Column: Chris Harris caps Hall of Fame-worthy career

The common themes enveloping Southeast Missouri State athletics in recent years have been two things: Elite student-athletes achieving greatness.

Anyone that follows Redhawk athletics can point to the never-ending list of championships won throughout the athletic department, all of which took student-athletes who are certainly worthy of future consideration as SEMO Hall of Famers.

With the exception of men’s basketball.

Outside of former Redhawk great, Antonius Cleveland, who has yet to be inducted into the university Hall of Fame, and the 2012 induction of the NCAA Tournament-qualifying squad from 2000, the men’s basketball program hasn’t fielded a legitimate candidate for consideration of this magnificent honor in a long time.

Without question, at some point, the 2022-23 team, as a whole, will be inducted, but as an individual student-athlete, now former (and it is painful to type that word) Redhawk guard Chris Harris has made a strong case for himself.

“I couldn't have scripted a better thing for Chris Harris,” third-year SEMO coach Brad Korn said Tuesday following his team’s gut-wrenching postseason loss to Texas A&M Corpus Christi. “You get your 1,000th point. You've got two degrees. You're going to win an OVC championship (and) you're going to play in the NCAA Tournament.

“That's a full book. You can't write it any better.”

And Korn left out the opening chapters of Harris’ story, which only adds credence to his having earned the consideration.

In the fall of 2019, Harris was on his fourth school in as many years and packed more weight and immaturity than he did mental and physical toughness.

Current SEMO assistant coach Keith Pickens had to run behind Harris during early-season wind sprints and literally push him, as he stumbled – lackadaisically – to his perpetual last-place finish among his teammates.

That scene is difficult to envision having come from the same guy, who just closed his career by averaging over 22 points per game over the final eight games, and was named the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament Most Valuable Player.

“I just realized where I was individually,” Harris said earlier this season of his growth process, “where we were as a team, and I felt like if I improved my performance, my body, my health, then being a leader, an older guy on this team, then everybody else would follow suit.”

As much as Harris’ production ON the court merits Hall of Fame consideration, what he did over the past four years OFF it, is just as impressive.

As the figurative revolving door on the SEMO men’s locker room sped faster and faster over the past four seasons, Harris was the one constant of which the foundation of today’s program could be constructed.

Harris ultimately played with 34 different teammates over the past four seasons, but he kept showing up each year, diligently trying to make a positive mark on the program.

“When Coach Korn first took the job,” Harris said on Tuesday, “and he called me because we didn't know what was going on, and he's like, first things first, my mission and my goal is to change the image and perception of the program.

“I feel like we've done that up until this point. That was the way I wanted to finish out my career.”

There is zero doubt that Harris accomplished that goal.

After he fouled out of Tuesday’s game with a team-leading 23 points, the Redhawk fans in attendance at UD Arena in Dayton, Ohio, were chanting “MVP! MVP! MVP!” They just as easily should have been screaming “Hall of Famer! Hall of Famer! Hall of Famer!”

If you want a final memory of Harris to hold onto, which shows who he is as a competitor, teammate, human being, and a Redhawk, the following were the first words stated in the postgame press conference by Harris following the end of his career.

“First off,” Harris began, “I just want to thank my teammates. They played a great season, a great conference tournament, and they played as hard as they could tonight, just the ball didn't bounce the way we wanted it to.

“And I want to give credit to our opponents because they made it hard on us on offense.”

If that guy doesn’t deserve a lasting place in SEMO lore, then I don’t know why the university even has a Hall of Fame.

Tom Davis is a freelance sports reporter for Rust Communications.