RIP Charlie Spoonhour

Charlie Soopnhour has died. He was a very cool guy and a damn good basketball coach. He had some great battles with Dick Bennett when Spoon was at SW Missouri and Dick was at UWGB.

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/charlie-spoonhour-dies-brought-spoonball-to-slu/article_99a81026-4cf3-11e1-8b1a-0019bb30f31a.html

 

Helluva guy. Was a MVC TV analyst after retirement. Universally loved.

RIP.

 

Sad ... have never heard a bad, or even questionable story, on him.

RIP, good sir.

 

Good ol' days of the Mid-Con ... SW Missouri State, Cleveland State, Northern Iowa, UWGB, and even Northern Illinois for a bit. Those teams had some great battles.

 

Spoon was one of my favorite coaches. He was a great coach and a better person.

He used to call into other coaches radio shows to ask questions, posing as "Charlie from St. Louis". He was hilarious.

After a short break, he came back to take the UNLV job. He said the reason he came back was because he had run out of decent sweats.

My favorite Spoon story came from a Final Four. He was with a group of coaches drinking in the hotel lobby and the place was packed. Bob Huggins was in the group, sitting on a coffee table, and when a round of drinks came, Huggins lost his balance when reaching for his wallet and crashed through the table. Everybody in the lobby heard the noise and looked that way, only to see Spoon hovering over Huggins and yelling something like, "If you say something like that again then I am going to hit you again."

I had no less than 10 people tell me in the next couple of days that Spoon had hit Huggins. Hilarious.

RIP Charlie. . . thanks for making this world a better place.

 

I had a few dealings with Spoonhour as a young sportswriter, and he was as gracious and accommodating toward me as he was toward the regular beat guys. Great coach, great guy. RIP.