10 SECONDS OF FAME: ORAN LOSES '69 STATE TITLE GAME ON CONTROVERSIAL FREE-THROW VIOLATION

Twelve seconds is too long to shoot a free throw.

Fred Johnson and the Oran Eagles found that out the hard way in 1969 when they lost the state championship game by two points.

With 12 seconds remaining and the scrappy Oran team down by two points to heavily favored Dixon, Fred Johnson was fouled. A deliberate free throw shooter, Johnson went to the line, amid the frenzies noise and sights in the Brewer Field House. He took his time and swished the first shot. It was 74-73.

He took his time again, preparing to shoot his second free throw. Suddenly referee Gene Barth blew his whistle and took the ball. Johnson later said he thought Barth was just trying to quiet the crowd. Instead he was calling an obscure and seldom-enforced 10-second time limit on free throws.

Oran had to foul and Dixon hit one final free throw for a 76-74 victory.

"I still think that's the worst call I've ever seen," Gene Bess said 30 years and hundreds of basketball games later. "I think the old boy who did it was honest as the day is long. He went on to be rules supervisor in NFL. It was just a very poor judgment call."

"That final free throw, I think is about the only thing that most people remember," said KFVS Anchorman Mike Shain, who broadcast the Oran state games for KISM Radio. "After that, I don't know if there are many people that can even tell you much about the game or much about the tournament because there was this one brief moment that decided the game--or most people said it did.

"As time went by, I think probably the official was correct in the call. The only problem was, I'd never seen the call made before. We knew there were guys who took a long time to get their free throws off. Then again, maybe this fellow said `This is the Final Four and here we go by all the rules. We don't give you any breaks.' I don't know if it was good officiating or an official being a little too rule-enthusiastic. I know we were disappointed. I think most people viewed this a slap in the face for all of Southeast Missouri."

Oran had entered the game as the clear underdog. Dixon was led by John Brown, an intimidating figure, was later a two-time All-American and first-round NBA draft pick.

The big-city media underestimated the Eagles to the extreme, calling them the "running runts of the Bootheel."

But Oran did more than hold its own. Unfortunately, the Eagles were left with a bitter feeling of what might have been.

"I've lived with that since 1969," said Johnson, who went on to a successful coaching career. "T~hat particular night became the longest one of my life. I felt I'd let the team down, and the community too. It took a while for me to understand I didn't.

"It was not a failure by me, it was just a part of growin' up," said Johnson, then he chuckled. "You give me that ball nowadays, I'd shoot that sucker so fast the ref's hands wouldn't get down."

Oran fans never did feel Johnson or any of the Eagles had let them down. Dusting off the frustrating and heartbreaking ending, the exhausted Oran fans showed how they felt shortly after arriving home that weekend.

Some 1,000 Oran residents joyously welcomed the team home amid 25 degree weather that Sunday night. A caravan, led by Mayor Louie Hirschwitz in the city's brand new fire truck met the team in Chaffee and led it back to town.

The call is debated to this day.

"With the game over, the second-guessing began," author Matt Chaney wrote in his book "Legend in Missouri". "(Kansas City) Star sportswriter Fritz Kreister wrote from Columbia that "Dixon and Oran, two fantastic teams . . . battled through 31 minutes and 48 seconds of dead-even basketball . . . only to have the Missouri Class M high school championship decided by an official.'"

In his "Bench Warmer" column in the Globe Democrat, Bob Burns wrote "...at a crucial athletic moment in the life of this Oran player, a referee called an obscure infraction...it is a time for concern when the outcome of a game of basketball can be controlled by whim, by caprice or by device."

The furor was terrific in Southeast Missouri.

According to Shain, while the Oran players and fans were amazingly good sports about it, rival Bootheel coaches were among "the most vociferous" in complaining. Looking back, Shain feels the media deserves some of the blame in the anger that surfaced.

"Perhaps it was rubbed in a little bit because we radio broadcasters, we were so dumbfounded," he said. "Relatively few people (from the Oran area) were at the game. There were several stations doing the game. I think one problem was our stunned reaction, followed by 'What's going on down there?' and I do recall maybe some of the color commentators saying 'What are they trying to do, steal the game?'

"Keep in mind, we were up there as fans. By the time you get to the Final Four, I was what you call a 'homer.' But why not? You follow these kids whether they be from Oran or Richland or Matthews, you follow these kids and they're your kids and you root for them. If you feel the calls are going against them, you look at that and say 'These are our kids.'

"Maybe it was our reaction that created this attitude back here in Southeast Missouri that 'Hey, we was robbed.' Maybe it's partly the media's fault. Certainly echoed the next day in the newspapers. All the sports editors around here questioned the call. Even if they were trying to explain it, that drove home the point that this was call I'd never seen before. There were coaches who didn't know it was in the rule book."