Before they played in the United Supermarkets Arena, Texas Tech basketball teams called Municipal Coliseum home. Before the Municipal Coliseum, there was The Barn, a cramped, noisy venue that provided quite a homecourt advantage.
Texas Tech’s most acclaimed player during The Barn era was Jim Reed, a 6-foot-4, 195-pound forward who averaged a double-double for his career, earned all-America recognition and led Polk Robison-coached teams to the Red Raiders’ first two NCAA Tournament appearances. Reed was one of seven charter members of the Tech basketball Ring of Honor inducted in 2019.
Reed died Friday at age 90. A family member said he’d been ill with cancer for about two years and received hospice care the past few days. He was a Brownfield resident since 1963.
Reed averaged 17.8 points and 14.0 rebounds per game — 10th and second in Tech history — from 1952-56. His 1,333 career rebounds and 27 rebounds in a game, achieved twice, remain school records.
“Times change and everybody says ‘In that day and time,’ but you judge people on the era when they played,” former Tech Chancellor Kent Hance said, “and to average a double-double for four straight years is unheard of.”
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Reed has the top six single-game rebounding totals, ranging from 23 to 27, in Tech history.
He once explained his rebounding prowess with a story about the Boys Club where he grew up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The club had only two basketballs for 20 to 30 kids. If you wanted to shoot, he said, you’d better develop a sense for rebounding.
“I think I had a little bit more of a competitive spirit than most,” Reed said at his Ring of Honor ceremony. “I was a pretty good jumper and we had teams that loved to fastbreak, so there were a lot of shots put up, and consequently a lot of rebounds.”
The Red Raiders set a major-college record in early 1956 by topping 100 points in four consecutive games.
Tech went 14-10, 21-5, 18-7 and 13-12 during Reed’s four seasons, winning the Border Conference championship the last three years and making the NCAA Tournament in 1954 and 1956. Reed led the Red Raiders in rebounding all four seasons and in scoring the last three.
He was first-team all-Border Conference and all-District 6 three seasons apiece and received some level of all-America recognition twice. He was inducted into the Tech Athletics Hall of Fame in 1967.
The Red Raiders were close to unbeatable at home with a 33-1 record in Reed’s four seasons playing in The Barn.
“I was in junior high,” Hance said, “and the first game I ever went to was at The Barn, and it was packed and it would get hot. To get to go to a Tech game was a big deal. There wasn’t any space, but it was full and it was loud. It was a crackerbox.”
“It would hold 2,500 to 3,000 if you packed ’em in,” Reed said in 2019. “They had overflow crowds sometimes where you had to put one foot on the out-of-bounds line to throw it in, because people were standing there and covered up the out of bounds.
“The fire marshal tried to turn people away. There were fistfights and riots, the people that couldn’t get in. They almost had to build someplace bigger after all that going on. The Coliseum, it was a three- to five-year waiting period for season tickets the first two or three years in the Coliseum.”
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Tech began playing in Municipal Coliseum during the 1956-57 season, the year after Reed graduated. It was an important time in Tech sports history with Southwest Conference members finally voting in May 1956 to admit Tech, long a school aspiration.
“The football team beat Auburn in the Gator Bowl and my bunch beat A&M, TCU and Texas all on their home floors,” Reed said. “And after that year, they couldn’t keep us out. So they finally voted us in my senior year.”
Reed was born in Slaton. From third grade through high school, he lived in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Coming out of Pine Bluff High School, he chose Ole Miss, but still had a lot of family in West Texas.
“My senior year, we won the state championship, big schools, in football and basketball,” Reed said, “so I got pretty heavily recruited and signed to go to Ole Miss.
“But I came out here in the summer to stay with some of my siblings, and while I was out here, I got recruited by Polk Robison, Buster Brannon at TCU, A&M, several other schools that I hadn’t been recruited (by) before. So they talked me into staying out here, and it agreed with me because of all my brothers and sisters. And that’s how I ended up at Tech.”