During the current state of athletics across the country, the Kennesaw State athletic department looks to fill the void by highlighting the amazing stories of select student-athletes both past and present as well as the faculty and staff that help to make KSU the unique and special university that it is. This week we begin an in-depth look at the 2004 men's basketball Division II National Championship season.
If the dream is big enough, the obstacles will be small enough to overcome.
A proverb preached by former Kennesaw State men's basketball Head Coach Tony Ingle, and for him there was always only one dream, one goal, a National Championship.
It was a dream 31 years in the making until in 2004 it was finally made real as he and a dominant team of underdogs out of Georgia began a miraculous run to the Division II National Championship.
It was a title run that began well before the opening tip of that 2003-04 season.
A season filled with records and achievements that still stand in the KSU and DII record books.
A legacy that goes beyond Cobb County.
It's the only NCAA men's basketball national championship in the entire state of Georgia, at any level, and it resides at Kennesaw State.
Setting Up The Pieces
Playing his collegiate ball at Dalton Junior College for a dynamic Roadrunner squad, coach Ingle was part of a squad that won back-to-back state and regional titles making trips to the national tournament each season.
During his sophomore year, Ingle and the Dalton squad took the trip to Kansas for the national tournament. It was there that Ingle, just minutes into the first game, tore the ligaments in his knee and forced him to have emergency surgery in Chattanooga.
That was moment the dream was born.
"I'm sitting on the airplane, my mother's crying, my girlfriend's crying, I'm crying and I look up and I see my dad and he's crying. I never saw him cry," said Ingle. "I vowed, I said I will win a National Championship and a dream was born in my heart and in my mind and only there could it ever die. And I would not let it die."
Cut to 1985 and Ingle receives his first shot at coaching at the collegiate ranks, reintroducing the basketball program at Gordon College, now Gordon State college, in Barnesville, Ga. He spent three seasons with the Highlanders, compiling a 61-32 record and an appearance in the NJCAA Region XVII championship game before joining the University of Alabama-Huntsville in 1998.
Ingle was at UAH for one season, finishing 10-18, and then he got the call to join Head Coach Roger Reid at BYU as an assistant coach.
He was with the Cougars for seven seasons, helping them reach five NCAA tournaments, three WAC regular season titles and two conference tournament championships.
Then, in the midst of his eighth season, the head coach was let go and Ingle took the reins.
He went 0-19 and was let go at the end of the year.
For the next three years he hustled as a color commentator for the Mountain West Conference and a scout for the Utah Jazz, until the Owls and Athletic Director Dr. Dave Waples took a chance.
"I'm blessed," said Ingle. "I'm blessed to have been hired at Kennesaw State. Dr. Waples hired me after going 0-19. Who in the world is going to hire someone after going 0-19 and bring them down here to coach. It wasn't about wins or losses to Dave Waples, he saw something other than just wins and losses."
Ingle arrived in Kennesaw before the 2000-01 season to find a middling KSU program that struggled to break into the top five of the Peach Belt Conference the previous three seasons.
His first year the Owls finished 11-15 and seventh in the league, the next year 20-10, tied for third in the PBC and runners-up in the conference tournament.
Finally, at the onset of the 2002-03 season, Ingle began to put the pieces into place for his eventual championship run. He started with freshmen Will Davis and Israel 'Izzy' Ingle, while finding a hidden gem in Georgi Joseph.
Watching film on his teammate, Joseph caught the eye of Ingle. Joseph was a track star in Florida, running the 800 meters in 1:51 his junior season, but Ingle wanted him so he convinced Joseph to make the switch full time from the track to the hardwood.
"He could run like a flippin' gazelle," said Ingle. "I told everybody he ran better than the '60 Chevrolet I had."
Ingle continued to beef up his roster with transfers Tommy Thompson, a family friend from Ingle's home town of Dalton, who had just finished his freshman season with Brunswick Community College.
"Tommy Thompson was just a stud," said Assistant Coach
Stace Tedford. "He's kind of like Steve Nash or Steve Kerr, just tough, hard-nosed. He'll stand in front of a 6-9 guy and take a charge. He never took a day off, never slowed down."
Or as coach Ingle would say, "He would bite a chainsaw with his lips and win. That sucker was tough."
Justin Thompson joined the fray after averaging 11 points and nine rebounds per game at Hillsborough Community College, while leading the team with 70 steals the year before.
"Justin Thompson was an unsung hero," said Ingle. "He couldn't jump over an egg, but he could pass and he could shoot."
And to round it out, two soon to be KSU legends, Reggie McKoy and two-time PBC Player of the year and 2004 First Team All-American Terrence Hill.
A dynamic forward, McKoy came to KSU from Manatee Community College after averaging over 16 points, 14 rebounds and two steals a game, a team leader in all three categories despite playing in just half the games.
"Reggie was the craziest rebounder I'd seen in my life, just unbelievable," said Ingle. "He had a long arm and reach. He's sort of like a Dennis Rodman, he thought that rebound was his."
Hill, a powerhouse player out of Fort Payne, Ala., received partial scholarship offers from Auburn out of high school. Instead he opted for Southern Union State Community College, planning to play for two seasons and transfer on a full scholarship.
His sophomore year Hill helped lead the Bison to over 30 wins and a sixth place finish in the NJCAA National Championship, earning him looks from DI schools South Alabama and Central Florida as well as Division II dynasty Kentucky Wesleyan, who had reached the DII National Championship game the last five years, winning twice.
And then there was KSU.
The Owls, and more specifically assistant coach Tedford, had been on Hill since high school. Coach Ingle drove out to Alabama and spoke with his mother and they all discussed the possibility of playing at KSU over a home cooked meal, and finally they managed to get Hill on a campus visit.
Seeing the campus for the first time and everything it had to offer, Hill felt at home.
But how did Ingle seal the deal with both McKoy and Hill? By preaching how close Kennesaw was to home.
And a free trip to Hawaii.
"I was like Hawaii?" said Hill. "A kid from Alabama that grew up in the projects, I never thought I would have the chance to go to Hawaii. I was like why not, you're near Atlanta, it's an amazing school, you already know how the coaching staff is, they're going to be honest with you, they're going to help you grow as a basketball player and as a man, and then when they mentioned Hawaii. They had me when they showed me the campus, but now you mention Hawaii? That confirmed everything that I loved about Kennesaw State. I had to take it."
Well Ingle was good to his word and sure enough the Owls took flight across the world that season, playing three games in Hawaii, downing Chaminade and Hawaii-Pacific before falling to BYU-Hawaii.
"It was a battle at Chaminade," said Hill. "Everyone clicked, but I would say that was probably one of my best performances of the season. It was a close game, but the second half I just felt like I had to take control. This is my team, I have to take control. Everybody did their part, everybody played well and that was the great thing about our team, we had anyone that could step up at any moment. And I just knew at that time, at that moment I had to step up."
Hill dropped a career-high 34 points in that game as McKoy recorded a double-double with 23 points and 13 rebounds. A glimpse of the things to come for the duo.
With the pieces starting to fall into place, KSU won a then program record 25 games in 2002-03, finishing second in the PBC before falling in the conference tournament championship for the second straight year, this time to rival Columbus State.
The Owls also made their first ever appearance in the NCAA Tournament that year, defeating Virginia Union before falling to Bowie State in the second round.
But that hint of success only left a sour taste in the team's mouth, fueling the fire for what was to come the following season.
"Our coaching staff brought us back out and made us sit on the bench and watch them celebrate, which will tear your heart out as a player," said Izzy Ingle. "I think our coaches wanted to light a fire within us like hey next year that's us. We watched them cut down the nets before leaving the court. So that following year we had that chip on our shoulder."
Buying In
"My sophomore year, that's where it started in my mind, building up for the next year," said Tommy Thompson. "Some of the pieces were starting to get into play. We had a good year my sophomore year, but the coaches knew what we were missing and a lot of pieces came in that summer to build the team."
Pieces like transfers Darrell Fisher and Cardale Talley, both former teammates of Justin Thompson at Hillsborough CC. Talley (18.6 ppg) and Fisher (13.1 ppg) ranked first and second on the team in scoring with Talley adding 10.8 rebounds per game and Fisher dishing out a team-high 110 assists.
"I looked at who he was recruiting, I felt like right then all these guys that I have played against or have played with either one of us could have gone anywhere," said Fisher. "So it's crazy that we all linked up at one school. Everyone pretty much had a feel for each other or knew each other personally."
High-powered transfers like Kevin McDonald, Tobias Seldon, who signed with West Virginia out of high school, Kenan Knight and Rey Luque continued to find their way to Kennesaw.
Some purely by happenstance.
Luque, a pin-point shooter averaging over 14 points per game with a team-high 56 made three-pointers for Miami Dade College, had already signed with Queen's College in North Carolina. After making it official, Luque was on his way back home to Florida when, less than two hours into the trip, Head Coach Bart Lundy called. He'd just taken the head coaching position at High Point University.
Luque was left with three choices, follow Lundy to HPU and sit out a year, stay at Queen's College and take a chance with whoever the new coach would be or explore his other offers. So he thanked Lundy and on the way home he took a detour to Kennesaw, remaining there for the next two seasons.
"I didn't know much about KSU," said Luque. "I knew they were decent and I knew that coach Ingle was a good coach and I bought into the system. We started off workouts and I knew just by looking at the players that we had a good team, I didn't know what other teams had to offer, but I knew that we were good, that we had good players and good pieces. Honestly we were a DI team trapped at a DII school with those players that we had."
It was a similar story for Knight, who was a member of the 2003 Sweet 16 Presbyterian team. He enrolled at Kennesaw not intending to play basketball, but to study for a year and transfer to Barry to play.
A week before school started he was spotted walking through the gym by one of the assistant coaches and was told that a few people would be trying out for a walk-on spot and he was welcome to join if he was interested. He said sure, and after weeks of preseason training, and seeing his fellow walk-ons slowly disappearing, he had made the cut.
"From an outsider's perspective, even coming from another very good DII program, the KSU team just seemed like grown men compared to a lot of teams," said Knight. "They were big, they were strong, super fast, super athletic. I remember telling my dad, if Presbyterian made the Sweet 16, this team can win the National Championship and I guess I was right about that."
But of course he wasn't the only one to think that.
"There was a drive to go to the next level and we didn't know what we had," said Tommy Thompson. "We all came into that room and the first day coach Ingle said we all were going to win the National Championship that year and we all were like whoa let's take a step back here. I think he knew what we had."
"I coach every year to win it all, but I knew we had something special," said coach Ingle.
Now he just had to make the rest of the team believe it too. And he engrained that into them from the start and every day afterwards.
Signs of the ultimate goal were everywhere. From the Bakersfield NCAA Elite Eight logo hanging in the locker room to the words 'National Champion 2004' etched in each locker nameplate.
Coach Ingle even had pillowcases made at the beginning of the season for each player that read 'Kennesaw State Owls' on one side and 'National Champions 2004' on the other so that they would dream about it when they slept.
"All year round, from day one of training, coach Ingle had this mindset that we were going to win," said Luque. "He put that in us the whole time. I remember after every game we would win it was like ok this is the next team we have so let's start getting ready for that."
But preaching success doesn't always translate to on the court success as Ingle and the rest of the staff saw first hand in the Owls' season-opening tournament.
Making the trip down to Orlando for the Walt Disney Tip-Off Classic, KSU was hit with a wake-up call in the form of back-to-back double-digit losses to Northern Kentucky and South Dakota State.
"We knew in our heads that we can actually win, but physically we had to go out and do it," said McKoy. "We had to settle down because I think we were a little too cocky. We felt like we could just step out there and we can win, but we had to settle down, take it game-by-game and play-by-play. We had to have some heart-to-hearts, we held each other accountable."
Disappointed but undeterred, the team took a breath, gathered together and hit the reset button.
They came out the next day and downed Philadelphia 75-60.
The following week they headed out to Utah to square off with DI foe Utah Valley State and star Ronnie Price, who would go on to have a 12-year career in the NBA. The Owls nearly doubled up the Wolverines 78-43. A teaser of the stifling defense the Owls had that year, finishing the season 23rd in the nation in scoring defense.
"Coach Ingle had a philosophy," said coach Tedford. "You can run great plays and you have great defenses, but it's about getting players to believe they are better than maybe they really are. You want to empower these young men to take ownership of what they're doing. It's not so much what you're doing, it's the passion that you do it with. We tweaked a few things, but I think it took that tournament getting away for the new guys to gel with the veterans and really understand."
That change of mentality, the sense of coming together as a team and buying in to coach Ingle's philosophy, changed everything.
The team began to roll. After escaping with a 63-62 win at North Alabama, the Owls dominated the rest of the non-conference slate, finishing 8-2 down the stretch.
"If there's such a thing as finding chemistry within three games, we found it," said Hill. "After those three games in Orlando we found the chemistry and it was continuous. The fourth game we found chemistry, the fifth game, we were always building. By the 10th game, it was fluid, It was like we didn't have to think about it."
KSU had an average margin of victory of 13.5 points during that 10-game stretch, including a 23-point victory in its rematch against UNA on its home court, the old Spec Landrum Center.
They followed up that win over the Lions with a massive 129-79 victory over Carver in which freshman Taylor Patterson recorded a then DII single-game record with 55 points, sinking 14 three-pointers. Both of which still stand as the KSU all-time single-game records.
"Our second squad could come in and give you instant production, we'd come in and didn't miss a beat and that's one thing that I think we had over every team we were playing," said Fisher. "All the guys just enjoyed winning and our practices were a million times more competitive than the games we played. Once we got everything rolling there was probably nothing anyone could do that was going to stop us."
The only speed bumps came at Montevello and Lenoir-Rhyne, but the Owls capped off the non-conference slate with a win at Wingate.
The slate was then wiped clean as KSU turned its sights on the Peach Belt, opening league play against none other than defending tournament champions Columbus State.
"Those games meant so much to all of us," said Justin Thompson. "It was always bragging rights. The year before, when we lost every time they saw us they had that 'aw yeah we whopped them, we're the champs.' Everybody from that year before, we wanted it. It was like there is no way we are going to go down again. We got more talent, they can't beat us. Man it was a heck of a game."
Continued in Pt. 2
