"The Iceman" Terry Bell and the greatest basketball story ever told

It was March, 2002. Our team had just won the state championship for the first time. I took our entire team into the press conference with me, because also I wanted them to experience this. I was 23 years old, and looked barely older than my players. A reporter asked me a question that went something like this.

"Coach, you're still young. Can you still get out there and play with these guys?"

I smiled, and maybe I was caught up in the euphoria of just winning, so I said something like, "There's not anybody in this room that can beat me in a game of one-on-one, not any of you reporters, not any of these players..."

Then I had to stop myself because I noticed the guy standing in the back of the room. It was my cousin, Terry Bell, who we had snuck "backstage" with us.

I pointed at Terry and said, "None of you in here can beat me except that guy standing right back there."

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Go back to March, 1986. Terry Bell was my hero. He was my cousin, 10 years older than me, and he was an all state guard at Scott County Central. He was good! I tried to never miss a game. I wanted to be just like him.

The year before, in 1985, Scott County Central went 33-1 and dominated on their way to a 1A state championship. They started 5 seniors. 1986 was a rebuilding year. Somehow that group made it back to the state finals. We won that game in triple overtime, where we beat Wellsville, who had a guy named Fred Johnson that scored like 3500 points in his high school career, the most all time in Missouri.

That Wellsville team was really, really good. Somehow our team won a miraculous game where our team was down by 4, with them shooting free throws, and less than 10 seconds to go in the second overtime. It's a game where you have to watch the tape to believe we won the game. That's a story for another time.

The point is, we won that game. My cousin Terry, along with several other guys, was a big reason why. He came back his senior year, 1987, and we had a lot better team. Terry was an all state guard again. Terry Blissett was a junior and a great player. Jerry Porter was a sophomore and a great player. Adrian Thompson and Jeff Holman were the other two starters, just getting moved up to varsity for the first time, and would also go on to be really good players.

The whole season came down to one game, the state sectional game vs. Van Buren. I still have the newspaper article from this game (pictured above) hanging on the wall in my office. It might not be the greatest basketball story ever told, like the title of this article says, but it's my favorite basketball story ever. They had an awesome team. I remember that was one game I didn't get to go to! I was sitting at home with my mom, huddled up by the radio, listening to the game, and I kept thinking "oh no, we're about to lose."

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Fast Forward. Spring of 1994. When I got old enough to start to "be good" (I was never as good as Terry), it was one of the greatest thrills of my life that Terry came around and took an interest in me. We used to play at the park or at Eric Kiesler's farm (another story for another time - epic games out there).

Terry was a fierce competitor. My friends called him "the warden" behind his back because he would just chew guys out for messing up. He was ruthless. Basketball was a serious thing for Terry, but so was wiffleball or anything else we played. He did not tolerate losing, which meant he did not tolerate being fancy or showing off.

To Terry, basketball was simple. You take the ball and put it in the hole. Period. So leave all that behind the back and other fancy stuff at home. If you were on his team, it was not tolerated. And if you were on the other team, he was merciless in his trash talk while the other team "tried to do too much."

I can still hear his voice in my head, "he's got tunnel vision, he's got tunnel vision" as he tormented me while I tried to beat him. Terry taught me how to win. And when he wasn't embarrassing me on the basketball court, he would give me a ride to practice or open gym. We had these long talks. My favorite times were when I could get him to talk about that Van Buren game.

My favorite part of the story was Mike Hollis, the kid from Van Buren that was assigned to guard Terry. Van Buren had 3-4 other really good players - the Fisher brothers, Rodebush, and Page. But it was Mike Hollis who was their defensive stopper.

From the time they were little, maybe in 7th or 8th grade, these boys from Van Buren had it drilled in their head, "if you're going to win the state championship, you're going to have to beat Scott County Central." These two schools are almost two hours apart. They don't play each other unless they meet in the playoffs. The players never saw each other and didn't know each other.

Beating SCC meant that somebody was going to have to guard Terry Bell. That somebody was Mike Hollis. Terry told me that Hollis played better defense on him that night than any kid who had ever guarded him. The article said Terry only had 6 points in the first half. Terry said Hollis did such a good job that Terry, the point guard, couldn't really even get the ball.

Going into the 4th quarter, SCC was leading by 1 point. Van Buren started the fourth quarter on fire and took a 47-42 lead with 6:22 left in the game. The paper said "Coach Cookson called three timeouts in a five minute stretch." SCC could not stop the bleeding.

That's what the newspaper said happened. Here is how Terry told it.

Terry told me that Cookson called three timeouts in a row, "bam-bam-bam" is how he described it. So now SCC is out of timeouts. During the last timeout, Terry said Cookson just stood there and did... not... say... a word. When the huddle broke, and the players, half confused, started to walk back out on the floor, Terry said he almost started to cry. Were they about to lose? What was Cookson doing?

Then he felt Cookson grab him, pull him real close, and say, "Get the (bleep) ball and tell them to (bleep) get out of the (bleep bleep bleep) way."

Terry scored 15 points in the next 6:22, including eight straight free throws to seal the win. That's why they called him "Iceman." When the pressure was on, and things got as hard as they could get, he just got better. He was a winner.

But like I said earlier, my favorite part of the story was Mike Hollis. Terry said right at the end of the game, Hollis fouled out. Terry said Hollis was so tired - not just physically but mentally from being so dialed in all night long - that he didn't hear the buzzer saying he fouled out.

Finally the ref told Hollis, "that's five. You're out." Terry said Hollis stood up and exhaled real slow. Like, "wow, it's really over." How many years had Hollis spent getting ready for this one night? How many hours had it been drilled in his head that he had to stop Terry Bell? And on this night, in a winner take all game, Hollis had guarded Terry Bell as well as anybody ever had in Terry Bell's life.

But it wasn't enough. Hollis's team was going to come up just short.

Terry said, "So I just hugged him." Here Terry was, about to shoot two more important free throws, and he just hugged Mike Hollis. He said Hollis hugged him right back. Here they were, two fierce competitors who had never met or played against each other before, and they would never play again. But for that one moment, there was nothing but respect.

SCC won 61-58. We crushed every team for through the rest of the state tournament and for the next four years. Terry, our only senior, graduated. A guy named Marcus Timmons took his spot in the starting lineup next year, and SCC went 130-3 over those next four years.

Overall, SCC won seven state championships in a row.

Looking back, people don't know how razor thin a couple of those state titles were. There was triple overtime in 1986, and then there was Mike Hollis vs. Terry Bell in 1987. Both nights, we were very fortunate to win.

The difference in those two games, in my opinion? Both nights we had The Iceman, my hero, and the other team didn't.

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So here is the moral of the story. In 1986 when I was sitting there watching us win state in triple overtime, or when Terry was telling me stories about a guy I've never met named Mike Hollis, who could have imagined that those events would have impacted so many people?

I grew up and became a basketball coach. I haven't changed the world, but I've coached a lot of kids that have gone on to do some really cool things. I've met a lot of people and worked with a lot of people that have really helped me, and I think I've helped a few of them along the way, too.

The point is, you have no idea how what you're doing today is going to impact somebody else right now or a year from now or 20 years from now.

Just Win Today is taking that type of thinking and applying it to today. Just this one day. What can you do that might help somebody else? What can you learn today that might make you "a better you" tomorrow? That's what it's all about.

There are two pictures in my office that capture this perfectly. One is of Terry, The Iceman, my hero. He gave me this gift. He made me love basketball. The other is of Dom Johnson, the best winner I ever coached, who is now a coach himself. I passed the gift Terry gave me onto Dom. Now he's passing it on to other kids.

What you do today is going to impact somebody. Think about that.

And when we got home from state, there was a line around the block of guys wanting to play me a game of 1 on 1 LOL! Thanks for reading. #JWT