(I didn’t get a chance, initially, to ask Ken, Sr., a question because he instantly began to talk about his son, Kenny, Jr.)
Kenny, Jr., is very quiet, he’s always been very quiet. He’s an unbelieveable coach. He’s won 8 or 9 of the last 15 state championships. He was coach of the year in the United States two years ago. He’s won 28 conference titles in a row in the toughest conference in the state.
But he doesn’t like being the center of attention. The AD was telling me the other day, you gotta get Kenny to put out some of the awards he’s won. I said, What do you want. He said, Just release some of that stuff so we can put it up there (in the Hopkins trophy case), and I said, He won’t do it. I know him, and it’s not about that. And he said, Well, I asked him, and he said, It’s about the kids, it’s not about me. And I said, I coulda told you that! That’s the way he’s always been.
Q: You were class of 1945, I was class of 1968. The game has changed a lot since our day. And there might be other things, too, but the 3-point shot, summer ball and open enrollment have really changed the game.
This is interesting. In the St. Paul paper, John Millea…people always say, you’re recruiting…but he talked to every single kid we had that came to Hopkins, they said they had never met coach Novak. And we haven’t had many who came in. We’ve had more kids leave our place than you could ever believe. But we have kids in 9thwho send us letters and we never say a thing. We just say, If you want to play, play. But if you’re afraid you can’t compete, then you better go.
Most of them want to know that (if they’re good enough to play for Hopkins), but we never (say anything). In fact, this kid right here in the blue shorts, Zeke Nnaji. He went to Lakeville two or three years ago, and his dad says, They never spent five minutes with him. There were two or three players who were better than him. But, now, he’s going to be a fantastic player. He’s got offers from a lot of the big schools. He’s 6-8 or 6-9. The coaches didn’t think he could play down at Lakeville. We didn’t even know who he was, he just walked in here. But, a great kid. Last week, we had Nebraska here, Wyoming, Purdue….
Please tell me Richard Pitino. I wish the Gophers did a better job of recruiting Minnesota.
Even my grandson, Blake Hoffarber, he had Notre Dame, he had Vanderbilt, and it wasn’t til the last day. He was at Notre Dame when Munson called him, offered him a ride, but until then, everybody else was looking at him, and they never did. And he wanted to play at Minnesota. So he signed and had a great career.
Richard Pitino never saw Amir Coffey until the state finals, and if it hadn’t been for Ben Johnson he wouldn’t be there now. No, I don’t think they recruit that well.
I remember when Khalid El-Amin played at North, and we beat him one year. Then his son played for us and now he’s at Ball State. He was with us from the 2ndgrade. We have never gone to a kid, ever…. There’s dads who say to me, Kenny won’t even talk to me, and I say, Well, because if he did they’d all say, hey, he’s recruiting.
I understand that you even told Royce White, please, don’t come here.
Who told you that? Yeah, we did. But I liked him. We never had a minute of problems with him. But he didn’t like playing for Dave Thorson. Dave was tough.
Dave is tougher than Ken?
Oh, Ken is not a holler guy. He’s actually quite quiet. I was a little more fiery. And Dave would intimidate him. And I’ve heard him use such terrible language. I took my wife to one game and I said I’d never take her back to DeLaSalle. And intimidating officials, holy cow! No question, Dave was a good coach, especially defensively. Offensively, not so much, and there’s kids who left DeLaSalle because of that, they held he ball….
And he would never play us. And now we’re going to play them this year. We play everybody, we don’t care. We’re going to play all of the top 10 this year, we don’t care. We never duck anybody. We have trouble playing people. They want to duck us.
You played DeLaSalle in the Tip Off a couple years ago….
But not a regular game. And we did pretty well in that game, as I recall. (NOTE: Hopkins won that game by maybe 10 points.) And look at Cretin. We play them every year and I don’t think they ever beat us.
But the people who did play DeLaSalle always said he would never run.
When you guys lose, it’s always a great game. I always say, even if Hopkins doesn’t win, you gotta go through Hopkins to win yourself. Osseo in 2012, Lakeville North in 2014. Those were fantastic games. And probably the greatest regular season game I’ve ever seen was in 2010 when you lost to St. Paul Johnson at Augsburg.
They were good. Vern Simmons is a great coach and a nice guy, too. We must have played them ten times and they never beat us other than that one. But his kids work hard, they pass the ball well, and he’s a nice guy. I have a lot of respect for him, but he’s retired now.
Tell me about the 3-point shot. What has it done to the game?
It has changed it completely. For example, in my day there were more zones, though I never played a zone in my life. But we saw a lot of zones. The 3 point play changes the game around. If you can shoot, it takes away a lot…you better know who you’re playing. I don’t know any other things that’s changed things as much as the 3 point shot.
The kids play so much more basketball today. It’s so funny how things have gone. When I was in college, we were supposed to go to NAIA, and we had a 2ndstring center who played in DeMoLay, and a coach squealed on him and we forfeited all our games. So Hamline played Bemidji, and we had beaten Bemidji twice, but that’s how they got to go to the NAIA. They beat Bemidji by two points.
(We got to talking about our backgrounds a little. I mentioned that I was raised a Roman Catholic. Kenny jumped in to say:)
Me, too. All my life. And I have to say, I have a record, I go to Mass every day. I haven’t missed a Mass since I was 4 years old. And last year when I almost passed away last summer, if I didn’t have my faith, I could not have made it. I lost a daughter about eight years ago, that was the hardest thing I ever did.
There was one kid, he really wanted to come here, even before he went to this other school. But Kenny just said, no, I think it’s better if you stay where you are.
(After some cajoling, Ken said it was “this Riley kid from Minnetonka.”)
Let’s talk about some of your kids. I thought Siyani Chambers was really underrated.
He was one of the best coaches you’ll ever have on the floor. And a great kid. We couldn’t get him out of the gym. He lived here. He wasn’t very big, but Tommy Amaker said he was one of the best coaches out there on the floor, a great leader, plays hard.
What made Blake so good?
Tubby Smith said he was the smartest kid he ever had, that’s quite a complement from Tubby. But he could score, he was a hell of a passer, too, very unselfish. He’s a great kid, I love him. He played all the time. He was in the gym since he was that high. And he was left-handed. And he was an unbelievable offensive player.
He’s probably the only kid who ever could have made “that shot.”
And he was good at everything. He loved tennis. He never played, but he would play some of the top players and darned if he couldn’t beat ‘em. But he was very humble.
Tell me about yourself. You played at Crosby-Ironton, right?
Yeah, right.
Where did you play college ball?
I started, or, well, I didn’t start, but my high school coach went to Carleton…
Herman Woock.
Yeah. He played on the same team as Joe Hutton, Carl Nordly, Gus Young, Ozzie Cowles…. (NOTE: They all played at Carleton, but Hutton, Nordly and Cowles played there in the early 1920s, Woock and Young in the early 1930s.)
And, by the way, Herman Woock, we always had great teams. We went to state four years in a row when I was in high school, and we lost in two finals. We lost by two points to Patrick Henry and we lost by two points to Denfeld.
(NOTE: C-I actually lost to Mpls. Patrick Henry 51-42 in the 1944 state final. In 1947 Duluth Denfeld beat C-I 46-44.)
What kind of coach was Herman Woock?
He was tougher than tough. Oh, was he tough. But I’ll tell you something. He knew his basketball. Fundamentally, nobody ever was any better than he was. And I think about it now, and I’m going to be 90 in March, 89 I should say, and Herman Woock, when we were in 7thor 8thgrade, he never had an assistant coach that I can think of. And, when we were in 7thand 8thgrade we would sit on the bench during practice, and then he’s say to come on the floor and shoot, and we were with him, and he controlled everything.
But, we pressed all over, every single second, so height didn’t mean anything. We never were very big but we pressed every second. We loved him even though he was tougher than anybody I ever knew.
You know, I asked Bob McDonald about Harvey Roels and he said, He was a tough son-of-a-bitch.
But Harvey Roels, I had Harvey Roels one year at Crosby-Ironton, but he was a football coach more than a basketball coach. And compared to Herman Woock, he was not what I’d call a tough SOB.
(NOTE: Actually, it was Harvey’s brother Carlton Roels who coach at C-I after Woock left.)
Herman Woock was tougher?
Oh! On a scale of 1 to 10, Herman was a 10 and Harvey (NOTE: that is, of course, Carlton) would be a 2.
Now, you played in the state tournament in….
We played in 1944, 1945, 1946 and 1947. (NOTE: Ken played in the 1945, 1946 and 1947 tournaments.)
Did you get down and see the tournament in 1944?
Oh, yeah, I was there.
I’ve been trying to find somebody who saw Jim McIntyre play.
Oh, yeah, I knew Jim McIntyre.
So, what kind of player was Jim McIntyre? You’d probably never seen anybody that big.
No, no, I’ll tell you, he was a hell of a high school player. He was very good. We only had a 5-11 center playing against him, Don Jacobson, but we only lost by two points.
(NOTE: Again, the final score was Henry 51 Crosby-Ironton 42.)
And, another guy who was really good was that kid from Duluth Denfeld….
Rudy Monson.
Very good.
Well, I tell people I’m a historian so I better know something. But he played at UMD.
We kicked the hell out of him at UMD. I played at St. Cloud and we kicked the hell out of them.
Who was your coach at St. Cloud?
Warren Cash. He was the nicest guy in the world but UMD never beat us.
Now, you played with Jim Malosky at Crosby-Ironton, right? And he went to UMD.
Yeah, we lived a half a block apart in high school. He looked like he was 40 years old compared to the rest of us. We barely had hair under our arms. And then he played quarterback for Billy Bye. But I can never remember us (C-I) losing more than one game, or none (each year). With Herman, we went all over and played. We went to Wisconsin, all over. And like I said, when we were in grade school, we never had a coach. You know who had the 5thand 6thand 7thand 8thand 9thgraders. We did. He didn’t have any other coaches. He was an unbelieveable coach.
And you say you pressed everybody all over the court.
Every second. And, then when I coached at St. Cloud State, we pressed every single second because (Herman) said, The big guys can’t hurt you if they can’t get him the ball.
Now, I hadn’t heard that, the full court pressure. I had thought that that was something that came into style a little later. Where did that come from? Where did Herman learn that? Was that an Iron Range thing?
Herman Woock was the only one who did that every second.
When you became a head coach, you’re known for playing uptempo, and you started coaching in the 1950s?
I was a head coach at St. Cloud State. I started at a small town called Olivia but I was only there for six weeks because I was called up for the Korean War, so I never got a chance. And in 1954, I was the head coach at St. Cloud State, and I pressed every single second of every game I ever coached—college, high school and in the service. I also coached in the service in Washington, D.C.
Who would you say your mentors were, then? You became a head coach, now you’re in charge, you can do it your way. Who are the guys whose ideas you liked?
Well, it’s a combination of things, there’s a lot of them, but the guy I really respected was Dean Smith at North Carolina. He was so solid and so good at everything, and he had four corners and all of those things, he was a heck of a coach. Kenny spent about a month or two with Krzyzyewski and Dean Smith and that guy who died of cancer, Valvano, he spent a week with each one of them. But Dean Smith was, I just liked everything about him. He had good teams, they were so well-coached.
Minnesota was always known for that Carleton ball-control type of game. Ozzie Cowles slowed it down. Joe Hutton slowed it down.
Completely. A lot of our guys from Crosby-Ironton went to Hamline because Herman Woock played with Joe. I had the chance to go there, I had a chance to go to the University, but I went to St. Cloud State because I also had Joe Odanovich (at St. Cloud), who was one of my coaches for a year (at Crosby-Ironton).
When I went to Carleton, there were five of us (freshmen) who were supposed to go there, but I was the only one who showed up. And when I watched them play, they were so bad, this team was the worst I’d ever seen. So I went to the coach and I said, Coach, I don’t think I can stay here, because I wanted to play at a better tempo. And he said, Ken, I don’t blame you, and he said, I hear you’ve got a couple other places to go. I said, I do, and so I called (coach Cash) up and he said, I’ve got one spot that’s going to be filled by Monday, and this was a Saturday, and he said, it’s yours, you’ve got a full ride, and I took it. And it turned out real well.
I had only gone down to Carleton because Herman played there…. They weren’t very good. The other five guys didn’t show up, I never knew if they couldn’t get in because of grades or what, but it was a good decision for me.
And, then, barely four years later, you became the coach at St. Cloud.
At age 24, I read in one paper not too long ago, that no coach has ever been younger as a head coach at a Division II school. You just don’t see anyone at age 24. And, I loved it.
Did you ever play against Whitey Skoog?
In high school? Oh, yeah. They never touched us, they never beat us in high school. He was never that good in high school. He learned to play in the Army. I was 21 when I finished college, he was 22 when he started. He became a great basketball player. But in high school, no, he was never a factor in any of our games.
Who were the great players of your generation in high school that you remember?
Our coach always made us think that everybody was great. Malosky was a good basketball player. He played at the U a little bit as a freshman. But he was more a good athlete who played basketball. But in football he quarterbacked with Billy Bye and those guys. Billy always said Malosky couldn’t block, he couldn’t pass, but he was the greatest coach on the field he ever saw and he was a great competitor.
Jimmy guarded me all the way through, and he was a year older than me. He was such a competitor, he would do anything to win. Anything to win. And it was great playing against him because then when you get somebody else….
You played against Lynd in 1946, that’s a very famous ballgame. You guys were rated #1 in the state at the time, I believe.
We didn’t play very well and we still only lost by one point. (NOTE: The final score of that game was Lynd 58 C-I 47.)
Were they different than anything you had seen before?
No, they played well, they shot the ball well, of course, we’d never heard of them, which probably wasn’t good. But they were a good team and they deserved it, they deserved to win. We didn’t play that well and yet everybody thought it was a great game….
Everyone always commented on the pace of the game. Did Lynd run a little harder than anybody else…?
Yeah, they did. They had good size, though, they had pretty good people inside. We had a 5-11 center, that was the biggest we had, and Lynd was a good team. Of course, did they lose that year?
Yes, Austin beat them in the final.
Austin was always good. Didn’t they have a kid named Halvorson or something.
Burdie Halldorson, 1951, though they didn’t win it that year.
Did Austin win the state title?
Yes, three times. Twice under Ove Berven but three times total.
There was one kid, when I was coaching at St. Cloud, we tried to recruit him from Eau Claire, he went to the U.
Chuck Mencel?
Nice guy. Nice guy. And one hell of a basketball player.
You probably knew Dick Garmaker.
Of course, Dick played at the (Hibbing) junior college. He was from the Range. He was a hell of a basketball player, too. But he may have been in the service, too, if I’m not mistaken. He had to be one of he best players I remember from my time.
You started at Hopkins in…
1954. Well, 1955.
So you succeeded Butsie.
I sure did.
Was he a tough son-of-a-bitch, too?
He was tough and he was one hell of a basketball coach. He was a great golf coach, too, though he never hit a golf ball himself. We had a golf course next door to us. But the school board called me and offered me the job. I hated to leave (St. Cloud) but my wife was from St. Cloud and she kind of wanted to get out of town. And it turned out…I learned a great deal from Butsie. He slowed it down. He went to Hamline. He slowed it down. He never pressed. They’d pass the ball around forever.
He not only had size but he had the Tschimperles, particularly Dan. (NOTE: It was Dave actually who was the better of the 2 Tschimperle brothers at Hopkins in the early 1950s.)
How good was he?
He was very, very good. He was a McDonald’s all-American. He was one of the best in high school at that time. At Hopkins, we always had good…. I was just asked by one of the guys at WCCO, How do you do it every single year? 28 championships in a row!? I said, you know, talent. He said, a lot of teams have talent. Well, they say you can’t win without talent, but there’s a lot of coaches who can’t win with it.
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