TSU's
Dick Barnett and John McLendon Tabbed
for Induction Into National Collegiate
Basketball Hall of Fame
Wallace
Dooley
4/2/07
Dick Barnett
Coach John McLendon
(Tennessee State Photo)
Atlanta,
GA - Tennessee State basketball legends
Dick Barnett and coach John McLendon
have been tabbed for induction
to the
National Collegiate Basketball Hall of
Fame on Sunday, November 18, 2007. The
announcement was made Sunday by the
National Association of Basketball
Coaches Foundation.
Induction
ceremonies
will be held
at the new College Basketball Experience
(CBE) in Kansas City, Mo. The CBE, which
will cover more than
40,000 square feet on two floors and
will provide a fun, memorable and
multi-faceted interactive experience for
fans,
shares a
common lobby with the new Sprint Center
Arena and is the home of the National
Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.
The players to be inducted include
Dick
Groat, a two-time All-America
basketball player at Duke University in
1951 and 1952, who went on to star in
major league baseball and was the
National League’s most valuable player
in 1962 with the Pittsburgh Pirates;
three-time Tennessee State All-America
Dick
Barnett, who won two National
Basketball Association (NBA) titles with
the New York Knicks; and Notre Dame star
Austin Carr, the 1971
national player of the year, who
averaged 41.3 points in NCAA tournament
games and holds five tournament records.
The coaches to be inducted include
Missouri’s
Norm
Stewart, who guided the
Tigers for 32 seasons, including 16 NCAA
tourney berths and eight regular season
Big 8 championships;
Guy
Lewis, the University of
Houston coach who led his teams to five
Final Four berths and championship games
in 1983 and 1984; and
Charles
“Lefty” Driesell, who coached
four different teams to 786 wins over
his 41 seasons as a head coach and led
all four programs to the NCAA
championship tournament.
TSU Player/Coach Inductee Profiles
Dick Barnett, Player
A
three-time All-America player at
Tennessee State, Dick Barnett led his
team to three consecutive NAIA national
championships for Hall of Fame Coach
John McLendon. Barnet was named
championship MVP in 1958 and 1959. The
top draft choice of the Syracuse
National of the NBA, he later played
with the Los Angeles Lakers for three
seasons and played on two NBA
championship teams with the New York
Knicks in 1969-70 and 1972-73.
John McLendon, Coach
One of the
game’s leading ambassadors, McLendon
learned basketball at Kansas from James
Naismith. He is the first coach to lead
a team to three consecutive national
championships, having accomplished that
feat with Tennessee State from 1957-59.
McLendon was instrumental in initiating
an era of integrated basketball and was
the first African-American professional
basketball coach with the Cleveland
Pipers of the ABL in 1961. He was
inducted into the Naismith Memorial
Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978.