Inductees

It all started at the top. That’s what the players will tell you. By a basketball coach who could have doubled as a drill sergeant and, on game days, wore suits as if he was readying for a GQ cover shoot.

What a time it was for the the Logan-Rogersville High School boys basketball teams of the early to mid-1980s.

“He was pretty tough,” said 1983 senior Keith Spaulding said of coach Gary McDaniel. “I taught and coached for 31 years, and you can’t do what he did now.”

McDaniel certainly knew how to build a winner. In fact, the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame proudly inducted the 1982-1986 era of Logan-Rogersville Boys Basketball with the Class of 2022.

The Wildcats won it all in Class 3 in 1982, finishing 29-1. They also placed third in 1983 (30-2 record) and was a state runner-up in 1986. In 1984, the team won 21 games and 23 the next year before a 29-4 season played out in 1986.

The state championship team beat Chillicothe 61-57 at the Hearnes Center and featured Kelly Samuel, Jeff Bass, Ronnie Swearengin, Jeff Andrews, Michael Taylor, Keith Spaulding, Mike Nichols, Chris Wallace, Mike Krause, Kelly Bradley, Kyle Jessen and Steve Greer. Assistant coaches were Carl Noyes and Larry Melton.

Thanks to McDaniel’s tough-as-nails coaching style, the Wildcats executed the fundamentals and showed mental toughness in tight games. And the era also featured 6-foot-9 center Chris Harville (MSHOF Filbert Five 2015), who became the Wildcats’ all-time leading scorer with 1,532 points.

“(McDaniel), he was tough, but he was fair,” said Jeff Bass, one of six seniors on the 1982 team. “McDaniel just believed in us and gave us the tools to succeed. He was a great athlete in high school, and he knew what it took.”

Rogersville boys basketball earned the Springfield News-Leader’s Team of the 1980s for compiling a 223-68 record, with the 1982-1986 era anchoring much of it.

However, it all started in the fall of 1979, with that season and the next seeing Rogersville finish 24-6 and then 26-5 as those Wildcats reached the state quarterfinals.

Given those near-misses, the 1982 team made sure to finish the job, so to speak. The six seniors had been playing together since their junior high school days, and not only knew tendencies but also possessed that chemistry that defines winning clubs.

The 1982 team’s only loss was to Ozark. Rogersville found its footing quickly and, weeks later in the state semifinals, beat Charleston in two overtimes despite three starters fouling out.

“That team worked hard,” Bass said. “We would run suicides, but (McDaniel) wouldn’t tell you how many. So none of us wanted to be the last guy to stop.”

The 1983 team returned only two starters and yet found itself early in the season.

“One of the untold stories is that, I wouldn’t say any of us ran around together but, when we got on the court together, it was something to see,” Spaulding said. “The 1982 team might have played better offensively. But defense and toughness and grit and an attitude that ‘nothing is going to beat us’ was what that (1983) group was all about.”

That also marked the start of Harville’s career, making the Wildcats an immediate threat yet again because they not only had a 6-9 guy in Harville but a 6-7 guy in Greg Spivey.

“We had a really strong defense, and we could get up and down the floor quickly,” Harville said. “McDaniel was a very good defensive coach. We had a strong offense, but he had a very great defensive mind.”

In 1986, Rogersville returned to the Class 3 state championship game and fell to tradition-rich Charleston 44-43. That season, among the Wildcats’ losses were one in the Blue & Gold Tournament and two in the Bass Pro Shops Tournament of Champions, including an eight-point loss to a Philadelphia, Pa., private school.

“We started getting on a roll with districts, and it was a good run,” Harville said.

A number of players went on to play in college. Among them was Harville, who was successfully recruited by Missouri State University coach Charlie Spoonhour (MSHOF Legend 2019) and was part of four NCAA postseason teams.

When players now look back and reminisce, they can’t help but smile about the good times.

“I’m proud of that era,” Harville said. “We had great players. Obviously, a great coach. We just had a lot of fun playing together, and we were friends off the court.”