Overview:
Ralph Barkey posted a win-loss record of 169-144 while coaching seven players who were drafted by the NBA
UC Santa Barbara’s campus was mostly a bland collection of military barracks when Ralph Barkey, the resolute son of a rodeo cowboy, enrolled there in 1955.
The mesa-top site had opened just one year earlier after its conversion from a Marine Corps Air Station during World War II.
It took several odd twists of fate to bring Barkey — an All-America, schoolboy star from Laramie, Wyoming — to this seaside, diamond in the rough.
His two-plus decades of toil in grinding through the obstacles faced by the budding university would harness the Gauchos for their rise into the dog-eat-dog world of NCAA Division I basketball.
Barkey, who died Jan. 23 at the age of 89, was recognized for the indelible mark he left on UCSB by his separate, Hall of Fame inductions as a player and coach.
And he got there the right way, by selling the school instead of buying the players.
One of the game’s greatest innovators, former Cal coach Pete Newell, recognized Barkey’s fairly humorless, Dudley Do-Right approach to the job when asked to describe his one-time adversary.
“Ralph is a sincere, honest man of principle,” he replied.
Tough Childhood
Sports were an escape for the young Ralph Ralston Barkey.
He was born in Sheridan, Wyoming, the youngest of eight children, during the height of the Great Depression.
His mother, Vivian Marie Barkey, died when he was only 7. His father, Rueben Ralston Barkey, rarely came round.
He spent most of his time chasing the professional rodeo tour.
John Barkey, one of Ralph’s two children, said those tough circumstances pitted his father in “a fight with depression his entire life.”
“He was thrown around five different sisters in Wyoming who all loved him, but they also had their own lives,” he said. “His childhood was tough.”
Barkey eventually settled in Laramie with his sister, Doris, who was nearly 10 years his senior.
He caught the eyes of college recruiters while playing both football and basketball for the Laramie High School Plainsmen during his senior year of 1952-1953.
He accepted Arizona State’s offer of a scholarship, but reached another one of life’s detours upon his arrival in Tempe.
“Arizona State had just gotten penalized for recruiting violations,” John said. “When he got there, they told him, ‘Sorry, but there’s no scholarship for you now.’
“He had to scramble to find someplace else and ended up at a junior college in Bakersfield.”
It became a serendipitous twist of fate for Barkey when he fell in love with the school’s homecoming queen, the former Diane Peery.
She transferred to UCLA and began a promising dance and theater career.
She took several professional modeling gigs, appeared in two films, and even got an audition with the Don Arden Dance Review at Hollywood’s Moulin Rouge.
She gave it all up, however, when a sophomore basketball star asked her to join him as his wife at UCSB. A year after their marriage in 1956, the Barkeys gave birth to their first child, daughter Leslye.
“My mom was the story of his life,” John said. “He had a lot of difficulty after she passed away in 2011.”
Family became the major factor in every decision Ralph Barkey would make.
Coach Wooden’s Offer
The subject of mathematics was another.
Barkey, who earned All-Southern California Junior College honors at Bakersfield, caught UCLA’s eye when he outplayed one of their top recruits during a tournament in Pasadena.
“The next week he got a call from John Wooden,” John Barkey said. “He told him, ‘Hey Ralph, we’d really like you to come to UCLA … I’m offering you that chance right now.’”
The caveat was that he needed to take a math class to pass muster with UCLA’s admissions office.
“Wooden told him, ‘We just need you to go to a junior college this summer and then we’re all set,’” John Barkey said.
“But my dad just hated math, so he said, ‘Coach, I’m really sorry, but I can’t do that … I can’t take that class.’”
UCSB coach Willie Wilton wasn’t sorry. He offered him a spot on the Gaucho roster and Barkey accepted.
He won a game during his sophomore year by making a 35-foot shot at the final buzzer.
As a junior, he scored 30 points to beat Cal State Los Angeles — a school record for a California Collegiate Athletic Association game.
He set another school record as a senior by making 84.2% of his free throws (80-for-95).
Barkey made the All-CCAA First Team that year and received honorable mention on the NCAA Small College All-America team.
The Gauchos had big ambitions but still the markings of small-college athletics.
They played their games in the cramped confines of the National Guard Armory gymnasium on East Canon Perdido Street.
A nine-mile drive into town on a road not yet a freeway was required for any student wishing to cheer on the Gauchos.
But Art Gallon, Wilton’s successor as coach, had great visions for the Gaucho program when he brought Barkey aboard to coach the freshman team following his graduation in 1958.
Robertson Gym, a state-of-art facility with a spring-loaded floor, made its bouncy debut the following year.
Newell brought his NCAA champion Cal Bears to campus for the gym’s first game in the fall of 1959.
Whistle Stops
Barkey went to the College of San Mateo in 1960 to prove his head-coaching chops. He turned the perennial loser into a 22-9 powerhouse by his second season.
Gallon brought him back on staff as his top assistant in the 1962-1963 season — just one year before the Gauchos’ entrance to the Division I world as a member of the West Coast Conference.
Barkey took over as head coach four years later, in 1966-1967 … and this time accepted Wooden’s offer to come to UCLA.
The NCAA champion Bruins of Lew Alcindor and Lucius Allen — described by super-scout Bill Bertka as “the finest looking collegiate team I’ve ever seen” — greeted him with a 119-75 shellacking.
It remains the highest score ever allowed by the Gauchos.
But Barkey never backed down, visiting Pauley Pavilion seven times during his 12 seasons as UCSB’s coach.
“There was a lot of connectivity between Wooden and my dad over the years,” John Barkey said.
The Gauchos posted a 17-9 record in just his third season as head coach in 1968-1969.
They knocked off 13th-ranked Seattle at Rob Gym the following season in a 105-98 overtime thriller.
Three days later they traveled to Stanford to log a 67-62, upset win.
The Gauchos also gave UCLA better games in January 1970 (89-80) and January 1971 (74-61) with the one-two punch of UCSB Hall of Famers Doug Rex and John Tschogl.
Barkey reflected upon those years — an era of obstacles both financial and cultural — after Rex died in October 2022.
“There were only two scholarship athletes on that team that beat Memphis State and several others, and that was Doug and John Tschogl,” he said.
“Ronnie Allen and Bob Schachter were recruited but not with scholarships, and Earl Frazier was on government-funded educational expenses.”
Barkey also had to cope with how the Vietnam War demonstrations and rioting in the student community of Isla Vista affected the parents of Gaucho recruits.
“I would meet with my assistants every morning and discuss how our recruiting calls went the previous night,” coach Barkey said. “Their answer: ‘Coach, they are hanging up on us.’”
The Gauchos were nevertheless in the running for a superstar from La Mesa Helix High’s Class of 1970. He opted instead to become one of the greatest players in UCLA history.
“My father recruited Bill Walton real heavily and, according to him, UCSB was his second choice,” John Barkey said.
“He was a California beach kid and really loved my dad.”
Glory Days
UCSB’s 1970-1971 team still posted a sterling win-loss record of 20-6.
Those Gauchos put together a nine-game winning streak that included the signature, 85-81 victory over Gene Bartow’s powerhouse Memphis team.
They suffered their only two defeats in the Pacific Coast Athletic Association, now known as the Big West Conference, to coach Jerry Tarkanian’s 19th-ranked Long Beach State team.
The 49ers advanced to the NCAA West Regional final before losing to UCLA while the Gauchos had to stay home.
Only league champions received NCAA Tournament bids in those days.
“Long Beach went after my dad super-aggressively after Tarkanian bailed (to take the UNLV coaching job in 1973),” said John Barkey. “There were several other schools, too.
“He actually accepted the job at the University of Pacific and ended up retracting the next day.
“He felt horrible, but at the end of the day decided that staying at UCSB was better for the family. He did love the community.”
Barkey also convinced UCSB’s administration to increase the number of basketball scholarships from two to eight.
“I used them on Don Ford — a very good decision — John Service, Jeff Lipscomb, Richard Ridgway and Tom Flavin,” Barkey said.
Ford in His Future
Ford, a 6-foot-9 forward from Santa Barbara High School, set a school scoring record with his 19.6-point average during the 1974-1975 season. That average still ranks in the UCSB Top 10.
He set another record of 37 points — now tied for fifth in the Gaucho history books — during the season finale against Portland.
Ford made 17-of-22 shots in a performance that rendered Barkey “emotional,” according to Santa Barbara News-Press sportswriter John Nadel.
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin in describing this finish,” he quoted Barkey as saying. “It was just a sensational performance in all aspects … He is so deserving of the records he broke tonight.
“I just hope it’s not his last home game for us.”
The Gauchos hoped to receive one of the at-large bids which the NCAA had started awarding for its postseason tournament the previous year.
They went 18-8 that season as an independent, having been temporarily banished from the PCAA for dropping the sport of football.
They also had an 89-71 win over Oklahoma to their credit.
It was not enough, however, to convince the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee.
But Barkey appeared more bothered when Ford, who was NBA draft-eligible as a redshirt junior transfer, wasn’t picked until the sixth round by the Los Angeles Lakers.
“It was a depressing and somewhat shocking thing to me for two reasons,” Barkey told Nadel. “It was utterly absurd that nobody picked up such an obviously talented player before that, and it reflected on our program.
“A player who had had such a tremendous individual year for us and we as a team had the fifth-best record on the West Coast … and then to have him snubbed for five rounds.”
Ford worked out with the Lakers several times before informing them that he would be returning to UCSB for his senior year.
Barkey intervened, however, by meeting with both Newell, the Lakers’ general manager at the time, and coach Bill Sharman during a Summer Pro Basketball League game in Los Angeles.
The team had been working out Ford as a center instead of his usual position as a stretch forward.
“My strongest comment to Newell and Sharman was, ‘If this guy isn’t an NBA forward, I’ll never see one,’” Barkey said.
The Lakers took heed and asked Ford to return for further evaluation.
“I went back and played very well,” said Ford, who signed a lucrative contract with the club just a few days later.
Chick Hearn, the team’s play-by-play broadcaster as well as an assistant GM, told Nadel that, “In my 15 years in the league, his contract is by far the richest ever offered any player who was drafted lower than the first two rounds.”
Ford publicly thanked Barkey for being “a great influence throughout this entire affair.”
“He spoke to Newell and coach Sharman on my behalf, and I think that had a tremendous effect,” he said.
“He helped my style of play and I feel I was able to put all of my talents together under his coaching.”
Ford would play in the NBA for seven years.
Administrative Decision
Seven of Barkey’s Gauchos were drafted by the NBA: Dick Kolberg in 1967, Steve Rippe in 1969, Rex in 1971, Tschogl in 1972, Clarence Allen in 1974, Ford in 1975 and John Service in 1976.
But Al Negratti, who was hired as the Gauchos’ athletic director in 1973, ended Barkey’s reign in 1978 after only his second losing season in eight years.
Negratti purged UCSB of the majority of its coaches at that time: nine during a 30-month period, according to Barkey’s count.
“My dad kind of helped him get the job,” John Barkey said. “But after just two losing years, Negratti came in and said, ‘OK, that’s it … You’re done.’
“That was really devastating for my dad. It was tough because it’s really tough to get up to the highest levels and he had gotten it up to those levels for years.”
His father made the transition into the administrative side of athletics, serving in positions at Cal State Fullerton and UC Irvine before starting a 16-year stint as Sonoma State’s athletic director in 1981.
Barkey was widely credited for reviving a financially troubled program that had discontinued athletics from 1974 to 1978.
The Cossacks thrived during his tenure, reaching national prominence in several sports. Sonoma State inducted him into its Hall of Fame shortly after his retirement in January 1997.
Sonoma State, ironically enough, dropped all of its sports programs again last month.
Barkey died the next day.
His legacy will endure, however. It tips off each November at UCSB’s Thunderdome.
