Remembering Barry Adams: Former coaches, players celebrate 'The Czar' of Oregon basketball

Remembering Barry Adams: Former coaches, players celebrate ‘The Czar’ of Oregon basketball

Posted by Admin October 19, 2024 Basketball

You would be hard-pressed to find a basketball coach in the state of Oregon throughout the past half-century who wasn’t influenced in some way, shape or form by Barry Adams.

A beloved figure who was equally revered for his tactical brilliance and gentle demeanor, Adams spent nearly four decades entrenching himself as one of the more decorated coaches in state history. With a career record of 653-315, he sits at No. 8 on the list of Oregon’s winningest boys basketball coaches. In 1999, he was inducted into the National High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

Just as significant as his on-court accomplishments was the tireless work that Adams poured into the Cascade Sports Camps — a renowned summer event near Lyons that he co-founded in 1969 that has helped shape the lives of more than 60,000 players and coaches.

Those accolades and accomplishments hardly begin to detail the impact that “The Czar” of Oregon basketball had on the coaching community.

Last month, that same community lost a legend when Adams passed away at the age of 88.

As Oregon mourns the loss of one of its most cherished basketball educators, Adams’ former players, assistants and peers detailed the immense influence he had on their own careers.

‘He just made basketball bigger than life for me’

Long before Scott Rueck was one of the top women’s college basketball coaches in the nation, all he wanted to do was play varsity basketball for Barry Adams.

Rueck’s father, Marv Rueck, served as the junior varsity coach at Hillsboro High School under Adams during his nine-year tenure there from 1973-1981. Scott Rueck served as the team’s ball boy “from the time I could walk” and spent much of his childhood laying out the blueprint for his soon-to-be star career with the Spartans.

“I had it scheduled out,” Scott Rueck recalled with a laugh. “I was going to be point guard at Hillsboro. … If I was good enough, I could make varsity and play for Barry.”

That dream changed slightly in 1981 when Glencoe High School was founded just five miles away from Hillsboro High. Marv Rueck spent a one-year stint as the Glencoe program’s head coach during its inaugural season and then stepped back into an assistant role in 1982 as Adams made the move across town to become the Crimson Tide’s head coach.

Adams immediately forged Glencoe into a powerhouse; it captured the state title and went 24-1 during the 1983 season. A little over a year later, Scott Rueck’s dreams were about to become reality. Ahead of his sophomore season, Rueck was poised to be in the mix for a varsity spot at Glencoe.

Prior to the start of that season, though, Adams left to become the head coach at South Salem High School, where he spent the final 15 years of his career.

Rueck was heartbroken at the lost opportunity. But, in the four decades that have followed, the countless hours that Rueck spent near Adams on the sideline have played an integral part in his own coaching career.

“He just made basketball bigger than life for me,” Rueck said. “My dad took me everywhere, so that’s the reason I was around. Between the two of them, that’s the reason I’m here; that’s the reason I coach.”

The principles that Rueck learned under Adams are still being utilized in his offensive game plans at Oregon State to this day.

“Jam the ball inside,” Rueck said. “That was Barry — get the ball inside. My whole system for 28 years now has been built around that. … I grew up running triangle, and we run it now. That came from Barry.”

Those who worked closely with Adams recall a rare ability to communicate successfully without needing to raise his voice. That trait has followed Rueck throughout his own coaching career, too.

“You want to be so thorough as an instructor and teach in a way that you don’t ever have to yell,” Rueck said. “If you do it in a way that makes sense — that they want to do it — then you aren’t coaching effort. That’s already there. If you’re yelling, if you’re mad, it’s probably on you as a teacher.”

Rueck and his family remained close with Adams and his family up until he passed away. Long after his own coaching career had come to a close, Adams continued to have a tangible impact on the way Rueck approached — and still approaches — the game of basketball.

“Barry was so selfless,” Rueck said. “He continued to reach out to me all these years. I would hear from him, ‘Hey, I’ve got this idea, I would love to come talk to you. There’s a new way that we’re doing this or that with the posts.’ I’m talking as recently as two years ago. Barry was looking to add value to me and our program. He really cared. When we would talk, he had been watching.

“It just meant the world to me that he cared enough to keep following me all these years.”

‘Great integrity’

The man who directly succeeded Adams at Hillsboro in 1982 was Tom Rohlffs, who was a varsity assistant on Adams’ staff there for nine years.

Rohlffs is a basketball historian who has assembled two seminal works of record-keeping that tell the story of basketball in the state of Oregon — “Cutting Down the Nets” and “Full Court Press.” He knows as well as anybody just how prominent Adams was for an entire generation of coaches who followed in his footsteps.

Rohlffs can effortlessly recite the nuances of Adams’ “hurricane” offense, which was the first he knew of that intentionally attacked a zone defense by way of dribbling into two defenders in order to create overloads.

“He was ahead of his time attacking defenses in those days,” Rohlffs said.

In addition to his decorated coaching career, Adams also taught history for more than 35 years and named his defensive presses after famous battles.

If his players heard “Omaha” it indicated a full-court zone press.

A 2-2-1 trap was “Utah.”

For a Barry Adams-coached team, all five beaches of Normandy indicated a different defensive look.

“What I couldn’t believe is every place he went, he developed programs,” Rohlffs said. “That was his strength; he could develop a program. He had different ideas of how to train and how to prepare. He was a great tactician. He had a unique ability to put any player wherever they needed to be on the floor to do the most good.”

More than any schematic wrinkle or on-court accomplishment, though, one of Rohlffs’ defining memories of Adams came during a Hillsboro road game at Aloha.

During pregame warmups, Rohlffs leaned back and felt a book sitting behind him. He picked it up, only to discover it was Aloha’s varsity playbook that had been mistakenly left on the bench.

An ecstatic Rohlffs had just hit the jackpot. ‘Great! We’ve got their playbook!’ he thought as he hurried to relay the good news to Adams.

“I gave it to Barry,” Rohlffs said. “He took it and said, ‘You march right now and give it to the Aloha coach.’ Talk about integrity. I mean, how many coaches would have really done that? I’ll never forget that. He had great integrity.”

‘A great communicator’

For all the hats Adams wore throughout his career, he never lost sight of the big picture.

Whether he was on the sidelines for a high-stakes playoff game, or instructing a group of grade-schoolers on the blacktop during a summer day in Lyons, the objective remained the same.

“He was a great communicator,” Rob Younger said. “I think he just transformed the love — his love of basketball — to others. People were extremely successful because of that.”

Younger, the executive director of the Oregon Athletic Coaches Association, said Adams was vital to helping develop the OACA coaches clinics 16 years ago — long after Adams’ own coaching career had come to an end.

After working closely with Adams in that capacity for many years, Younger has seen first-hand how many coaches who were influenced by Adams have gone on to forge their own noteworthy careers.

“You just look at all the players, assistant coaches and everybody who eventually became head basketball coaches throughout our state. His impact has continued because of his tutelage and how involved he was in so many people’s lives that now are vital parts of our basketball community,” Younger said.

‘He’s the reason I’m in this profession’

One of the more illustrious figures to emerge from Adams’ coaching tree is Craig Rothenberger.

During a 53-year career that spanned from 1970-2023, Rothenberger became the third-winningest boys basketball coach in state history with a career record of 715-520. That included a 43-year run at Junction City highlighted by a 1994 state title.

And yet, Rothenberger isn’t sure any of that would have happened if he had never met Adams.

“He’s the reason I’m in this profession,” Rothenberger said.

Rothenberger played for four years under Adams at Nestucca, in Cloverdale, and later went on to coach his alma mater from 1976-1980. He took much of what he learned under Adams and added unique twists and flourishes to his own ever-evolving offensive and defensive systems.

“He had man defense down to an art,” Rothenberger said. “I took all of that and developed my own system from his that was very fundamental; very easy to teach at all levels. It came from Barry and Camp Cascade and a lot of private conversations with him.

“I think a lot of young coaches come out and they’re kind of scattered. Kind of all over the place. There was some of that with me. But I soon started instituting a lot of what he did. And when I did that, I got better.”

The drills that Adams passed onto Rothenberger indirectly helped build Junction City into a program that, for decades, was known as a gritty, hard-nosed defensive program.

That included the notorious “snake pit” drill that nailed down the principles of man-to-man defense.

“I worked through those drills regularly — I’d pick one or two every day,” Rothenberger said. “We took great pride in how hard we played, how much pressure we could put on the ball. Those drills taught kids to play hard on defense, to just grit their teeth and get after it. I don’t know that everybody does that type of thing — teach kids to take tremendous pride in the way they defend in an individual and as a team.”

‘He added to the national prominence of Oregon’

Nick McWilliams enjoyed his own decorated 32-year coaching career, which began with a boys state title at Santiam Christian in 1984 and featured nearby stops at Sprague (1999-2002) and Central (2004-2007).

As a second act, he took the helm of the South Salem girls program in 2008 and went 187-82 over the next decade, winning state titles in 2015 and 2016.

During his time on the sidelines, he matched up with Adams just twice — in a pair of league games during Adams’ final season in 1999.

Still, 25 years later, McWilliams recalls just how difficult Adams could make life for opposing players and coaches.

“He was kind of the guru of running out of the 1-4 set,” McWilliams recalls. “It gave you a lot of stuff you had to prepare for. If you were going to play man-to-man, well, try to be ready for 20-25 different things. It was a big challenge just to be ready for everything he was going to throw at you.”

McWilliams also fondly recalls what Adams accomplished as an ambassador for the sport in Oregon at a time when basketball in the state wasn’t necessarily recognized at a national level.

In addition to his work shaping the Cascade Sports Camp, Adams helped create the Basketball Congress of Oregon, an organization that worked to generate recognition and national tournament opportunities for athletes.

“He really added to the national prominence of Oregon,” McWilliams said. “People were always amazed that a little state like Oregon could compete so well.”

‘Intense, but calm’

When Adams opted to make the move down I-5 to Salem after a decade-plus stint of success in Hillsboro, it came as a bit of a shock to those within the South Salem community at the time.

“When we got him it was kind of like, ‘Wow!'” said Dave Johnson, the Saxons’ head football coach when Adams arrived.

Several years later, Johnson was promoted to athletic director at South Salem and became Adams’ boss. But that didn’t alter the dynamic of the two, who met and became good friends while cutting their teeth at Lebanon early in their respective coaching careers.

The pair worked closely as Adams forged South Salem into a perennial contender — and led the school to its first state title in 1996 when the Saxons beat Barlow, 53-39, in the 4A championship at Memorial Coliseum.

Johnson can still recall plenty about that day. But what stands out to him about the 1996 playoff run — as well as each time Adams and his players traveled to Portland for the postseason — was the uncanny blend of intensity and empathy he conveyed to his players.

“His kids knew what was expected of them,” Johnson said. “But I never saw him get super angry, to tell you the truth. He was intense, but I never saw him get out of line. … A coach can, a lot of times, be an example for the parents and the crowd. If you’ve got a crazy coach, you can have some crazy fans. The state championship was a tight game, but Barry was just Barry. Intense, but calm.”

While Adams’ success in terms of wins and state titles speaks for itself, Johnson, like so many others, is quick to mention the expansive impact of his expertise and generosity during those long summer days in Lyons.

“Barry was so good to players up at those camps. From young age groups to the best of the high school kids,” Johnson said. “Then, those kids who graduated would come on back and become (camp) counselors. He continued this huge wave in the basketball world.”

“He became the high school basketball Czar of Oregon.”

Jarrid Denney covers high school sports and Oregon State for the Statesman Journal. He can be reached at JDenney@salem.gannett.com or on X @jarrid_denney