Top Moment in Southland Conference Men's Basketball History

Nominees:

• Splendid 60s Era – Lamar, Abilene Christian, Trinity, Arkansas State Succeed in College Division
• Louisiana-Lafayette’s Dwight “Bo” Lamar – Southland Scoring Machine
• Super 70s Era – Superstar Players and More
• Lamar’s 80-Game Home Win Streak, 1978-84
• Lamar’s Incredible NCAA Tournament Run from 1979-83
• Louisiana Tech’s 1985 Nationally Ranked Sweet 16 Team
• 1986 – Three Teams in the NIT, One in the Final Four 
• Awesome 80s Era – The Cardinals, The Mailman, Joe and More 
• Louisiana-Monroe’s Mike Vining and His All-Time Winning Ways
• 2006 Northwestern State “Demons of Destiny”

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Louisiana-Monroe’s Mike Vining and His All-Time Winning Ways

By far the Southland Conference’s all-time winningest coach, Mike Vining led the Northeast Louisiana/Louisiana-Monroe men’s basketball program as the league’s standard-bearer for many years. Vining led the Indians to 401 wins (383 as a Southland member), and made seven NCAA tournament appearances and an NIT berth in his 24 seasons leading the program.

With six 20-win seasons and nine conference championships, Vining also coaches 46 all-conference players, including seven league players of the year and five newcomers of the year. Sixteen of his players surpassed the 1,000-point scoring plateau, and 7-footer Wojciech Myrda set the NCAA record in career blocks in 2002.

For his remarkable coaching efforts, Vining was selected for induction into the Southland Conference Hall of Honor in 2006, and he entered the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 2010.

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Awesome 80s Era – The Cardinals, The Mailman, Joe and More

Joe Dumars

At the turn of the decade, Lamar was on top of the Southland Conference mountain with players such as Mike Olliver and B.B. Davis leading the Cardinals to championships and postseason success from 1979 through 1981.

Opening the ‘80s with an appearance in the NCAA “Sweet Sixteen” under head coach Billy Tubbs, the Cardinals didn’t miss a beat with five more consecutive postseason appearances under new leader Pat Foster.

The decade also saw the recruitment and development of two game-changing players for the league, Joe Dumars and Karl Malone, both who would go on to be among the all-time NBA greats.

Dumars became only the second player in Southland history to be named first-team all-conference for four years, and he “bookended” his career with the 1982 freshman of the year award and the 1985 player of the year honor. Now the president of basketball operations for the Detroit Pistons, where he was a first-round draft choice and won two NBA titles as a player, Dumars finished his McNeese career with 2,607 points, second all-time in the Southland.

The Malone era of success at Louisiana Tech brought an unprecedented level of national media and fan attention to the school and Southland than at perhaps any other time. With his catchy “Mailman” nickname, Malone and his teammates scratched success in the 1984 NCAA tournament with a win over Fresno State, and parlayed that into prominent national rankings and a “Sweet Sixteen” run in 1985. Like Dumars, Malone was a NBA first-rounder and became one of the league’s most dominant power forwards with the Utah Jazz, earning a spot on the NBA’s Top 50 all-time team and winning gold medals with the U.S. Olympic Teams in 1992 and 1996.

Foster’s Lamar teams kept rolling with an 80-game home win streak, a pair of Southland tournament titles, two NCAA trips and four NIT appearances.

McNeese State also garnered an NIT appearance in 1986, and Arkansas State also played a rare postseason game against Arkansas, falling to the Razorbacks in the 1987 NIT, 67-64.

The Southland Conference tournament debuted at the Beaumont Civic Center in 1981, and Louisiana-Monroe (1986), North Texas (1988) and McNeese State (1989) all gained their first postseason championships during the decade.

In addition to Foster’s stellar coaching mark of 134-49 in his six Lamar seasons, Louisiana Tech’s Andy Russo tallied an outstanding 122-55 record from 1980-85, McNeese State’s Glenn Duhon won more than 100 games in the decade, and Louisiana-Monroe’s Mike Vining was just embarking on his record-setting coaching career.

Membership changes at the end of the decade arrived with the departures of Louisiana Tech, Arkansas State and Lamar (returned in 1998) and the additions of Northwestern State, Sam Houston State, Stephen F. Austin and Southwest Texas State.

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Splendid 60s Era – Lamar, Abilene Christian, Trinity, Arkansas State Succeed in the College Division

The initial years of Southland Conference basketball saw many great players and coaches push the league to the top of what was then known as the NCAA’s College Division (later Division II).

Almost immediately, the league was placing multiple teams into postseason play, with Abilene Christian and Lamar earning NCAA berths in 1964.

ACU received another postseason bid in 1965, and in 1966, Abilene Christian, Arkansas State and Lamar all advanced to NCAA action. In fact, ACU lost to North Dakota in the 1966 College Division National Championship game, 63-62.

Arkansas State repeated with an NCAA trip in 1967, and Trinity earned a berth in 1968, and the Tigers advanced to win the NCAA’s Third-Place Game, 68-62, against Ashland.

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1986 – Three Teams in the NIT, One in the Final Four

After terrific NCAA runs by Lamar and Louisiana Tech in recent years, the 1985-86 Southland Conference season appeared to be a bit more tranquil, although Lamar’s crushing 78-59 home win over defending national champ Villanova reminded everyone of the Cardinals’ ability to compete successfully outside the league. However, it was Louisiana-Monroe’s turn at the top of the Southland, winning both the regular season and tournament titles before falling to UNLV in the NCAA tournament.

The larger story turned out to be the “other” tournament – the National Invitation Tournament – as a record three Southland teams earned berths: Lamar, McNeese State and Louisiana Tech.

While the Cardinals suffered a tough 65-63 home loss to George Mason in the NIT first round, the McNeese Cowboys handled Dayton at home, 86-75, and Louisiana Tech won 67-61 at Northern Arizona. While not ideal, the wins forced an intra-conference matchup between Tech and McNeese in Ruston, La., that the Bulldogs won, 77-61. That sent Tech to a quarterfinal game at Providence led by a young Rick Pitino and featuring a sharp-shooting guard named Billy Donovan.

Tech edged the Friars that night, 64-63, to earn an unthinkable trip to New York City’s Madison Square Garden for an NIT semifinal game with Ohio State. The Buckeyes exacted revenge for the previous year’s NCAA loss to Louisiana Tech, dispatching the Bulldogs, 79-66. However, Tech rebounded to defeat Florida in the NIT third-place game, 67-62.

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Super 70s Era – Superstar Players and More

Mike McConathy

In addition to the accolades of Dwight “Bo” Lamar at Southwestern Louisiana, the decade of the 1970s featured spectacular basketball performances with plenty of fantastic players in this 10-year period.

A three-time All-Southland Conference selection, Abilene Christian’s Ronnie Hearne led the league in scoring in 1970 with a 22.0 average.

Upon Louisiana Tech’s entry into the league in the early, few players were as physically gifted as the Bulldogs’ 6-10 center Mike Green, a two-time all-conference choice and the 1973 Southland player of the year after scoring 30.9 points per game. Green earned countless All-America honors, and was a first-round draft choice by both the NBA’s Seattle Supersonics and the ABA’s Denver Nuggets.

Arkansas State’s tandem of Steve Brooks and Don Scaife took scoring titles in 1974 and 1975, respectively.

Louisiana Tech’s Mike McConathy, who now leads Northwestern State as its head coach, earned three All-Southland honors as a sharp-shooting guard who twice led the league in scoring, including a 27.5 clip in 1977.

McConathy was followed by another great shooter, USL’s Andrew Toney who led the league in scoring from 1978-80, finishing as the Southland’s third all-time leading scorer with 2,526 points.

McNeese State’s Henry Ray (1975) and David Lawrence (1979) took league player of the year honors while each also earned first-team All-Southland honors.

Lamar’s dynamic scoring duo of Mike Olliver and B.B. Davis came on the scene in 1977, combining for over 5,600 points scored in their careers as the Billy Tubbs-led Cardinals became a nationally prominent program at the end of the decade.

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Lamar’s 80-Game Home Win Streak, 1978-84

B.B. Davis

What began as a hard-working 59-54 Southland Conference win against Arkansas State on Feb. 18, 1978, the Lamar Cardinals embarked on a remarkable 80-game home win streak during the next six seasons.

Coinciding with Lamar’s remarkable NCAA tournament success, the Cardinals were simply unstoppable at home during the streak, whether playing in the on-campus McDonald Gym, where the streak began, or in the Beaumont Civic Center, where the Cardinals hosted games from 1980-84. The streak continued through the 1981 and 1983 Southland tournaments that were held at the Civic Center, but came to an end at the 1984 Southland tournament, when Louisiana Tech ended the run with a 68-65 win over the Cardinals in the championship game on March 10, 1984.

The home streak currently ranks as the seventh longest in Division I history.

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Louisiana-Lafayette’s Dwight “Bo” Lamar – Southland Scoring Machine

A native of Columbus, Ohio, Dwight “Bo” Lamar was one of college basketball’s prolific scorer’s even before his then Southwestern Louisiana “Ragin’ Cajuns” joined the Southland Conference in 1971. Playing the two previous seasons in the Gulf States Conference, Lamar averaged 22.8 points per game as a freshman and an astonishing 36 points per game as a sophomore.

When the Cajuns moved into the Southland and the NCAA’s University Division (Division I), Lamar didn’t slow down a bit, averaging 36.3 points in leading USL to a 25-4 record, a national Top-10 ranking, and a berth in the then 24-team NCAA tournament. As a senior, Lamar “cooled” to a 28.9 scoring clip, but the Cajuns again ranked among the nation’s top teams, earning another NCAA tournament bid.

Lamar’s career scoring average was 31.2 points per game, and including his career total of 3,493 points, he still holds 13 Southland scoring records to this day. Lamar was a third-round pick by the Detroit Pistons in the 1973 NBA Draft, and he played for three ABA teams before ending his professional career in 1977 with the Los Angeles Lakers.

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