Gene Bess is not in the National Basketball Hall of Fame, why not?

Editor's note: This appears in a special section in the Saturday, June 6, 2020 edition of the Daily American Republic, honoring the career of Gene Bess, who recently retired as the men's basketball coach at Three Rivers College after 50 seasons.

Gene Bess had a hall-of-fame coaching career, retiring recently as men’s basketball coach at Three Rivers College with more wins than any college basketball coach in the history of the game.
While he’s a member of five halls of fame — including being honored twice by the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, which features a bronze bust of Bess at its Springfield museum — Bess has yet to get a call from another Springfield institution.
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, located in Springfield, Massachusetts where James Naismith invented the game, has enshrined 109 coaches from the high school, college, professional and international ranks.
Having coached at a school in Southeast Missouri his entire career and at the junior college level, Bess is certainly overlooked. But his resume can be comparable to many coaches already in the national basketball hall of fame.
First off, he retires with 143 wins more than any other coach at any level. The two coaches now chasing his 1,300 milestone are already in the hall of fame — Mike Krzyzewski and Herb Magee.
Putting aside the total number of wins, which is an average of 26 per season, Bess’ winning percentage of .757 is better than all but eight hall of fame college coaches. It’s better than Phog Allen, who coached 50 years, recently elected Eddie Sutton and Bob Knight.
Bess won 85.8% of his home games, and that includes his first 12 seasons when Three Rivers didn’t have an on-campus gym to even practice in. The Raiders won 88.7% of their off-campus games when they were considered the home team.
In actual road games, the Raiders won nearly 63% of the time while in the postseason, they have a .706 winning percentage.
In 17 national tournament appearances, Three Rivers was 41-21 for a .661 winning percentage.
Bess was 41-25 in overtime games and won 410 games decided by single digits or in overtime with a .614 winning percentage. The Raiders won 475 games by 20-plus points and got beat by that margin only 35 times in 50 years.
Bess didn’t have a losing season in his first 47 years and only had eight years of less than 20 wins. His teams won 30 or more games 16 times.
Among his peers, Bess is one of only 13 junior college men’s basketball coaches with 800 wins. There are 26 coaches with that many wins at the four-year level.
While coaches at four-year schools can develop players over a longer time, Bess has a higher turnover rate of players at the junior college level.
Bess coached 29 NJCAA All-Americans with only one earning the honor more than once, and he had 18 players reach 1,000 career points, but combined, their totals only account for 15.1% of the all-time scoring total by the Raiders.
About 40% of all players that Bess coached went on to play at four-year schools and a few reached the NBA or played professionally — notably Moon McCrary and Latrell Sprewell, who came to Three Rivers with just one year of basketball experience. His summer camps feature three more future NBA players, and he traveled the world, including Africa and New Zealand, promoting the game. Bess also hosted coaching clinics and was among the first coaches to use weight training and studying film.
Nearly 50 of his former players went on to be coaches themselves, including a hall-of-fame trio at the high school level that each won over 500 games and multiple state championships.
Combined with his own high school coaching career, in which he won 71.4% of the time, Bess won 1,537 times and coached in over 2,000 games over a 62-year career.
Also consider that his 258 of his losses, nearly two-thirds of his college career total, were by single digits or in overtime.
When his teams were beaten, they later beat that same opponent during the same season 105 times.
Eight of his teams lost to either the eventual national champion or the runner up. The Raiders ended their season with a win nine times while two of the end-of-season losses came in the championship game.
Three Rivers won two championships — 1979 and 1992 — one before the shot-clock and 3-point line were introduced and another with both in play.
There are 64 men’s college coaches in the hall of fame. Of those, Bess has more championships than 48 and only John Wooden (10 national championships), Krzyzewski (5), Adolph Rupp (4), Jim Calhoun (3), Knight (3), and Arad McCutchan, who won five Division II championships, have more national titles than Bess.
One coach enshrined in the hall of fame has an NJCAA national title to his resume, Nolan Richardson. Bess and the Raiders beat Richardson’s Western Texas team in double-overtime of the national semifinal before winning the next night, again in overtime, to claim the 1979 title.
Unlike the NCAA Tournament, Bess and his teams had to qualify for the NJCAA National Tournament by winning their region and, in some cases, a district playoff. Only recently has the NJCAA opened the tournament to at-large bids.
For most years, Bess coached, winning the NJCAA title required four wins at the national event, a win at the district level, and between three and six wins at the regional tournament as opposed to six wins at the current NCAA format.
The Raiders made 17 appearances in the national tournament, reaching the final four eight times, and had five more appearances in the district playoff. They lost six best-of-3 region finals, four that went the distance, and made five more appearances in the winner-take-all region championship game.
That equals 33 seasons of reaching what would be similar to playing in the NCAA Tournament, the same number of tournament appearances as Krzyzewski.
Bess may not have the name recognition with the casual fan, but basketball in this corner of the world is better because of him.

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Brian Rosener is the sports editor for the Daily American Republic. Contact him at sports@darnews.com .