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 Missouri
State head basketball coach Barry Hinson is bidding
to build on the fast finish of last year's team as
enters his sixth year in the MS program and has put
together one 20-win campaign and four winning
seasons in five years guiding the Bear cagers.
Hinson’s 2003-04 MS season produced a late surge
capped by a State Farm Missouri Valley Conference
tourney run into the title game. The Bears upset
five-time NCAA entry Creighton in the quarterfinals,
knocked off 2004 MVC champ and #15 Southern Illinois
in the semifinals and almost made a late comeback
stand up before dropping a double-overtime decision
to Northern Iowa for the title. By the narrowest of
margins, the 19-14 Bears missed their first 20-win
season in four years and first NCAA trip in five.
Last year's 19-14 record came on the heels of a very
strong statement the previous season when Hinson
guided his club to an impressive tie for third place
in the league after the Bears had been picked to
finish eight. MS has been in the league's first
division four of Hinson's five years at MS. After
finishing in the middle of the MVC standings in 2001
and 2002, MS in 2003 turned in its best-ever first
half in 13 years in the MVC, winning nine of its
first 10 to tie for the league lead. The run
included a 6-3 road mark that equaled the Bears’
best road record ever in Valley play.
Hinson made an immediate impact in his first year as
the Bears’ head coach, as he took over in 1999 and
became only the fourth MS coach to record 20 wins in
his first year at MS while posting the best win
total of any MS basketball first-year mentor ever
with a 23-11 club.
Hinson took MS on a 10-game winning streak that
pushed the Bears to second place in the final 2000
Missouri Valley Conference standings and into the
finals of the Valley tournament. MS then reached the
second round of the NIT, beating SMU at home and
losing at Ole Miss.
Hinson, who took over at MS in April of 1999 after
two seasons as head coach at Oral Roberts
University, owns an 125-91 mark for seven seasons as
a college coach.
Hinson, a native of Marlow, Okla., made MS his first
coaching venture outside his home state after having
held six coaching positions in Oklahoma since his
1983 graduation from Oklahoma State University.
Hinson is the 15th head coach in the 92-year history
of Bear basketball. MS, with an all-time record of
1,409-766 (.652) through 2003-04, is the 27th
winningest program among all Division I schools.
MS has been hampered by key injuries to regular
forwards three times in Hinson's MS tenure and the
Bears have been slowed as a result. Scott Brakebill
missed a number of games with injuries each of his
last two seasons with MS, and Shelton Colwell was
out for a significant time as a junior. In each
case, Hinson regrouped his ballclub and got the
Bears back on the winning track.
The 2000-01 season effort came on the heels of a
banner year Hinson put together with his first
ballclub in 1999-00.
Hinson’s first MS team had a nucleus of seven
returning players from the Bears’ 1999 NCAA Sweet 16
ballclub, including five seniors. The Bears started
that season at 11-4, lost five of six, and then
caught fire in the second half of the campaign in
what had the makings of another MS storybook season.
The Bears went from mid-February through the end of
the regular season and the first two rounds of the
MVC tournament with a 10-game win streak that set
the tone for the campaign. MS closed the regular
season with 20 victories and came within an eyelash
of sharing the regular season league crown. MS took
its second place league finish into the league
tourney, where the Bears lost in the finals of the
event.
The 10-game February win streak, the league regular
season and conference tournament runner-up finishes,
a 22-10 record and a mid-30s RPI weren’t enough to
get the Bears an at large selection into the NCAA
field of 64. MS instead drew an invitation into the
NIT. The Bears belted SMU at home in the NIT first
round before losing at Ole Miss in the second round.
When it was over Hinson had become the fourth head
coach in Bear basketball history--after Bob Vanatta
in 1950-51, Eddie Matthews in 1953-54 and Mark
Bernsen in 1992-93--to collect 20 or more wins in
his first season at MS. He also surpassed the 22
wins logged by Vanatta and Matthews as the record
for an MS coach in an inaugural season, and rolled
up a 23-11 record that won the hearts of the area’s
fans; fans who take Bear basketball pretty
seriously.
The Bears’ 23-11 season was the 24th campaign with
20 or more wins in school history, and the 11th
20-win year and postseason tourney ballclub in the
18 years MS has competed at the Division I level.
The Bears’ 13-5 Valley record equaled the best
conference standard MS had had in the Bears’ first
decade in the league.
Hinson, head basketball coach at Oral Roberts
University in Tulsa, Okla., for the last two seasons
of a six-year ORU tenure, was named MS head coach
April 21, 1999.
Hinson compiled records of 19-12 and 17-11 in two
seasons as head coach at Oral Roberts. His 1997-98
team finished one game behind Valparaiso for the
Mid-Continent Conference regular season title in
ORU’s first year as a member of the MCC, the league
of which MS was a member from 1982 until 1990. Valpo
also won the league tournament and ultimately
advanced to the 1998 NCAA Sweet 16.
Oral Roberts and Valparaiso shared the Mid-Continent
regular season title in 1999 with identical 10-4
league marks, and Valpo clipped ORU 73-69 in the
league tourney title game to take the Mid-Continent
banner back into NCAA play.
Hinson moved up as head coach at Oral Roberts in
1997 after spending four years as an assistant coach
to Bill Self. Self took over at ORU in 1993 and
Hinson succeeded him when Self moved across town to
the University of Tulsa. ORU returned its program to
Division I status in 1994 as an independent, and the
Golden Eagles were selected to play in the National
Invitation Tournament at the end of the 1996-97
season in Self’s final year as head coach.
Self and Hinson, friends since they were in school
at Oklahoma State together, hooked up once each of
the two seasons Hinson was head man at ORU in
Tulsa’s Division I cross-town rivalry, with Self’s
TU Golden Hurricane beating Hinson’s ORU Golden
Eagles by five points in each of those two matchups.
Self won over his former coaching partner again
early in the 1999-00 season as Tulsa, on its way to
an NCAA regional final berth, got past MS by nine
points in an early-season matchup in Tulsa. Self
moved after that season to Illinois and takes over
in 2003-04 at Kansas.
At one point in 1998-99, Hinson and ORU had the 29th
most difficult schedule in Division I, with
non-conference games against Tulsa, Montana,
Arkansas State, Texas A&M, Texas, TCU and Oklahoma.
The Golden Eagles rebounded from a 3-6 start to win
13 of their last 17 regular season outings, share
the regular season league title, and gain the top
seed and a quarterfinal round bye in the
Mid-Continent Tournament. ORU clipped Youngstown
State in the league tourney semifinals before the
four-point loss to Valparaiso in the tourney title
game.
Hinson spent eight years as a high school coach,
including six seasons as head coach at Tulsa Bishop
Kelley. He had a year each as an assistant at
Stillwater High and Edmond Memorial High, and he was
head coach three years at Stillwater Junior High.
Hinson's OSU degree is in secondary social sciences.
Coach Hinson and his wife, Angie, have two
daughters. Tiffany was married in 2004 to Niles
Thomason and the couple lives in Stillwater. Ashley
is an MS junior.
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