Snubbed Part 1: Behind Barry Hinson's hiring and how he built the 2005-06 MSU Bears

Barry Hinson can still close his eyes and picture himself in the basement of his home with a CBS camera crew and his team sitting around him. They were watching the 2006 NCAA Tournament Selection Show.

The day started with a practice full of energy and excitement. The Bears, with the No. 21 RPI in the country, were, in Hinson’s mind, a lock to make it to the big dance for the first time since 1999.

The Bears' resume was too good to ignore. They didn’t have a bad loss that season and no team in the history of the tournament with that good of an RPI had ever been left out of the dance.

“We knew we were in the tournament,” Hinson, the Bears’ head coach, said. “There wasn’t even a question.”

When the show began, one team after another was announced without Missouri State’s name coming across the screen. One region to the next decreased the Bears’ chances after an underwhelming performance at the conference tournament the week before.

Others sensed what was happening but the thought had yet to cross Hinson’s mind. He was that sure the Bears would get in.

Looking back at photos from the day, Hinson could see in the eyes of others that they were prepared for heartbreak. His wasn’t torn apart until Oklahoma and Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the final two teams, were announced.

What followed was a moment of stunned silence that felt like it went on for an eternity.

Missouri State didn’t make the NCAA Tournament.

Little did Hinson and the Bears know, that at that moment, one of the more controversial decisions ever made by the NCAA Tournament selection committee would change the course of Hinson’s life, and the trajectory of the Missouri State men’s basketball program, forever.

“I don’t think that pain will ever go away,” Hinson said 17 years later.

The coach who never was

In 1999, Missouri State found itself without a head men’s basketball coach. The Bears had gone on one of the most memorable runs in the school's history by reaching the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament for the first time.

Steve Alford was a hot commodity and he departed the Bears to become the head coach at Iowa. Whoever followed him would have big shoes to fill.

Initially, the Bears got a verbal commitment from the man who they thought would keep them in NCAA contention for years to come — Appalachian State head coach Buzz Peterson.

“We offered it to him and said that we’re at the point that we should go ahead and have a press conference on it,” then-MSU Athletics Director Bill Rowe said. “On the day it was supposed to be, I got a call from his athletics director and said ‘Hey Bill, I wanna tell you that Buzz isn’t gonna come for the press conference and he’s not gonna take the job.’”

Rowe was confused. He asked why it wasn’t Peterson calling and was told that the coach wouldn’t come out of his room nor would he talk to his wife or assistant coaches. Rowe was told that Peterson was “hunkered down and wouldn’t say much.”

Peterson coached Appalachian State for one more season and reached the NCAA Tournament in 2000. He then became the head coach at Tulsa before departing after a year for Tennessee. With stops at Coastal Carolina, another year at Appalachian State and then UNC Wilmington, he never made it back to the big dance.

About a decade later, Rowe received a hand-written letter from Peterson who apologized for the debacle.

That left Rowe and Missouri State in an uncomfortable spot. They were still in contact with Fran Fraschilla who had been fired from Saint John’s following the 1998 season in which he led the Red Storm to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in five years. He opted to become the head coach at New Mexico instead.

Missouri State then turned to an up-and-coming head coach by the name of Barry Hinson at Oral Roberts who continued the basketball program’s success after Bill Self moved down the street to become the head coach at Tulsa.

Hinson nailed the interview process and made Missouri State forget about those who it missed out on in the previous days.

Hinson showcased his infectious personality that those in Springfield would come to love over the better part of the next decade and still to this day. No one was going to do more for the community or show a stronger love for the student-athletes than he would. There wasn’t a more perfect fit than Hinson in Springfield.

“Everybody had the same opinion that he was a big deal,” Rowe said. “He wanted to be here. He was going to make a giant impression on his guys’ lives.”

The Sandlot

Heading into the 2005-06 season, expectations were high for a Missouri State men’s basketball program that had suffered heartbreak to end its previous two seasons.

In 2004, the Bears erased a 12-point second-half deficit to tie it up and send the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament championship game to two overtimes. Northern Iowa proceeded to hit big shots down the stretch to win 79-74 and the league’s automatic bid.

The following year, MSU made a similar run at Arch Madness but wasn’t a match for Creighton in the championship. The Bluejays made 12 shots from beyond the arc and won the game 75-57.

The Bears have made the MVC title game only one time since.

Those two appearances served as the motivation for the Bears heading into the season. They knew they were capable of making a run that no one would forget.

“You had a feeling going into the season that ‘this team feels special,’” Kellen Easley, a senior in 2005-06, said. “We thought we could do some great things and win a lot of ball games, even though it was a tough conference. We felt like we could keep up with anybody we played.”

The strength of the roster was its versatility. The Bears had multiple lineups that could be competitive and match up with just about every team in the Valley.

The star of it all was Blake Ahearn, one of the most beloved Bears of the 21st century and a future NBA player from St. Louis. Hinson called him “Steph Curry before Steph Curry” and he still owns the No. 1 free throw shooting percentage in NCAA Division I history.

Nathan Bilyeu, Tyler Chaney, Dale Lamberth and Easley were players 6-foot-5 and taller who could play in the post and on the perimeter. They stretched defenses and played a style of basketball that was ahead of its time. Sky Frazier and Drew Richards served as the team’s big men when more size was needed.

Deke Thompson and Easley, the senior leaders, were the heart of the program and were the reasons why some wanted to make the big dance.

“They were the best leaders you could ask for at that time,” Lamberth, a sophomore coming off a redshirt season, said. “They were both positive guys. No matter who you were, they never let you hang your head and you wanted to win for them because of what they meant to you, not only as players but as people.”

At their best, the Bears played tough defense that turned into getting out in transition offense. The defense ranked 42nd in the nation in steals by getting in passing lanes and pressuring the ball.

Players dove to the floor for loose balls and created chaos. Players like Ahearn, Easley and Bilyeu were nightmares for teams in transition by getting to the rim or knocking down the open shots that were available.

“We were very physical,” Richards said. “We were knocking people over, getting loose balls and those were things we prided ourselves on.”

“You had guys who were just running up and down the floor, sharing the ball and playing fast,” Ahearn said. “We just had so many guys who were unselfish and played the right way. We truly enjoyed playing with each other.”

The roster’s makeup made it loved by the Springfield community. Four were from the southwest Missouri area with eight total being from the state. The three others from outside the state were from either Oklahoma or Illinois.

Bilyeu (Ozark), Richards (Logan-Rogersville), Chaney (Neosho) and Shane Laurie (Kickapoo) gave Springfield a sense of pride in Ozarks basketball.

“We had the perfect storm of having enough talent in the area at that time to be able to have a good team and recruit locally as much as Coach Henson and everybody did,” Richards said. “Being able to go to The Courts and grow up with those guys and be able to be teammates with them after hearing so much about them was really cool to see come into fruition. It’s special regardless when you have good seasons but I think it’s a little more special when they’re from the same locale.”

“It was all by design and was one of the first things we talked about as a staff was that we want to recruit the best players in our area,” Hinson added. “We knew at that time, at the mid-major level, that the most important priority was to get local kids that can help us. That’s a gamble because if the local kid doesn’t make it or do well, then most of the time, it’s the coach’s fault and it’s not received very well at all. The Missouri flavor to it just made the roster that much better.”

Hinson considered the group to have the characteristics of the kids in “The Sandlot.” They loved to play pranks, with their head coach bearing the brunt of most of the jokes.

Lamberth loved to do impersonations by yelling “Jiminy Christmas” with Hinson’s well-known southern twang. Lamberth continued to oversell it by pretending to push up a pair of invisible glasses and get into a squatting position.

During a road game at Southern Illinois, Hinson remembers an opposing fan making fun of his height by asking “where’s the rest of your torso?” As he looked down the bench and at his players at the free throw line, Hinson saw his players bent over laughing.

“There are some other stories but I’ll probably leave them out of this at this point,” Lamberth said with a laugh.

Making an early statement

Before going down the Valley road, the Bears had a non-conference slate that was mostly made of teams from the region. Matchups at Oral Roberts and Arkansas were the highlights of the eight-game early-season slate.

MSU won its first six games, which included a 12-point win at eventual Mid-Continent Conference champion Oral Roberts, to set up its game at Arkansas. The Razorbacks made the NCAA Tournament that year as an at-large with a No. 8 seed. They were led by future NBA players Ronnie Brewer, Dontell Jefferson and Steven Hill.

The Bears’ trip to Arkansas marked their first bad shooting night of the young season but they almost won anyway. Rallying from 13 down at halftime, they came back and took the lead with four minutes to go.

Unfortunately, Brewer, who enjoyed a lengthy NBA career and was named a first-team All-SEC player at the end of the season, took over down the stretch. He finished the night with 19 points, five steals, four assists and three blocks for a 79-75 win at Bud Walton Arena.

“I always wish we had that win at Arkansas that year,” Lamberth said. “We kinda gave it up in the final three minutes.”

The loss was the Bears’ only during non-conference play.

Wyatt D. Wheeler is a reporter and columnist with the Springfield News-Leader. You can contact him at 417-371-6987, by email at wwheeler@news-leader.com or Twitter at @WyattWheeler_NL.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Behind Barry Hinson's hiring and how he built the 2005-06 MSU Bears