Legendary Texas Southern men’s basketball coach Robert Moreland has passed away. He was 85.
Moreland leaves behind a legacy of winning TSU, notching 406 wins and holding the title of the Tigers’ winningest all-time coach. He coached the Tigers from 1975-2001 and then returned to the program he loved for a one-year stint during the 2007-2008 season.
A native of Utica, Miss., Moreland brought with him a reputation of winning and that soon extended to the Tigers. TSU won the NAIA National Championship in 1977 and then he led the program to its first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance in 1990 and then subsequent trips in 1994 and 1995.
Moreland used his native ties to create a Mississippi pipeline of recruits during his time. None was bigger than Kevin Granger, whom he lured from Scooba, Miss. Granger was the SWAC Freshman of the Year, a two-time First Team All-SWAC player, a two-time Black College All-American selection, and the NCAA season scoring leader after averaging 27.0 points per game during the 1995-1996 season.
Granger is now the Tigers’ longtime athletic director.
“It was a great experience for me, I’m going to be honest,” Granger said of playing for Moreland during a recent conversation with The Defender. “Anytime you can learn from a legend, get guided by a legend … The one thing I will say about Coach Moreland, if you had the talent, he would help you nurture that talent.
“He didn’t get in the way of your talent. If you could do special things, he allowed you to be yourself and let you do those special things. And that is so important for anybody’s success. If you have a great player and you don’t know how to maneuver them and put that great player or let that great player be himself then a lot of times you won’t be great.
“So he allowed me to play to my strengths so that I could be successful.”
Moreland and Granger built a bond that endured until his death.
“Coach and I were real close,” Granger said. “I learned early on from my father that I had to get to know the coach because the coach was going to decide if I played or not in my opinion.
“A lot of student-athletes would not go into Coach Moreland’s office all the time. But I went in there every day because I wanted to learn the coach. I wanted to get his expectations so that I could know what I needed to be doing so that I could make sure I was always on the court. I never liked not being on the court, so I needed to learn what you need me to do from Coach Moreland’s point of view so that I could always stay on the basketball court.”
Moreland is set to be enshrined in the Texas Southern Sports Hall of Fame this fall as part of a star-studded 24-member class. He guided the Tigers to six 20-win seasons, five SWAC conference championships, and three conference tournament championships.
Harry Kelly, who is from Jackson, Miss., was also a two-time NCAA scoring champion under Moreland and Granger was the topper scorer in college basketball once.
Moreland was named SWAC Coach of the Year on five occasions, the American Wire Service National Coach of the Year in 1994, and the American Wire Service National Black College Champion in 1994 and 1995.
Upon retirement from coaching, Moreland remained at TSU as a professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology.
Moreland began his coaching career at Greer High School in Carthage, Miss., where he coached from 1962 to 1963. He then moved on to to Utica Junior College where he made an immediate impact as he won 78 percent of his games over a 12-year period which saw him win 20-plus games during a 10-year stretch.
Moreland earned his Bachelor’s degree in Physical Education from Tougaloo College (1962) and his Master’s (1969) and Doctorate (1972) Degrees from the University of Indiana. Along with his SWAC Hall of Fame Honor, Moreland received the “SWAC Alumni Association Lifetime Achievement Award” for contributions to the Southwestern Athletic Conference in 2009. He is also a member of the Tougaloo University and Hines Community College Hall of Fames. In 2010, TSU officially named its basketball court inside the H&PE Arena after Moreland.
