Hunting Beavers
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No cant say that I do. But after a quick Google search I still don’t but a good read and connection.
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@JRyman Ralph was a defensive guru back in the day. Had some really good teams, including Gary Payton Sr.
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I remember him… he coached at WSU (back then, U of W), Iowa and Oregon State. Also coached at Wichita East HS.
He was from Chanute… and I believe he was a KU grad!
HOF’er… all the way! Tremendous coach! He was instrumental in expanding the full court press to all situations.
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@drgnslayr From what I gather talking to local OSU alums, Ralph Miller is thought of as their Phog Allen (which makes sense since Ralph played for Phog).
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Another KU guy gone good.
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@KUSTEVE KU is due for a bad game at the Sprint Center… its been a while.
I hope it doesnt happen though!!
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@Lulufulu Sorry, not subscribing to that.
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@KUSTEVE me neither, negative Ned!
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I remember #1 ranked Oregon State losing to KSU in the NCAAs in 80-81. Rolando Blackman nailed the winner. What a game that was. THIS, is not that team though. LOL
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@hawkmoon2020 I remember that.
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Rolando was a stud…
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Damn, you’re old too! Welcome to the “Seniors Club.”
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How do you say 636 Ws and .632 W&L without ever having coached at an elite school.
Ralph Miller was the guy that should have been given the KU job after Harp flopped, instead of Owens. Miller was one of the great coaches of his generation. He was an absolute man. He was a proponent of fast break basketball. Had he coached KU, instead of Owens, KU would have never sagged in national respect as happened. Miller got caught in the Wichita/Kansas City power struggle for replacing Harp. The Wichita faction wanted Miller. The Kansas City faction wanted Dean Smith. And they compromised on Owens, at least that 's how it was told to me by old timers when I was a boy. His WSU team with Dave Stallworth and Nate Bowman was a fabulous team.
He was one of KU’s greatest athletes of the 1930s. His wiki summarizes his KU and high school career well.
“In college at the University of Kansas, he won three letters as a football quarterback and three in basketball. He set the state record in the low hurdles in 1937. He was all-state three consecutive years in football and basketball. By 1940, he was beating the 1932 gold medalist in the decathlon Jim Baush in seven of 10 events.”
Miller was a gruff, no BS kind of guy–a stud. Let me put this guy in perspective. Had Bob Knight come into Corvallis and thrown a chair, Miller would have grabbed him and slapped him around. Miller left WSU for Iowa and built a good team almost instantly there, too, then bailed and went to Oregon State because he liked the Big Country and the Big Water–an outdoorsy type. The guy was just a MAN. At Oregon State he had many good teams, but the touchy feely era of sports on the west coast started and he was out of step with the times that way. Not smooth. Didn’t try to be smooth.
He is a fair sized legend in Corvallis–the court bears his name. I visited there about ten years ago and talked ball in a coffee shop with a Beaver fan. He didn’t hesitate. The old guy had watched the great Slats Gill, Pete Newell, and Sam Berry, and Wooden. He said that on the bench Miller was as good as any of them, probably better. But he never had enough top talent to go deep. He said Miller’s best OSU teams never had more than two really good players on each team that could play for UCLA, or the big schools back east like UNC, Kentucky, Kansas and Indiana. He said Miller was too honest. And he could have coached Knight’s 76 team to an undefeated season in his sleep. I liked this old dude. The minute I knew he knew about Slats Gill, I knew I had a live one on my hands. He said Miller had come to OSU with the reputation of an offensive coach that liked to run, but that at OSU he realized he wouldn’t be able to get enough talent to run with the top teams in the country, so he slowed it down and played defense and ball control. I kick myself for not asking him about the offense Miller ran.
Miller to me represents the real missing link between Phog Allen and the modern game. Once Harp lost his nerve, and found god, and devoted himself to FCA, that left Miller and Dean Smith as the links in the modern day to the Allen tradition of ball. But Smith systematically distanced himself from Allen by embracing first the Oklahoma Shuffle and then Iba’s high low passing offense. Smith talked about lots of Allen principles and drills in how they practiced, but Smith really coached a brand of ball, not very closely connected to Allen at all. Smith’s game was 1/3 Oklahoma Shuffle, 1/3 Iba High Low, and 1/3 McGuire Ball.
I saw an interview with Miller once when he was being inducted into a HOF, or was sponsoring someone into a HOF. All I remember is that he said Allen and Iba were the two great influences on his thinking about the game. He was Bill Self before there was Bill Self, maybe.
Miller is also remembered for having had the audacity to have said that he could go out and find a guy 6-8 out on the street that had never played organized basketball and with coaching turn him into a credible back up big man in D1 college basketball. Remember, this was at a time when everyone had seen Wooden embrace athleticism and everyone thought guys had to be Y-axis guys, or footers, to play the game in college ball. Uh, yeah, the guy had a pair and didn’t care when he was in step with the times, and then didn’t care when he was out of step with them.
According to my late father, who was at KU when Miller was a BMOC in football and playing basketball for Allen and taking classes from Naismith, but who never assisted Allen, Miller was a fabulous athlete, and Miller’s brand of ball was the logical extension of Allen. Allen was protean and willing to constantly try radical new things. Miller was protean and willing to coach a running game one period of years, jump into the Big Ten and set an offensive scoring per game season record, then completely shift gears to a slow down game at OSU. This was the sort of flexibility that characterized Allen, also.
My pop said he had heard that Miller was somewhat embittered that he was turned down by KU a couple times and that he really had little use for KU by the time he was in mid life. His loyalty was all with Allen and Naismith, the men, and not with the KU survived them. He seemed to feel that KU after Allen and Naismith had pretty much shafted him. I have always wanted to hear from someone that really knew the story from Miller as to what happened.
Miller is in my pantheon of great basketball coaches.
Miller is the one that KU squandered.
Imagine KU laboring through Harp and Owens and having spurned a future Hall of Famer–Ralph Miller. Only a school with such a giant basketball coaching legacy could even be in position to make such a stupefying miscalculation.
All through my childhood of Harp and Owens, my father said that anyone of three guys should have been the KU coach: Ralph Miller, Dean Smith, or Eddie Sutton. Smith never wanted the KU job after he got to UNC. Sutton no one at KU would consider because he was an Iba guy and there were still too many KU alums and fans that remembered the bad blood between Allen and Iba over Allen thinking that Iba’s slow down game was ruining basketball. Ralph Miller, he said a thousand times, was THE ONE. Miller was the right guy–the real connection to Allen–the guy with the brashness and balls and vision that Allen had. But Miller was to socially and politically unpolished and too opposed by the Kansas City faction for reasons he never explained, but which had to have had something to do with the Ray Evans-Dean Smith faction in Kansas City.
But this is all rumor, speculation and hearsay, and what we need is for someone that knew someone that knew Ralph Miller to come forward for the legacy and clarify what really happened–to explain how KU missed out on not one but two Hall of Fame coaches–Ralph and Dean–that should have been taking KU to the promised land all those years between Allen and LB.
Rock Chalk!
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@jaybate-1.0 good stuff!
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Oregon St has some talented freshman, some top 100 kids that have helped them right from the start. Should be a good game before KU wears them out.
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@jaybate-1.0 I appreciate the history on him. I had always wondered why he wasn’t chosen as our coach. And we took Ted Owens over Miller. Wow.
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@jaybate-1.0 Thanks for the history. Self’s video yesterday about the campers waiting for the next game and him saying that professor’s on the first day of class will ask “Why did you come to KU?” The most common answer was “Basketball.”
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@jaybate-1.0 Are you the one with the receding hair or the one who’s receding chin is about to meet his belt buckle?
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@KUSTEVE Jethro I would imagine granny has fixed you many a fine beaver in yur day thanks to your uncle Jed’s good shootin’.
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@brooksmd granny might have shot and cooked it!
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@jaybate-1.0 goo goo g’joob
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@jaybate-1.0 fascinating stuff. Great basketball history lesson. Love it.
