What made Lou so special? Email Jim Rossow at [email protected] and we will pass on your thoughts to Mary Henson and her family.
Lou Henson receives a standing ovation at the 2018 Illinois Athletics Hall of Fame Gala at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago on Friday, June 15, 2018.
In a nation and business consumed by irreverent language, he never swore.
But you must forgive crowds of friends for issuing a sincere expletive. CURSE! – when they learned that revered basketball coach Lou Henson, 88, passed away Saturday and was buried (unannounced, only for family members) Wednesday morning at Roselawn Cemetery.
The family’s desire to keep his weekend death private was due in part to the coronavirus pandemic, which limits large gatherings for occasions such as funerals.
Photos through the years.
Stories through the years.
From the day Dr. Jeff Kyrouac diagnosed non-Hodgkin lymphoma (Stage 4) in 2003, the former Illini coach set rebound records, not on the basketball court, but in life. With his powerful partner Mary Henson directing traffic, he struggled every time the light blinked … until the light bulb simply vanished from years of stress.
Blessed with a particular skill in athlete development, Henson was, however, the common man.
Mary and Lou Henson
In a rare experience for college coaches, Henson shared residences in both communities where he trained: Champaign and Las Cruces, NM
Among his multitude of honors, basketball courts will continue to bear his name at both the UI State Farm Center and the New Mexico State Pan American Center, which was built during his first term there.
Henson was buried with his son, Lou Jr., on Fourth Street, in front of the Dick Butkus statue and half a block from the State Farm Center.
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Lou Henson with assistant coaches Tony Yates, middle, and Les Woethke.
Henson was a half-century coach, dating from 1955-56 at Las Cruces High School (where he won three state championships) and met his second stop in the state of New Mexico before a serious collapse, medications for people who did not they are from Hodgkin, which caused viral encephalitis. and forced his resignation during the 2004-05 season. He was in a coma for days with almost paralysis in his right leg, going from bedridden to a wheelchair, then to a walker, a cane, and finally to swimming, bridging, and golf almost daily.
Her immune system dropped dramatically, Henson has struggled with intermittent health problems for 17 years. His popularity increased further during this period, and many of those who had complained about an Illini basketball loss became a quick friend.
The National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame was just one of numerous honors. When he was not selected in the initial Illini Hall of Fame in 2018, athletic director Josh Whitman greeted at the banquet in Chicago when he announced that Henson would be the No. 1 choice in the second group.
Earlier this year, Henson was scheduled to attend the 50th anniversary celebration of his 1970 Final Four at NMSU, but he canceled due to health issues. He also led Flyin ‘Illini to the Final Four in 1989, concluding a decade in which his UI teams won 233 games and were seeded seven times in the top 16. The 1989 club lost in Seattle in a last rebound against the Michigan team that the Illini had defeated 96-84 and 89-73 earlier.
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Henson’s 779-win career would have been much greater had he not taken on such difficult challenges.
– Hardin-Simmons won just eight games in 1961-62 when Henson accepted the job with the agreement that the program could integrate with African-American athletes for the first time. He produced two 20-6 teams among his four seasons there.
– The State of New Mexico won four games in 1965-66 in a disastrous season that saw coach Jim McGregor take the team on a road trip and never return. With the freshmen ineligible, Henson formed a team that shocked the basketball world by defeating Texas Western twice, the defending NCAA champions with three returning starters. After a 15-11 start, the Aggies went 23-5, 24-5, and 27-3 as they ran the streak against nearby Texas Western (now Texas-El Paso) to 10 in a row. The 25-mile highway from Las Cruces to El Paso is named after Henson.
– Illinois was 5-18 in the last season for Harv Schmidt and 8-18 in the only season for Gene Bartow. The program was in tatters when Henson, leaving his double job as an AD coach, arrived in the summer of 1975. His starting salary was $ 30,000, matching what Oklahoma was offering. It took six years before the Illini released a winning record in the Big Ten Conference game, that unit by Derek Harper, Perry Range, Derek Holcomb, Eddie Johnson, and Mark Smith finishing 12-6. This started an exciting career in the 1980s … before Iowa-instigated charges against assistant coach Jimmy Collins in recruiting Deon Thomas led to NCAA penalties for “lack of institutional control.” Despite recruiting penalties, the Illini finished 11-7 or 10-8 for five consecutive seasons before falling to 7-11 in its final UI campaign in 1995-96.
– Henson was called in to help locate a coach at NMSU in 1997 when Neil McCarthy was fired. It was then that he accepted the “temporary job” as a coach for $ 1 per month in 1997-98. All 18 wins that season were removed from his record due to McCarthy’s violations. Henson’s teams have won 20 or more games in four of the next five seasons.
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Lou and Mary made deep impressions and are revered in their two cities.
They became deeply involved with the Cunningham Children’s Home here and the Boys and Girls Club in Las Cruces. A street bears her name here, and a highway in New Mexico. The most important player of the year in the country is named after Henson. They received the honorary doctorate in law at NMSU in 2005.
Rebounders UI and Orange Krush were formulated in Henson’s living room.
If there was a disappointment, it was the impossibility of bringing a national championship to the UI when “the 80s belonged to the Illini.”
Yes, Henson’s teams celebrated eight consecutive Christmas wins over Norm Stewart’s Missouri Tigers until 1990. Yes, the Illini were 137-25 at home in the 1980s, including a 55-3 mark in the first games that they were not from the conference.
But if the Illini excelled in that decade, the Big Ten was extraordinary.
Starting with Purdue and Iowa breaking the Final Four in 1980, the league accumulated successes. Bob Knight’s Hoosiers joined his 1976 NCAA championship with titles in 1981 and 1987. Purdue had a 127-20 record at home with Gene Keady, 15-3 to equal Indiana for the Big title. Ten from 1987, and improved to 16-2 in 1988. Michigan closed a strong decade with the 1989 NCAA crown.
In that span, no team had greater disappointments in the NCAA game than Illinois, Henson’s teams withdrew from the NCAA tournament in some particularly memorable frustrations: 57-52 to Kansas State, 54-51 to Kentucky (ending the NCAA policy of allowing teams to play at home), 58-56 to Alabama, 68-67 to Austin Peay, 66-61 to Villanova and, in the 1989 Final Four, 83-81 to champion Michigan.
Illinois was at its peak with Henson’s Flying Illini when an NCAA investigation, highly debatable in origin and management, chilled recruitment and slowed the program, ultimately influencing Henson’s resignation in 1996.
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