Time Machine: Bucky O’Connor

He twice guided Iowa’s ‘Fabulous Five’ to Final Four in 1950s

Bucky O’Connor, the University of Iowa’s head basketball coach from 1951 until 1958, directs his team during a game in this undated photo. O’Conner died at age 44 in a car crash near Waterloo in April 1958. (Gazette archives)

Frank “Bucky” O’Connor, head basketball and golf coach at the University of Iowa, was on his way to Clear Lake for a speaking engagement April 22, 1958.

As he traveled along Highway 218, the car in front of him suddenly slowed and swerved to avoid hitting a pair of guinea hens in the road about 3-1/2 miles south of Waterloo.

O’Connor swerved his car, too, and then lost control, skidding sideways into an oncoming semi bound for Cedar Rapids.

Both vehicles went into the ditch. The semi’s load of 16 tons of concrete sewer pipe and tile fell onto the coach’s car. Authorities determined O’Connor, age 44, had already died from the crash before the pipes flattened his vehicle.

His funeral was moved to the First Methodist Church in Iowa City to accommodate the number of mourners, including fellow Big Ten coaches and officials. He is buried in Memory Gardens Cemetery in Iowa City.

Coaching merry-go-round

A native of Newton, the bespectacled O’Connor had played basketball at Drake University and coached high school basketball at Harrisburg, Ill., and in Boone, Iowa. During World War II, he served four years with the Air Force, some of the time in Japan, returning to Iowa in 1948 as the UI’s freshman basketball coach and varsity golf coach.

Lawrence “Pops” Harrison was the Hawks head basketball coach at the time, leading the team during the war years to a .700 winning percentage and the Big Ten title in 1945.

Harrison’s health forced him to leave the sidelines in January 1950, and O’Connor took over as temporary head coach because everyone thought Harrison would return.

Instead, Harrison was fired in April, and Rollie Williams, the UI assistant athletics director, was named head coach in addition to keeping his AD job. Williams had coached the Hawks for 13 years before enlisting in the Navy in 1942, leaving Harrison in charge.

Williams named O’Connor as his assistant coach. But Williams, citing health concerns, asked to be relieved of coaching duties in March 1951 but stayed on as Iowa’s assistant athletics director.

Athletics Director Paul Brechler named O’Connor, then 37, as the Hawkeyes new head basketball coach.

O’Connor as coach

O’Connor’s first year as coach, 1951-52, ended with the Hawkeyes in second place in the Big Ten.

In his second season, Big Ten Commissioner Kenneth “Tug” Wilson found that O’Connor had violated recruiting rules and ordered him to not talk to any high school athlete for more than seven months.

That ruling caused an uproar among sports writers, who were not shy about commenting and thought O’Connor had been unfairly singled out. In ensuing games, O’Connor got more applause during team introductions than his players.

At first, the Hawks’ 1952-53 season looked less than promising. They dropped six of seven games, but then caught fire and won six of the last seven, finishing sixth in the league.

‘Fabulous Five’

Then came the 1953-54 season, the first year of play for the “Fabulous Five” — Bill Schoof, Bill Seaberg, and three sophomores, Bill Logan, Carl Cain and Sharm Scheuerman. They ended the season 11-3 and second place in the Big Ten.

In the 1954-55 season, the Hawks were Big Ten champs with a 12-1 record and a .448 shooting percentage, the best in the league. They were atop the Big Ten the next year, too.

Even better, O’Connor and the Fabulous Five took Iowa into the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament — then with 24 teams — in March 1955 and March 1956.

In 1955, the Hawks finished fourth in the tournament.

In 1956, they were the NCAA national runners-up, losing to the University of San Francisco team anchored by 6-10 Bill Russell, a future NBA Hall of Famer.

The Fabulous Five graduated, and their jersey numbers were retired. Logan, the center, became Iowa’s highest career scorer with 1,109 points in 70 games. Over the three years the Five played together, they won 35 of their 42 Big Ten games.

Rebuilding

O’Connor faced a rebuilding year in 1956-57. He appointed Milton “Sharm” Scheuerman — one of the Fabulous Five — as freshman basketball coach. The new team finished eighth in the Big Ten.

In 1957-58, the team improved, finishing sixth in the conference, and things were looking up.

And then O’Connor died. Four weeks later, Scheuerman was named Iowa’s head basketball coach. At age 24, he was the youngest basketball coach in conference history.

Gazette Sports Editor Gus Schrader said of O’Connor: “It’s inadequate, of course, to try to measure a man like the late Bucky O’Connor in terms of wins and losses because Bucky’s value to the boys he coached and the friends he made far exceeded that. But his seven seasons as head coach at Iowa was very close to being the most successful of all Big Ten teams.”

Reunion

Ten years after they played, the Fabulous Five reunited at the Iowa Fieldhouse on Jan. 22, 1966. A crowd of 11,700 was there to greet them.

By then, Scheuerman, after coaching for six seasons, had moved on to an Iowa City realty and insurance business. Schoof was selling school supplies in San Clemente, Calif. Logan worked at the family bank in Keokuk. Seaberg was a rancher in Evergreen, Colo., and Cain was a probation officer in Gardenia, Calif.

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