The winningest college basketball coach in history retired.

Posted on: May 11, 2020 at 08:52:11 CT

Coach Gene Bess at Three Rivers Community College called it quits after 50 years and 1300 wins. He won 2 national championships and played in the finals 3-4 other times. I know many don't recognize Juco much but it's still a remarkable career. Coach K will need a few more years to catch him.

An interesting tie to Mizzou is in his last season as high school coach in 1969 at Oran his team was undefeated and playing in the state championship game against Dixon and some guy name John Brown. With 12 seconds left Bess's team was shooting FTs to tie. Fred Johnson made the first but was called for a 10 second violation on the second and the shot disallowed. It ended up being their only loss of the year.

I watched a lot of his games growing up including 2 of the early years when my brother played for him. He coached a lot of really good players. Including Moon McCrary who went to Mizzou, Latrell Spreewell, who is still one of the most dominating players I ever saw in Juco, and a guy named Terry Mead from the bootheel who was 6'2" and once hit his head on the rim. I've never seen anyone jump like Mead. He also coached the best shooter I've ever seen still to this day, Danny Foster from Ellington MO.

Gene's son, Brian Bess, has been his assistant for 27 years and will take over the head coaching job. Brian has been doing a lot of the work the last few years as Gene's health forced him to slow down some. Here's a decent write up about Coach Gene Bess.

https://www.semoball.com/story/2731854.html