Rex Nelson: Northeast Arkansas – Fertile Basketball Land

As a sports fan and former sportswriter, I’ve heard about the Northeast Arkansas Invitational Tournament (commonly known as just the NEA Tournament) all of my life.

The basketball tournament is currently celebrating its 70th edition at the Convocation Center on the campus of Arkansas State University at Jonesboro.

It’s truly an Arkansas classic.

My father coached at Newport High School in the late 1940s and early 1950s and talked about attending some of those early tournaments.

The NEA Tournament first was played in late 1947 and early 1948. The following boys’ teams took part — Bay, Clover Bend, Hickory Ridge, Hoxie, Lake City, Leachville, Manila, Marked Tree, Nettleton, Oxford, Pocahontas, Rector, State High and Trumann.

Hickory Ridge defeated Trumann in the finals, 41-38.

A girls’ division was added in 1977.

Paul Austin of the Arkansas Humanities Council, who grew up at Imboden in Lawrence County, often would tell stories of what a holiday tradition the tournament was for those who lived in the small towns in the northeast quadrant of the state. Schools from the Ozarks and schools from the Delta would come together on a basketball court in Jonesboro during the Christmas holidays each year and do battle.

People in Northeast Arkansas loved high school basketball, and folks would drive an hour or more in those days to see stars such as Chester Barner Jr. of Marmaduke (who later would lead the Greyhounds to state championships as a coach), Rickey Medlock of Cave City and Bill Bristow of Strawberry play in various tournaments.

Bristow would go on to play college basketball at Arkansas College (now Lyon College) in Batesville and then attend law school at Harvard. He became one of the state’s top trial lawyers. I was the campaign manager for Gov. Mike Huckabee in 1998 when Bristow was the Democratic nominee for governor. When I headed Arkansas’ Independent Colleges & Universities (the association representing the state’s 11 four-year institutions of higher education), Lyon was an AICU affiliate and Bristow was on the Lyon board of trustees. It’s a small state.

Medlock, meanwhile, would go on to star in basketball at the University of Arkansas and then become a highly respected ophthalmologist in Little Rock.

In a 2012 newspaper column, Harry King wrote: “The best free throw shooter in Razorback history was a technician with a self-imposed penalty for failure. Rickey Medlock, who set a Southwest Conference record of 48 consecutive while at Arkansas, would eye the back of the rim, his left hand almost underneath the ball, and use his legs, something ignored by many shooters today. He learned under his grandfather, Corbet Medlock, a former high school coach in Sharp County who sat on a stool and rolled Prince Albert cigarettes while watching Rickey shoot at a wire hoop nailed onto a garage.

“Alone at Cave City High School, Medlock would not leave until he made 10 straight free throws. If he missed, he would do a line drill and begin again. He led the NCAA in free-throw shooting in 1973-74 with 87 of 95 and made 62 of 66 the following year, but needed four more attempts to qualify for the NCAA title.”

Chester Barner Sr. was the successful head coach at Marmaduke in the 1950s.

In a 2002 interview with the Clay County Times-Democrat, his son Chester Jr. said: “One day my dad hung a sign in the old gym that said, ‘Those who fly with owls at night can’t run with the Hounds the next day.’ The next morning when I went into the gym, I saw that a dead hoot owl had been draped over the sign. One wing was affixed to the top of the sign, and the other wing touched the floor. A note was attached to the owl that read: ‘Coach, we killed the owl. Now, we’re going to run with the Hounds.’ Being a kid — I was in the seventh grade — this made a big impression on me. I idolized those older boys. That they thought it necessary to really work hard at basketball really impressed me.”

The junior high team that Chester Jr. played on won a state championship in 1957.

As a sophomore, he led the senior high team to a state title in 1958.

“I didn’t start early in the year,” Chester Jr. said of his sophomore season. “I sat on the bench. In a game against Monette, Larry Joe Miller broke his collarbone, and I took his place in the starting lineup. … We started playing well as a team toward the end of the season as we advanced to the finals of the state tournament. In the title game, we faced Caddo Gap. They came into the title game undefeated at 30-0 while we came in with a record of 31-5. When we beat them, we thought we owned the world.”

In his senior season, Chester Jr. set an NEA Tournament single-game scoring record by scoring 58 points in a victory over Mount Pleasant from Izard County. That record still stands.

While Chester Sr. was achieving success as a coach at Marmaduke, Jess Bucy (who later would be the head coach at Harding University) was doing the same eight miles to the north at Rector.

“It was the biggest game of the year,” Chester Jr. said. “Both Rector and our team had great fan support. When we met, it was something. It was the one game that mattered the most.”

Chester Jr. graduated from high school in 1960 and then played college basketball at Arkansas Tech. He met his wife Sue, who was a Tech cheerleader, in Russellville. He coached at several high schools following his college graduation, sold insurance for a time and then returned to Marmaduke High School as head basketball coach in 1974.

His first team there was 23-11, and his second team had a record of 28-10.

In Chester Jr.’s third season as head coach, a senior named Tim Porter transferred to Marmaduke and was named the most valuable player in the state tournament. The team finished 37-5, losing in the state championship game to McNeil from south Arkansas in what at the time was the Class B tournament.

The Hounds were led the next year by 6-8 Scott Horrell. They went 35-8 and won the 1978 state championship.

In Horrell’s senior year of 1979, Marmaduke went 40-2 and won the Class A state title again in a game I covered as a young sportswriter. It was played in the Duke Wells Center on the campus of Henderson State University at Arkadelphia. Parkdale then beat Marmaduke, 73-62, in the finals of the Overall Tournament on the campus of the University of Central Arkansas at Conway.

Chester Jr.’s final season as head basketball coach was the 1997-98 season. He retired in 2002 as athletic and transportation director for the Marmaduke School District.

I was thinking about all of this rich high school basketball tradition in northeast Arkansas when Paul Austin picked me up at my home in Little Rock at 7 a.m. last Saturday morning. The destination was Jonesboro, where we would attend the first day of this year’s NEA Tournament.

Continue reading at Rex’s Southern Fried Blog…