Men's Basketball | 9/27/2018 10:22:29 AM

Each week, the MIAA’s featured writer David Boyce covers an intriguing story in the conference for a series called Boyce’s Beat: Featured Stories of the MIAA.

This week David Boyce profiles Gene Iba, former head men’s basketball coach at Pittsburg State, and his path to leading the Gorilla basketball program to national prominence.  

On October 5^th, when Gene Iba enters the Pittsburg State’s Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame, a humbling feel will engulf him.

After spending 15 seasons as the men’s basketball coach for the Gorillas, Iba was immersed in the school’s rich athletic tradition.

Iba added to that athletic fabric. He quickly resurrected a basketball program that beat the elite teams in the MIAA and made noise on the national level. In just his second year at Pitt State, he guided the Gorillas to their first-ever NCAA Division II tournament berth and that team reached the Sweet 16 in the 1996-97 season.

“He was demanding and he didn’t compromise with what he wanted from us,” said Doug Gillispie, who played on that team as a sophomore and will also be inducted into the 2018 Hall of Fame class. “He was definitely an old-school coach, no nonsense. You got with the program and did what was asked.

“We had guys who could take that and we had guys hungry to win and he was hungry to prove himself in the coaching arena at Pitt State. It all came together.”
Indeed. From 1995 to 2010, Iba consistently put teams on the hardwood that thrilled fans and made life in the MIAA even more rugged for opposing teams. He finished with a 261-172 record at Pitt State.

“I tell people this and I really believe it,” Iba said. “The time I was in the MIAA, I coached against better people, more talented people than when I was in the old Southwest Conference that had some national championships. I don’t say that lightly. When you look at the guys I coached against, they are not only great coaches, but we got along well. We didn’t get along very well at 7:30 at night, but beyond that, it was a good group to be around. We had a good time when we had meetings.

“You look at Bob Chipman (Washburn), Kim Anderson (Central Missouri), Steve Tappmeyer (Northwest Missouri State), Tom Smith (Missouri Western), Robert Corn (Missouri Southern). These guys knew what they are doing. Most of them had been around really good programs, either as players or as coaches before. They knew how to make things work. When you teed it up every night, you better have your best game going.”

Before Iba arrived at Pitt State, he knew little about the MIAA. He didn’t even know where Pittsburg, Kansas, was located even though his dad and uncle played against the school many years ago and another uncle coached against the school.

From the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, Iba spent six years as the head coach at Baylor in the old Southwest Conference. He guided the Bears to an NCAA tournament berth and an NIT tournament berth.

But after the 1991-92 season, Iba’s contract wasn’t renewed. The Pitt State job came available in 1995. Iba was 55 at the time. He talked with his friend, Gary Garner, who once led Fort Hays State to a Division II national title, about the job.

Iba also credits current Oklahoma coach Lon Kruger for helping him land the job at Pitt State. 

“I got there, kind of by accident,” Iba said.

He figured at 55, he would be there five or six years if the school wanted to keep him and then he would retire. At the time, Iba didn’t know much about Division II basketball.

“I thought there would be a bunch of student-athletes who dropped by for practice and go back to their studies and didn’t pay much attention to how they were playing,” Iba said. “When I got there, it was a scary remembrance of how the old Southwest Conference was.”

Iba, though, realized he needed some players. He only had three returners. He asked a friend about finding some players. The conversation went like this:

I said we need players.
He said what kind.
I said I don’t care. We need players.

One of those players was guard Oscar Gonzalez from Madrid, Spain. He is already in Pittsburg State’s Hall of Fame and is a recent inductee of the MIAA Hall of Fame. Another player was Gillispie, who Iba said he recruited from the baseball team.

Another player who is the Pittsburg State Hall of Fame and helped the rapid rise was Marc Eddington, who Iba calls the best shooter/athlete he has coached.
“We got really lucky,” Iba said. “For one thing, when a program is down, expectations are really low. It wasn’t in very good shape when I got there.

“We started off with 12 players the first year. We had a transfer. I had two baseball players, a freshman point guard from Madrid, Spain. Four years later, they won 84 games.”
Gillispie knew something special was brewing his freshman year when the team started 2-9 and finished 14-14. In that season, they beat one of the top teams, Northwest Missouri, three times.

The following year, Pittsburg State 24-8 and made the Sweet 16. The Gorillas wound up advancing to the Division II Tournament three straight years. 

Anderson, now the head basketball coach at Pitt State, was an assistant for six years with Iba at Baylor. He also coached against him when Anderson was at Central Missouri.

“I didn’t really enjoy coaching against him for two reasons,” Anderson said. “One, he is the guy who gave me a start as a full-time assistant at Baylor.”

“The other reason was his teams were always tough to play. I have taken a lot of stuff from him. A lot of times we had similar plays and defenses and strategies and things like that. He is a solid, fundamental coach.”

Iba also simply loves the game. Given his family history in the sport, it is easy to say basketball is part of his DNA. It is why a 5-year job turned into 15 years. Iba loved his time in Pittsburg.

“There have been some great players and great coaches who have gone there,” Iba said. “Pittsburg State has a history that goes back almost the turn of the century and not this century but the last one.

“There are some tremendous people in the athletic department and at the university and around Pittsburg. It is a great town, a fun town. It is a college town.”