Recalling the Kamikaze Kids: Riveting, chaotic, unforgettable
The wild, woolly ride of the University of Oregon’s “Kamikaze Kids” is recounted in a 2020 retrospective, “Mad Hoops,” by former Register-Guard sportswriter and columnist Bud Withers, who worked at the paper from 1970 to 1987.
Withers’ fifth book traces the hiring of Dick Harter as basketball coach by the Ducks in 1971, recalls the Marine-inspired principles which guided his stewardship of the program, and remembers the mania that gripped Eugene over seemingly every crumb of news that developed at Oregon.
It’s not a pollyanna recollection, including accounts by former players who departed the program unable to deal with Harter’s fury, as well as the coach’s infamous trysts with any number of women, while his wife tended to the job of raising five children.
The book was well-received, reviewed by several Oregon newspapers, among them in Portland, Eugene, Corvallis and Medford. Wrote the Portland Tribune, “Withers’ book will awaken memories, both good and bad. For those who didn’t live through it, ‘Mad Hoops’ serves as a cautionary tale of what can happen when a coach has unchecked power. In either case, it is an entertaining recounting of one of the most unforgettable sagas in Oregon sports.”
The book details Oregon’s sizzling rivalries both with UCLA and Oregon State in that seven-year era, which included the final years of the fabled regime of John Wooden, the Bruins coach who didn’t hide his disdain for the hell-bent style Harter implemented at Oregon.
Harter left Eugene abruptly for Penn State in 1978 and five years later, embarked on a long career coaching in the NBA, chiefly as an assistant, where he became a more mellow, settled figure — and husband, to his second wife, whom he had pursued initially when she was an Oregon cheerleader less than half his age.
Jay Bilas, the longtime college-basketball analyst for ESPN, called the book “a fabulous, behind-the-scenes journey into Dick Harter’s Oregon Ducks, the good, the bad and the truth. Mad Hoops is a must-read.”
Withers writes occasional blogs on the site “madhoopsthebook.com,” both on former players of that era and on recent events in sports.
The members of The Register-Guard Reunion Steering Committee are Ann Baker Mack, Donovan Mack, Paul Neville, Lloyd Paseman, Dean Rea, Mike Thoele and Sandy Thoele.
They can be reached at the email address [email protected].