Overview:
Little’s hellbent playing style made him a fan favorite at both San Marcos High and the University of Oregon
Doug Little, cult basketball hero from Oregon’s Kamikaze Kids Era, could have been just another Lost Boy.
But then he found Santa Barbara.
His two years at San Marcos High School pointed him in a new direction and an eventful life, which ended just last month.
Little, 72, died of kidney failure in Eugene, Oregon, after successful careers in college basketball and the lumber industry.
He leaves behind his wife, Carla, and children Scott, Kelly and Kendra.
His own father left their family when he was a young boy. He had just finished his sophomore year at Las Vegas High School when his mother packed up the house and headed West.
Fate brought them to an apartment just across the street from San Marcos High.
“She was a little concerned about who he was hanging out with in Las Vegas,” said Dave Christiansen, who would become one of Little’s high school teammates and a lifelong friend.
A band of basketball brothers and a fatherly coach named Maury Halleck soon became the center of Little’s universe.
“Halleck understood him,” Royals’ team captain Herb Harms told Noozhawk. “He was that way with quite a few players throughout his coaching career.
“Halleck was a different type of coach, and they really clicked.”
Little expressed as much upon Halleck’s death in 2016.
“I wished he could’ve been my dad,” he said.
Leaving Las Vegas
The Royals were just glad to have Little as their teammate.
“I remember Doug coming to our first practice our junior year,” classmate Roland Siegert said. “We were all thinking, ‘Who is this guy that coach Halleck bagged?’
“Well, it didn’t take long playing our first scrimmage with and against him to realize what a wonderful player he was. He had it all: outside shooting, driving the basket and great rebounding skills.”
Little was an undersized post player at 6-foot-3, but he played with supersized zeal.
“Doug was the banger,” Harms recalled. “If he missed a shot, or if any shot went up, he was going after it — and if people were in his way, he’d just ram through them.”
Little established himself immediately as a newly arrived junior, averaging 19.4 points per game to lead the Royals into the CIF-Southern Section playoffs.
He was voted first-team all-conference by the coaches in the Santa Barbara County League (San Marcos had yet to join the Channel League).
He also made a strong impression on Christiansen that year when he spoke to his ninth-grade basketball team at La Colina Junior High School.
“He was like Superman,” he said. “Little did I know that the next year I would be playing with him on the San Marcos varsity basketball team.
“He took me under his wing and made sure I was OK. He was like a big brother to me.
“Even when we would speak on the phone over these past years, he would always want to know what I was doing and how it was going. We would laugh and reminisce about our younger days.”
Man Among Boys
San Marcos’ basketball program — just two years removed from its 25-4, CIF-Southern Section semifinalist season of 1966-1967 — was in a rebuilding mode during Little’s senior year. Halleck’s roster was comprised mostly of sophomores and juniors.
“We were a very young team,” said Paul Menzel, the team’s 6-4 junior center. “Doug was physically a man among high school boys.
“We ended the regular season with a losing record (11-13) but somehow got into the playoffs. We went on a run at the end of the year, probably because the juniors and sophomores had a season under their belts playing alongside Doug.”
Although San Marcos lost six of its first seven games, two of those were against Southern California power South Torrance High.
The Royals were also toughened up by the likes of Long Beach Millikan and Loyola.
“It seemed like Halleck set up a heavy game schedule, possibly to showcase Doug to the college scouts,” Siegert pointed out.
“He didn’t disappoint.”
Halleck’s scheduling paid off later that spring when Little took a recruiting trip to Oregon.
The circumstances were recounted in Bud Withers’ book: Mad Hoops: The Dizzying, Floor-Burning Ride of the Kamikaze Kids of 1970s Oregon.
According to Withers, Ducks’ assistant coach Frank Arnold called Jim Harrick, then the coach at Morningside High in Inglewood, to ask for some insight.
“We’ve got Doug Little here,” Arnold told Harrick, who would later guide UCLA to the 1995 NCAA championship. “What’s your opinion — can he play in the Pac-8?”
“Frank,” Harrick advised, “go over there and close the door and get his name on a letter of intent.”
Little was flabbergasted when Oregon offered him the scholarship.
“I don’t think they’d seen me play at all, which is unreal,” he told Withers.
Getting Charged Up
The Royals’ early stumbles in the 1968-1969 season included a 60-59 loss to rival Dos Pueblos in their second league contest. Little was suspended for that game for having forged a hall pass.
“They let me go to the game,” he recalled years later. “I sat right at the top, and they beat us. It was highly motivational.”
The raucous atmosphere at DP’s Sovine Gym led to some missed San Marcos free throws down the stretch — and a hunger for revenge.
“Everybody was screaming and there was just some really weird stuff going on at the end of that game,” Harms recalled.
The banners that greeted the Chargers on their late-season, return trip to San Marcos included one reading, “DP has Little to worry about!”
Little’s inspired play led to record-setting totals of 39 points and 33 rebounds.
The Royals all signed the game ball, which included the final score of 102-60. It still holds a place of honor inside the gymnasium’s trophy case, although the names have all since faded away.
“I was in the gym refereeing some boys volleyball, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh! The ball’s still here!’” Harms said. “You could barely read the score on it.”
Little was a man on a mission that night, Menzel said.
“He was the most dogged and aggressive shot-follower I have ever seen,” he said. “He wasn’t so much a pure shooter as he was a physical, won’t-be-denied style of player.
“As soon as a shot left his hand, he pursued the rebound for a put-back. I think that is why he had such impressive double-double stats.”
San Marcos followed up that rout by beating Lompoc 70-62 in its regular-season finale. The victory qualified the Royals for the CIF-Southern Section’s Division AAA playoffs.
Playoff Passion
They shocked Serra High in the first round, 84-74, behind Little’s near triple-double of 24 points, 17 rebounds and nine assists. His playmaking set up big scoring nights for Menzel (19 points), Siegert (18) and Harms (16).
“I remember it fondly,” Menzel said. “I had my best game against a 6-7 leaper (future San José State player Leon Beauchman).”
Menzel would also beat Beauchman in the high jump at the CIF-SS Track and Field finals by clearing 6-7 with fewer misses.
Siegert, however, would not remember the Serra game as fondly. He stepped on an opponent’s foot to suffer a severe ankle injury, rendering him unavailable for the rest of the playoffs.
He had ranked second only to Little in both scoring (11.8 points) and rebounds (7.8) for the Royals that season. His injury left them with a huge void up front for their second-round game against Beverly Hills’ towering, fourth-ranked team.
“They were led by comedian Sid Caesar’s son (Rick), who was reputedly 7-feet tall as a senior,” Menzel said. “I think he was only 6-9, but I was sufficiently psyched out by game time.
“The pressure was on me to guard Caesar and provide some size support for Doug. I ended up getting three fouls in the first three minutes.”
Menzel played only 12 minutes altogether and fouled out less than halfway through the third quarter.
Little, however, hoisted the team onto his broad shoulders. He carried the Royals to a 57-52 lead early in the fourth quarter.
He finished with 36 points and 22 rebounds. Christiansen was San Marcos’ next-highest scorer with eight points.
Beverly Hills, however, got hot enough at the end to pull out a 69-65 victory.
The Normans won all their other playoff games by double-digit margins while capturing the school’s first CIF-SS basketball championship.
Endorsement from an Adversary
Beverly Hills’ coach, however, lobbied for Little when it came time to select the division’s CIF Player of the Year.
“Little is not only the best player in the AAA, and the best we have seen all season,” Chuck Reilly began, “but for my money, he is the best in Southern California.”
He remains one of the few players from a team with a losing record to ever win a CIF division player of the year award.
Little averaged 25.3 points and 19.2 rebounds that season. His Santa Barbara County League average of 28.1 points earned him that conference’s MVP Award.
He put up big numbers at Oregon, as well, after that school hired a hard-nosed taskmaster — former U.S. Marine Corps officer Dick Harter — as its new head coach before Little’s junior season.
“Doug was made for Dick,” teammate Paul Sunderland said in Wither’s book. “He played his ass off.”
Little posted team-high averages of 15.2 points and 8.2 rebounds as a junior during Harter’s first year.
He was joined in the starting lineup the next season by Harter’s first recruiting class: sophomores Ron Lee, Mark Barwig and former Dos Pueblos High star Bruce Coldren.
The nickname “Kamikaze Kids” was coined after Oregon stunned highly ranked Wichita State in its second game of that year. Shockers’ coach Harry Miller complained about the Ducks’ hellbent style of defense, claiming that they were “more aggressive than Kamikaze pilots during World War II.”
Little’s averages of 17.1 points and 6.1 rebounds that season were second-best to Lee’s 18.7 and 6.6.
The former San Marcos star, however, was unquestionably the captain of the Kamikazes.
“He was the role model for the younger ones that came along,” said Rich Bernstein, a junior varsity player who roomed with Lee. “There was no one that he wouldn’t take out.
“He became like a big brother to Ronnie. All you had to do was show Ronnie the path.”
Lee expressed the same appreciation for Little as Christiansen had at San Marcos.
“Doug took me by the hand and showed me the ropes and helped me along,” Lee said. “I wish he could have been there longer.
“He was coach Harter’s type of basketball player. He would go all out. That was the type of player I enjoyed playing with.”
Little scored 28 points in his final collegiate game in a victory over arch-rival Oregon State. It capped a 16-10 season for the Ducks and placed them third behind UCLA and USC in a strong Pac-8 Conference.
Lee, Little’s protégé at Oregon, won NCAA All-America honors two years later before playing six seasons in the NBA. But a 6-3 forward like Little almost always got lost amongst the trees of professional prospects.
Passed Up By the Pros
Little did get selected by the Buffalo Braves — later known as the Los Angeles Clippers — in the fourth round of the 1973 NBA Draft.
He also was chosen by the San Diego Conquistadors in the third round of the American Basketball Association’s supplementary draft.
Both teams took a pass, however. He never played professionally. He eventually turned to a 35-year career as a lumber broker.
Little was in his 50s when he developed diabetes. His kidneys shut down in 2017, just a year after Halleck’s death.
He got dialysis treatments three days a week for the rest of his life. He lost 35 pounds during the first year alone.
Little, however, was hellbent on rejoining his old teammates at San Marcos’ 50-year high school reunion in 2019.
“It was great to reconnect with him,” Siegert said. “I for one will never forget that high school adventure.”
Menzel made a point of also visiting Little in Oregon.
“He went through some grueling health challenges,” he said.
Christiansen’s reconnection had actually occurred a few years earlier, when Halleck died.
“We would try to speak with each other a couple of times a month,” he said. “When he really started going downhill, we tried to make it once a week.
“He was so strong as he battled through his health issues. It was so difficult to see what was happening to our Superman, but he battled right to the very end.”
It reminded him of the last game Little ever played for the Royals, battling big, bad Beverly Hills to the very end.