Snubbed Part 7: What if Missouri State made the 2006 NCAA Tournament?
Dale Lamberth still talks frequently to a handful of his teammates from the 2005-06 Missouri State men's basketball team who are still in Springfield. They often reminisce over the season while remembering the small details about what made the year so special.
During the conversations, it’s difficult not to wonder “what if?”
The decision by the 2006 NCAA Tournament selection committee changed the course of the Missouri State men’s basketball program and has played a crucial role in what it is today.
Instead of being considered one of the biggest heartaches in Missouri State’s history, the 2006 team would be celebrated as one of the best ever.
Missouri State still hasn’t been back to the NCAA Tournament since 1999. The closest the Bears have come was in 2010-11 under Cuonzo Martin when they won the MVC regular season title but lost to Indiana State in the Arch Madness title game. The Valley was a one-bid league that year.
There’s no telling how far Missouri State would have gone in the 2006 NCAA Tournament if it got the chance. The controversial teams that got in — Air Force, Alabama-Birmingham and Utah State — all lost in the first round.
The Bears figured that they would have had a better chance after seeing Missouri Valley Conference foes Wichita State and Bradley each reach the Sweet 16. Missouri State had beaten Bradley once during the regular season before the Braves got hot late and lost in the Arch Madness title game. George Mason’s run to the Final Four out of the Colonial Athletic Association allowed the Bears to dream even bigger.
“It’s easy to make a prediction," then-head coach Barry Hinson said. “You never know but I do know this beyond a shadow of a doubt — no matter who we would’ve played, we would’ve been in the game. It wouldn’t have mattered.
“We would’ve been in the game because, for most first-round games against Missouri Valley opponents, the other team always takes the Missouri Valley team for granted. They think they’re gonna wipe them off and that’s not the case. We would have been extremely competitive, no matter who we would’ve been playing.”
It also played a factor in the Bears’ direction under Hinson. If the selection committee put Missouri State in the tournament, Hinson would not have been fired two years later.
Bill Rowe, the Bears' athletics director back then, said it wouldn’t have happened.
“Even though we didn’t then, later on, there were two more years in which we didn’t make the tournament and it wasn’t his fault and it wasn’t ours either,” Rowe said. “We tried to promote us in every way we could, but in the end, when it comes down to it, if you don’t make the tournament, that’s just the nature of the business and Barry understood that and knows it’s true.”
Perhaps a different decision by the selection committee, a choice that was out of the Bears’ hands, could’ve caused other schools to inquire about Hinson’s availability in future seasons. Maybe a different decision would have led to a run of success that could have followed the Bears to this day.
Perhaps a different decision would have led to Hinson opening a chain of barbeque restaurants in Springfield as he continued to coach on the Bears’ sideline.
“The NCAA selection committee, I know they do the best they can, but it really does have a huge effect on what programs they decide to put in and who they decide to leave out,” MSU radio voice Art Hains said. “Who knows? He might still be the coach here. He probably would’ve moved on one way or another between now and then.
“You kind of have to go to the NCAA Tournament and feed the monster and go again occasionally. And who knows who’s available in the years that we made a coaching change? But I don’t think you would have been after '08.”
If Hinson wasn’t fired after the 2008 season, the Bears likely would never have had the opportunity to hire Cuonzo Martin and Hinson would have been on the sideline to open Great Southern Bank Arena.
The butterfly effect might not stop there. Maybe the Bears never win the Valley’s regular season title in 2011 but perhaps the momentum from reaching the NCAA Tournament would have turned into trips on a frequent basis.
Perhaps Paul Lusk would have never been hired and Dana Ford would be a young up-and-coming head coach somewhere else. Perhaps, as he suggested, Rowe would have been inspired to stay on as MSU’s athletics director for a few more years with continued success. Kyle Moats maybe wouldn’t have been hired in 2009.
The answers to the “what ifs?” following the season can only be left to the imagination. That alternate universe could be better, maybe it’s not.
“If we made the NCAA Tournament in 2006, then what kind of recruits are we getting by 2023?” Lamberth said. “Are we Wichita State before Wichita State? Are we able to make the run to the Final Four and Sweet 16s consistently? Could we be the Butlers or something like that? That’s where we go with the ‘what ifs?’ That’s kind of what we ask each other, you know?
“We ask ourselves ‘what do we need here in Springfield to attract something?’ and ‘why do people choose to go to Drake and Northern Iowa and Indiana State?’ Is it because we haven’t been to the tournament? Is it the coaches? Is it the atmosphere? Is it the arena? What makes Missouri State not a hard sell to the premier mid-major athlete? It’s a bunch of different things that kind of factor as we ask ‘what can we do?’
“We’re always asking ourselves ‘Where would the program be if the luck of fortune was on our side?’”
A year after Wichita State made the Sweet 16, snapping an 18-year tournament drought, Mark Turgeon was hired away by Texas A&M and the Shockers brought in successful Winthrop head coach Gregg Marshall.
Marshall’s Shockers didn’t make the NCAA Tournament in his first four years but showed constant improvement. It set up Wichita State to be a juggernaut in the MVC before making seven-straight NCAA Tournaments. They reached the Final Four in 2013 and the Sweet 16 in 2015.
The success launched the Shockers into the American Athletic Conference and grew the university’s reputation as a whole. Fans filled the arena night after night.
Missouri State, which hasn’t had near that success, has seen a drop in attendance and community interest over the same span. The Bears have gone from nearly 7,000 fans in Hammons Student Center per night in 2005-06 to an average of 3,300 this past season at Great Southern Bank Arena.
“People get a thirst of winning and they get that taste in it, then you’re not dissatisfied and you want to go back for more,” Rowe said. “That’s exactly what would have happened here. Our people would’ve just been on fire. Barry wouldn’t have quit. He would’ve kept coming back and we’d have more good players. He was a great recruiter on top of it. He was a great personal man with great qualities.”
Since Hinson was fired at Missouri State in 2008, he’s made a stop as an administrative assistant at Kansas where the Jayhawks made the NCAA Tournament all four years which included a national runner-up finish in 2012. He then became the head coach at Southern Illinois where he never led a team to the big dance before he was relieved following the 2018-19 season.
Getting ready for a meeting with his Oklahoma State athletics director, Hinson now heads up his alma mater’s Name, Image and Likeness program — a position that didn't exist just a few years ago but was added with the ever-changing college athletics landscape. He was an analyst under Mike Boynton for three seasons before stepping into a role that he loves today.
Seventeen years later, Hinson says he will never forgive the NCAA Tournament selection committee for leaving his team out in 2006. He’s tried, but he’s not going to.
Hinson will still lean on the advice of his late father and be grateful for the experiences he had in Springfield, which he still calls “home,” and the opportunities he was given after Missouri State didn’t hear its name called.
It's all he can do.
“My dad taught me for a long time that we have no idea what the future holds but we know who holds the future,” Hinson said. “I’m not a victim and I’ve never been a victim. I’m not going to play the victim. I’m not gonna do that. I’m telling you right here why I’m pissed off and I’m still upset.
“The selection committee made the wrong choice and I still have the right to say that I’m not playing the victim. They were wrong and we were right. My destiny was determined a lot by that non-selection.
“If that had not happened, I would’ve never coached in a national championship game, been to two Elite Eights and four Sweet 16s. I had the opportunity to work with Bill Self who I consider a brother and I would have never had the opportunity to go to Carbondale which was a community that my wife and I were totally in love with. I got to stay in the Missouri Valley Conference, which will forever be one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me.
“I think about what would’ve happened, but not in a negative way. I’ve been blessed more than ever.”
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: Snubbed Part 7: What if Missouri State made the 2006 NCAA Tournament?
