associate athletic director for communications at OU. “He was gracious to his teammates and coaches for helping him get to the level he got to.”

‘Easy to root for’

Sampson said Ryan not only had fans in Oklahoma, but across the conference.

“During that time, he was a rock star in the Big Eight,” Sampson said. “Everywhere we went people were always waiting for him to sign autographs and Ryan would take his time and sign every single autograph, take every single picture, say something nice to everybody. Sometimes we would have to save him from himself because we had to get on the bus and go.”

Oritz said Ryan “was easy to root for… He always treated us (teammates) great.”

Damon said every member of the ’94 baseball team, and other former players from other years along with former OU basketball players has reached out after Ryan’s passing. Many will be returning to Oklahoma next Saturday to attend a memorial service for Ryan at the First Baptist Church in Moore.

All of Ryan’s teammates feel like they are losing a family member, Ortiz said.

‘Dale and Nancy’s son’

Former OU baseball coach Larry Cochell called Ryan the All-American kid from a small town in western Oklahoma.

“His parents kept him grounded,” Cochell said. “His dad was a great mentor and an athlete himself. He was just raised in a great family.”

Damon said their parents taught them to always treat people with respect and kindness, no matter how much success came their way. Sampson said it showed.

“(Ryan) was Dale and Nancy’s son from Hammon and he was always that. No matter what he accomplished. No matter how big the stage was, until the end he was Nancy and Dale’s kid from Hammon and Damon’s twin brother,” Sampson said.

“People knew him as the guy who replaced Cal Ripken or an All-American basketball player or a national championship baseball player. Those were just his accomplishments. That’s not who he was. He was Dale and Nancy’s kid from Hammon. He came into the world like that and he left the world like that.”

Ryan Minor Memorial Service

A Celebration of Life service for Ryan Minor will be held Jan. 13 at 1 p.m. at the First Baptist Church in Moore, 301 NE 27 St.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OU baseball & basketball: How Ryan Minor became a Sooners legend