The unfinished story of the 1969 Oran basketball team

This story has the worst kind of ending a basketball story can have.

While it might bring about sadness for some, it's not a sad ending. No, sad endings happen all the time.

Teams lose, final shots get missed and dreams of championships go unrealized. Players and fans sometimes cry, but another game comes along. Even if the players change, the teams carry on and, eventually, so does everybody else. The sadness isn't forgotten, but its intensity lessens with time.

Sometimes basketball stories have incorrect endings. Those might be the second-worst kind. It's an unavoidable truth that sometimes an official makes the wrong call and the wrong team wins.

But this story's ending isn't like that. In fact, it doesn't even have a proper ending. It doesn't have a resolution -- even after 44 years.

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Members of the 1969 Oran boys basketball team gathered for a photo at their 2009 reunion.

This is the story of the 1969 Missouri Class "M" state championship game between the Dixon Bulldogs and the Oran Eagles, when a denied free-throw attempt helped decide the outcome.

Back then there were just three classes in Missouri, an "S" class for small schools, an "M" class for medium schools and an "L" class for large schools.

The Eagles advanced to the championship that year with a 34-0 record under the direction of coach Gene Bess, who would go on to become the winningest coach in college basketball history at Three Rivers Community College.

"Coach Bess, what he taught us was discipline," 1969 Oran team member Fred Johnson said. "He was an extension of your family. My family was old farmers from the South. They was disciplinarian. Coach Bess did the same thing, so that was no difference, but his conditioning was sometimes brutal.

"But once we bought into it -- and what he was trying to do was make the strong survive -- and if you was weak you couldn't play for him. You have to be strong. He was going to find a way to get everything out of you that you had."

The Eagles, whose tallest player was 6-foot-2, wore opponents down with full-court defense. They'd press man-to-man, or they'd play a 2-1-2, or a 2-2-1, or a 1-2-2, or a 1-1-3 -- whatever Bess thought it would take to wear a team down and expose their weaknesses.

They beat rival Scott County Central by 33 points that season, beat rival Matthews by 22 and took down bigger schools as well. Notre Dame and Poplar Bluff were the only teams to manage to stick within 10 points of the team all season. Cape Central was beaten by 25 and Charleston by 28.

Oran won its state quarterfinal by 29 points over Flat River Central in front of a sell-out crowd of more than 3,500 people at Houck Field House. Others were turned away at the door.

"We got out on the floor, there was people sitting out on the playing floor, sitting down because there was so many people in there," Johnson said. "So we were warming up in a tight area. Finally they kept pushing people back, kept pushing people back. And then we was able to warm up.

"But when that game started, we hit them with a ton of bricks. That full-court press, we was out-rebounding them. We was so much quicker than they were, they were so much bigger than we were. Coach Bess told us how to break people down."

The Eagles played another team with much taller players in the state semifinal at Brewer Fieldhouse on the University of Missouri campus.

Kansas City's Pembroke Country Day team started a pair of 6-foot-7 players, but the Eagles won by 18 and outrebounded their opponent -- just like they did in every other game all season.

"Not so surprisingly to the fans who have watched the Eagles all year was the fact that they outrebounded the Kansas City boys, with the 6-2 Johnson boys -- Fred and John -- leaping high over the Pem Day duo time after time for the big board grabs," read a newspaper account of the game.

That win set up a showdown with undefeated Dixon in the state championship. There are an agreed upon set of facts about what happened during the game, but the less-important details change depending on who's talking. The beauty of a story that lives on this long is all the different versions that come to life.

Everyone who was there has their own, as does everyone who participated.

Controversial call

Johnson said he knew his team was the underdog against Dixon, whose star player, John Brown, went on to be All-America at Mizzou and play in the NBA.

"We knew it. No one thought we had a chance," Johnson said. "The only somebody who thought we had a chance was the people from Oran and maybe some of the people who had seen us play down here because they didn't know anything about Dixon. But Dixon was no fluke. They were a darn good team. But as far as us, we felt that we could get them."

Johnson's teammate Rodney LeGrand had a slightly different memory.

"Wasn't aware of it if we were," LeGrand said. "I think against Kansas City we were probably considered the underdogs, too, but we weren't really affected by that."

Oran couldn't wear down the Dixon players, who were used to playing an up-tempo game. But Dixon couldn't shake the Eagles either.

Oran trailed by two with 12 seconds remaining when Johnson, who had scored 31 points in the game, was fouled.

He made the front end of a 1-and-1 to make the score 75-74 and got the ball for his second free throw, but his dribbling was interrupted by official Gene Barth's whistle.

"I thought the official, when he asked me to give him the ball, it was to quiet the crowd," said Johnson, who explained that the crowd was asked to be quiet during free throws at that time. "He said '10 seconds.' Ten seconds? And he said, 'Dixon's ball.' I said, 'How?' And he said it again, 'Dixon's ball.'

"It was a hurtful thing."

LeGrand had fouled out and was watching from the bench.

"When Fred shot the first free throw -- and he took a little time, but nothing that I thought was significant. There again, the crowd was really yelling and Fred was taking his time.

"The second one, the referee gave him the ball and he dribbled it a couple times. He looked up, he dribbled it again and then all of the sudden he blew the whistle. We're like, 'What's going on?' He took the ball, and he gave it to Dixon. They took off and there was 12 seconds left in the game, but I think we were so caught off-guard by that they ran 11 seconds off the clock before we finally fouled Randall Irvin. But by then it was too late. I honestly still didn't know. I said, 'What did he call? Why did he get the ball? Why did they get the ball?' So it was more just totally caught off-guard by the play."

Irvin made one of two free throws, and Dixon won the game 76-74.

So, yes, the game had an ending. But trust that this story does not.

Judicious editing

Not surprisingly, both LeGrand and Johnson express shock to this day that the call ever was made and disappointment that a game so good, between teams so good, could be decided like that.

"Dixon and Oran, two fantastic teams with undefeated records, battled through 31 minutes, [48] seconds of dead-even basketball here last night only to have the Missouri class M high school championship decided by an official," was the first line of a story in the Kansas City Star the next day.

"That game, had that call not been made -- we could have lost that game, we could have tied and went into overtime, we might have won the game," LeGrand said. "Who knows what the outcome of that game was? The only thing that's disturbing and troubling for me is the referee made the decision as to who was going to win that game, and I'm not quite sure why he made that call at that point in time."

While it's the not knowing that sticks with LeGrand, it's the knowing that bothers Johnson.

"I know I'd have hit it, and I didn't get a chance to shoot it," Johnson said. "That game was on the line. I wasn't missing that shot."

The Missourian ran a story about the game the next day as well as a column by reporter Greg Brumley headlined "That 'Ridiculous Call.'"

"During the infamous free shot incident, we observed Mr. Barth with his eyes glued to shooter Johnson," wrote Brumley in the column. "Therefore, he made his decision without any consultation with his watch or any timepiece. Most observers who were aware of the possible call, timed the lapse at seven or eight seconds. Our review of a tape recording of the game concurs with that gap.

"If 10 seconds did elapse, it was very close. Mr. Barth must have an acute faith in his sense of timing. Whether that faith is justified is quite debatable."

Back then the officials from the Missouri State High School Athletics Association filmed each game and sent a copy to all participating schools once the event was over.

LeGrand remembers being eager to watch the tape when it arrived in Oran. It should have provided some resolution. After all, rules are rules. If Johnson had taken too long, the Oran players would know their ending was a sad one. If he hadn't, they would know it was an incorrect one.

"We're all sitting there with watches saying, 'We're going to find out if this was 10 seconds or not,'" LeGrand said. "And when it came time for that free throw, they had edited that free throw out of the film. It wasn't in there, and I thought, 'Holy Mackerel!' What an indictment."

You still can watch the game today. It's even on DVD now. But you won't find footage of the free throw.

"Everybody tried to comfort us, and everybody really tried to comfort me," Johnson said. "That still didn't give us what we wanted. I appreciated the people, the fans of Oran and the fans in different towns and things coming to my aid and stuff, but it still wasn't what I wanted. I wanted that state trophy.

"I just couldn't believe we lost the game that way. We were perfect all year. And then we lose a game like that. At first I thought that I did it myself. That was the hardest thing. I blamed myself and I blamed myself and I blamed myself. I would laugh and talk with people, but when I would be by myself it would all come full force. I spent a lot of time out in the barn thinking about it -- a lot of time spent by myself, just thinking."

One-sided officiating?

There is, of course, still an ever-so-slight chance that Barth, who went on to become an NFL official and was the referee for the 1984 Super Bowl, was right. It's hard to imagine the tape of the game would have been altered if he was and hard to discount Brumley's review of an audio recording.

But just in case he was, there's an alternate ending to the story that also inspires head-shaking.

Multiple accounts of the game, both from newspaper articles and from people who were there, include references to the actions of Dixon players that could have resulted in technical fouls. One player in particular gave the crowd the world's most famous obscene gesture during the course of the game.

"When questioned on this, one of the game officials lamely replied, 'Yes, it could have been a technical, but there was a lot of pressure involved there,'" wrote Brumley.

"HOW MUCH PRESSURE WAS THERE ON FRED JOHNSON?" was the column's next line.

An editorial by Ray Owen later published in the Missourian replied to a reader who wrote that "the primary purpose of an official is to guarantee that two ball teams play by the rules."

Owen replied: "One Dixon player in particular actually slammed his hands on the floor (an act of disgust) at one referee's call yet a foul was not called.

"The basketball rules state that any time a player shows an act of disgust at an official's ruling, an automatic technical should be called.

"Was it fair to Oran to 'let these calls go?'"

Final lesson

The members of the 1969 Oran team scattered throughout the country in the years after the game.

Johnson was one of the few to remain in the area. He went on to play for Bess at TRCC, then played at Southeast Missouri State. He became the first coach to take the Oran baseball team to the final four, he coached the Scott County Central girls basketball team to two state titles and was the first coach to take the Sikeston boys basketball team to the final four in 1995.

He retired from Sikeston Public Schools in May, where he had been the dean of students.

He watched this year's Oran basketball team play at the Southeast Missourian Christmas Tournament and will watch the Eagles play for the school's first state championship Saturday at Mizzou Arena in Columbia -- if they win their state semifinal Thursday.

"I know Oran is going to follow," Johnson said. "Everybody from Oran is going to be there. They better have the National Guard or somebody go to Oran because there won't be anybody in that town. They're going to be on the road up there, at the ballgame. I'm going to be right there watching them. I just really, really hope they can win it. It would be great to have Oran win. You know, I got my paycheck from Sikeston that last 23 years, but your heart still be at your home town."

The Eagles' trip to the final four this season is the first since Johnson and his senior teammates walked off the floor for the last time.

"It's kind of funny. The '69 team has kind of reconnected," said LeGrand, who lives in St. Louis. "I guess there's five or six who either through phone call or through email that we've kind of talked about how the team was doing down there. Of course, then we started reliving some old memories, telling highly embellished stories."

Those stories stick with him and his teammates, no matter the conclusion, which is what he would tell the members of this year's Oran team.

"Probably the only thing I would is you've got to give it your total, 110-percent effort because however this ends is going to be with you for a long, long time," LeGrand said. "So don't leave anything out there on the floor. Give it all."