Spoon back on familiar grounds

Friday, Feb. 13, 2004 | 10:06 a.m.

Charlie Spoonhour will be in very familiar territory when the chartered jet carrying the UNLV basketball team lands at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport tonight.

The team bus will head two hours west, to Columbia, on Interstate 70, a route Spoonhour knows by rote. The Hearnes Center, site of Sunday's game against the Missouri Tigers, should also bring back some memories.

If it doesn't, a host of locals who have known Spoonhour, son and assistant coach Jay Spoonhour and assistant coach Deane Martin for decades are bound to bring up a story or two over the weekend.

A few of those old friends and relatives are expected to make the 36-mile trek south, on U.S. Highway 63, from Moberly -- not to mention many other Missouri burgs -- to Columbia.

"Moberly is right up the road," said Southwest Missouri State athletic director Bill Rowe. "Believe me, a lot of those people remember Charlie. Even though it's been a number of years, he made a valuable addition to that community and many still pull for him."

Rowe, who hired Spoonhour at Southwest Missouri in 1983, might be required to attend his women's basketball team's big game Sunday at Creighton. If he doesn't, he said he'll be inside Hearnes.

"To hopefully watch the Rebels beat up on the Tigers," Rowe said. "There will be a lot of people in the stands who 'dad-gum' sure know who Charlie Spoonhour is, and they will be pulling for Spoon, not for the Tigers."

Maryland athletic director Debbie Yow, who hired Spoonhour to coach Saint Louis when she was the Billikens' athletic director in 1992, said Spoonhour should have spent the bulk of his career at elite institutions.

"Like Kentucky, but not everybody gets that opportunity," she said. "He's an emotional favorite. Anyone who makes you smile or laugh is someone you remember and appreciate, because there aren't that many around you who can do that.

"He's the real deal."

He was born in Kansas and raised in Arkansas, but no place is more of a home to Spoonhour than Missouri, where he spent 29 years in various coaching capacities at the high school, junior college and Division I levels.

From Bloomfield to Moberly to Rocky Comfort to Salem to Springfield and all around St. Louis, the lore and lure of the Spoonhour name is rich.

Rowe still regrets allowing Spoonhour to speak, wooing all those crowds with his folksy humor, all those times at the Missouri Valley Conference tournament in St. Louis, at the Missouri Athletic Club.

"I exposed him too much," said a facetious Rowe.

This weekend marks Spoonhour's first return to the Show Me State with his own team since he left Saint Louis almost five years ago.

He and Jay downplayed the significance of his return to the state that both know so well. However, the 10 requests the UNLV coach has fielded for Missouri-based sports radio shows this week attests to Spoonhour's lasting popularity.

Between the two Spoonhours and Martin, a Missouri native, dozens of tickets would be needed to fulfill every request. Instead, they will have to make due with less than 40.

No matter, Spoonhour said.

"So far, I've told everyone it's on TV," he said with a smile. "I have friends I didn't know I have, and I have a lot of friends who are really cheap."

Spoonhour even admitted that he was a Missouri fan when he coached high schools, in Rockey Comfort, Bloomfield and Salem, from 1961-68, and when he led Moberly Junior College to a 58-17 record in 1972-73 and '73-74.

Columbia was a regular stop during the three total seasons Spoonhour spent on the Oklahoma and Nebraska staffs. He remembers boisterous crowds, which include a rabid few dozen students who dub themselves, and wear, "The Antlers."

A 10-10 record and controversy that has dogged Tigers coach Quin Snyder from the opening of practice won't likely dampen that crowd's spirit or enthusiasm come Sunday.

"Those crowds are great," Spoonhour said. "Missouri crowds are exciting. It's a lot of fun playing there, there's so much going on. The fans are very supportive, which makes it a tough place to play.

"I'd hate to have a year in which you have a lot of issues. That would be very difficult to deal with. I have watched Quin coach and I have a lot of respect for him. His kids are playing hard, and that's what you want to see."

Many of the teams that Spoonhour coached in the state have shown opponents the same qualities. Patient and deliberate offenses have combined with sticky defenses to provide Spoonhour with a winning formula.

Rowe became aware of Spoonhour's abilities when Rowe was the Southwest Missouri baseball coach in the 1960s. A few administrators and fellow Bears coaches were Salem High alums, and they spoke highly of Salem's hoops coach.

"He had done well in a town that hadn't done a lot in basketball," Rowe said, "and he wanted to get into college basketball."

In 1968, then-Southwest Missouri basketball coach Bill Thomas allowed Spoonhour to join his staff in an unpaid position. Four years later, Spoonhour took over at Moberly.

Famed coach Cotton Fitzsimmons still tells Rowe to remind Spoonhour that Fitzsimmons was the best coach in Moberly history.

Spoonhour had moved around a bit until 1983, when Rowe hired him to replace Bob Cleeland as Southwest Missouri's coach. A year earlier, Rowe had been promoted to athletic director.

"I knew Charlie would be a perfect fit for our area," Rowe said. "Bob was a good person, but it just didn't fit. Here, people were proud of Charlie's Ozarkian roots. He's so personable, and I knew our people would relate to him."

In nine seasons, Spoonhour directed the Bears into Division I, and to five NCAA tournaments and two NITs. That's when he became a hit as a speaker all over the Midwest.

When the Bears visited Bradley, Braves administrators begged Spoonhour to be a keynote speaker at a booster-club luncheon. When an emcee, wearing a red sports coat, introduced him, Spoonhour thanked him and wondered aloud why the guy had to moonlight at Avis.

One year, he broke up the crowd telling a story with an incomplete ending. The following season, Spoonhour resumed that story at the exact point that he had left off a year earlier.

"The people were cryin'," Rowe said. "I heard them say, 'He comes in here, makes us laugh and then kicks our butts.' Charlie can spin a yarn."

Southwest Missouri had belted Saint Louis five times in a row, and in seven of nine overall, when Yow, the Billkens' athletic boss, called for him in 1992.

His time at the podium before the tipoff of the Missouri Valley tournament became annual events.

"Saint Louis fans got big laughs from him, and we were beating them like a yard dog," Rowe said. "He always had 'em rolling on the floor, but we'd have to encourage him to get up there. They were dying to hear him tell his stories.

"But I exposed him too much and they said, 'Hey, let's go after 'Spoon.' They did."

At his 1994 induction into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, Spoonhour paid a tribute to Rowe that Rowe will always treasure. Both men are 64, and their families are still tight.

"At that ceremony, (Spoonhour) said he had tried to get a lot of jobs but the only guy who would hire him was me," Rowe said. "I've always taken that as one of the good things I can lay claim to.

"But I had an advantage, because I knew him and knew what he could do."

So did Yow.

"Obviously," she said, "I hired him for a reason."

Rowe even learned more about Spoonhour the moment after he accepted the Saint Louis job, when Spoonhour placed his first call as the Billikens' coach to his ex-wife, Carolyn.

"Even though they couldn't make it work forever, they were still really good friends," Rowe said. "There were no bad feelings. There is no hate in Charlie's heart."

For the first time in Saint Louis history, it went to consecutive NCAA tournaments under Spoonhour, in 1994 and '95. During his tenure, the Billikens defeated higher-seeded teams twice in the NCAAs.

Yow became a fixture at his games because she formerly coached basketball, at Kentucky and Florida. She also served as an ace Spoonhour interpreter for Father Lawrence Biondi, the Saint Louis president.

"He was a Chicago guy with a Ph.D. in linguistics from Georgetown, but he couldn't understand Charlie," Yow said of Biondi. "He wound up with two Southerners, a protective female athletic director and a very Southern men's basketball coach.

"The Father would turn to me when Charlie was talking and say, 'What did he say?' Not a lot, but when Charlie gets going ... I actually had to do that."

Many were reminded of Spoonhour's legacy in 1999, when 12th-seeded Southwest Missouri State upended fifth-seeded Wisconsin and coach Dick Bennett, 43-32, in the first round of the NCAAs in Charlotte.

How do you feel, Rowe observed many reporters asking Bennett afterward, about losing to Southwest Missouri State?

When Bennett coached at Wisconsin-Green Bay, he lost all 12 games he played against Spoonhour and the Bears.

"How many of you have been to a game there?" Bennett said, eliciting few hands. "Charlie beat me like a drum. If you've never been there, you don't know what it's like. They have great fans. And I still haven't beaten them."

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