Bio

Some great memories shared here by former Grizzly Basketball Head Coach Tom Barr and Hall of Fame inductee.

When starting a new collegiate athletic program from scratch, it’s important that you find the right people to lead your teams. For the Missouri State University-West Plains Grizzly Basketball program, the right person was Tom Barr.

The Missouri native, who served as the Grizzlies’ first head coach from 1993-2004, had just the right experience and mindset to make Grizzly Basketball a contender from the start.

“His work ethic was unbelievable,” said longtime Grizzly Booster Club member Russ Gant. “He not only coached, he helped recruit, he helped fund-raise, he was a tremendous promoter in the community. He understood the community buy-in was extremely important. He was the perfect guy – the perfect hire – for that job,” Gant said.

Barr came to the Grizzlies having worked nine seasons with one of the best junior college coaches in the country, Gene Bess at Three Rivers College in Poplar Bluff. During his tenure as an assistant under Bess, the Raiders compiled a 256-64 record, finished in the top 10 of the NJCAA rankings four times and won the 1992 national title.

As the Raiders’ top recruiter, Barr enticed such players as All-Americans Belvis Noland, Shon Peck-Love, Greg Coble, Fred Johnson, Jeff Ford and former NBA great Latrell Sprewell to play for the team. Missouri State-West Plains officials and fans hoped he would do the same for them.

“When (Barr) came over to interview, to me, he was a shoe-in,” Gant said. “His resume was impeccable. He was coming from a national championship program, he had experience in our region, and he wasn’t coming from a ‘foreign land.’ He knew the adversity he would face recruiting kids to this area.”

Even so, it wasn’t an easy task to get the new program up and running, Barr admitted.

“When I came over to interview, I sensed there was a great commitment from everyone. I felt like they wanted to have an outstanding program,” he said. “We had a nice place to play because the civic center had just opened, and the commitment I sensed from the people I talked to when I came over here, that they would do what they had to do as far as resources to make a go of it, I felt really confident in that.”

“Then, the more you got into it, the more you could see the obstacles that stood in your way. We had a house, but we didn’t really have something nice to show (the players) where they’d live. We told them the dorm would be up and running in a year or two,” he explained. “And, the lack of diversity, including cultural diversity, in this area also was an obstacle.”

Add to that the fact that Barr was still committed to recruiting players for Three Rivers’ upcoming season, and it seemed as if the program might get off to a slow start. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

“We were thinking we were going to ease our way into this, but he (Barr) had no plan for that at all,” Gant recalled. “He told us at the time he was going to give us a full schedule. We would go into this full throttle. We weren’t going to take it easy on anything.”

Once Barr finished recruiting for Three Rivers, he began putting his new program together. “The easiest part was scheduling. Everyone wanted to play us,” he said. In fact, he put together a full 30-game schedule that included some of the perennial powerhouses in junior college basketball, including Indian Hills, Connors State and Coffeyville.

In recruiting, Barr received help from his new assistant coach, Jason Tinsley. “Coach Tinsley was a big key to getting this started on the right foot. We had a lot of players from Georgia and Louisiana that first year who he had seen, and he put me in contact with them. He did a great job recruiting for us,” Barr said.

With the schedule set and a roster of all freshmen in place, the Grizzlies embarked on their first season in fall 1993. As expected, there were several ups and downs that first semester, and the Grizzlies went into the winter break with a 5-7 record. But the second half of the season the Grizzlies showed fans and opponents a glimpse into the future by finishing 13-6.

“We had success fairly quickly. Actually, we played pretty well. We were one of the better teams in the region after Christmas that first year,” Barr said. “When you work for someone like Coach Bess, you learn how a program should run, how to get the most out of your players, and I learned from the best. That really helped me.

“I wanted a culture here of discipline, hard work, team play, and right from the start that’s what we tried to establish. You don’t establish that after 10 games or a season. You establish that at the start. Bedtimes, study times, working hard, you try to establish that right from the start,” he said.

That philosophy paid dividends during Barr’s 11 years at the helm. His teams compiled a 256-98 record for a 72.3 winning percentage; earned two region championships; and competed for the region title eight times. They also were listed in the NJCAA poll numerous times, reaching as high as No. 2 on Feb. 5, 2000.

On an individual level, Barr developed nine NJCAA All-Americans, two NJCAA Distinguished Academic All-Americans, 17 All-Region 16 honorees, and 31 players who transferred to NCAA Division I programs.

Barr is quick to credit his assistant coaches and his administrative assistant for their contributions to those milestones and the success of the program.

“I had really good assistants – Coach Tinsley who was instrumental in getting it started on the right foot, and Anthony Beane, David James and Robert Guster. They did a great job bringing in good players. My job was not to screw it up after they brought them in. All four of them were really, really good assistants, and all left here with coaching opportunities at D1 schools. You’re not going to have a good program if you don’t have good assistants,” he said.

“Linda Cates, my administrative assistant for nine years, did a great job keeping us organized and helping maintain the day-to-day operations of our program,” he added.

Many of Barr’s former players, however, give credit to him for their personal success.

“As a player, I came in as a no-name walk-on, and I left there as an All-American,” said Jerome Jackson, who played for the Grizzlies from 1995-1997 and was a Grizzly Athletics Hall of Fame Inductee in 2004. “It was all because he believed in me and showed me how to be the best I could be as a basketball player.

“As a person, he was the most important mentor that I had ever come across at that point in my life,” he added. “The life lessons I learned from him go well beyond the basketball court. I came to him as a boy, I left him as a man.”

For Guster, who also played for the Grizzlies from 1995-1997 and served as Barr’s assistant for the last five years of his tenure with the team, his former coach continues to be a mentor. “To this day, I still call upon him for ideas, strategies and advice. Any time there is a decision to be made, he can expect a call,” said Guster, who now serves as an assistant with the Texas State University men’s basketball program.

“Coach Barr pushed his players to do things we never thought we could do,” Guster said. “He expected us to excel in the classroom, respect the community and work hard on the court. He holds his players accountable, and they know he cares about them as an individual.”

“He expected the best from us, he trusted the knowledge he gave to us and expected us to go out and execute it as individuals and a collective unit,” Jackson added. “When he spoke, we listened because we all believed in him, his strategies, his techniques and his coaching style. He wanted the best for every player, and we all knew that.”

“Coach Barr’s character was of the highest level, and he instilled in me to have character like that,” said Jason Robbins, one of Barr’s first local recruits who played for the Grizzlies from 1994-1996. “He helped me understand how hard I should work in everything I do. He not only made me a better player, but a better man, a better father, husband, employee, citizen and friend.”

More than team records or awards, it’s hearing about the success of his players off the court that Barr’s most proud of. “Every player who stayed two years with us got his two-year degree,” he noted. “So many of these players went on to play basketball and get their four-year degree. You see so many of them who are successful now. The wins and losses, that’s great, but the fact that so many of these young men came here and needed a sense of direction and we were able to provide that for them, that’s the most important thing for me personally. That’s what’s neat to see.”

As for his legacy with the program, Barr said, “We tried to start a winning tradition. The coaches who have followed have tried to continue that. We put Missouri State-West Plains on the map early, and the program continues to be important for the area and the school. But the greatest contribution or legacy has been helping some of these players.”

 Tom’s Missouri State-West Plains Career Stats

• Cumulative Record • 265-98 (.723)
• Overall Region 16 Record • 90-36 (.714)
• Region 16 Championships • 2 (1997-98, 1998-99)
• All-Region 16 First-Team Selections • 18 (17 different players)
• All-Region 16 Player of the Year Selections • 5
• NJCAA All-American Selections • 9 (8 different players)
• NJCAA Distinguished Academic All-American Selections • 2