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This Day In Sports…March 10, 1991:

Eddie Sutton, whose college head coaching career began in the state of Idaho, becomes the first coach ever to take four different schools to the NCAA Tournament when Oklahoma State is named to the field of 64. The Cowboys were seeded third in the East Regional and defeated New Mexico and North Carolina State to get to the Sweet 16, where they lost 72-63 in overtime to Temple.

Sutton had previously guided Creighton, Kentucky and Arkansas into the Big Dance, taking the Razorbacks to the Final Four in 1978 and getting the Cowboys there in 1995 and 2004. It was Sutton’s Arkansas squad that ended one of the great NCAA Tournament Cinderella stories of the 1970s, edging coach Bobby Dye’s Cal State Fullerton Titans 61-58 in the Elite Eight. Dye, of course, would become Boise State’s head coach five years later.

Sutton got his coaching start in Twin Falls, where he founded the College of Southern Idaho basketball program in 1966 and coached there for three seasons. In the Golden Eagles’ first year of hoops, they went 33-4 and qualified for the AAU national tournament. Sutton was 84-14 at CSI before taking the Creighton job. Remarkably, CSI has maintained its elite status at the junior college level in the 5½ decades since Sutton departed.

His longest tenure came at Oklahoma State, his alma mater, where he spent 16 seasons and went 368-151. It would have lasted longer had Sutton not battled alcohol and a resultant DUI arrest in 2006 that forced a leave of absence and eventual resignation. He finished his career in 2008 by serving as interim coach at the University of San Francisco. In his 36 seasons as a head coach, Sutton made 26 NCAA Tournaments—and from 1977-2005, his teams missed the Big Dance only twice. He went 806-326 in his career and was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2020.

(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.) 

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