Year graduated
1952
Major accomplishments
Received Trester Award for mental attitude; Named Mr. Basketball; On the IHSAA Silver Anniversary team in 1977; Indiana Basketball Hall of Famer; Indianapolis Public Schools Hall of Famer
As Joe Sexson, 72, sat in the home west of Zionsville, Indiana, which he shares with his wife of 53 years, Donna, he laughed often while describing what happened during a basketball game at Kokomo his senior year at Tech, a game won by the Wildkats.
“They didn’t care much for me up there,” said Sexson. “They had a very good team. In fact, they and Muncie Central were the two best teams we played all year. At the time, I was the guy at Tech, and we were in the North Central Conference at the same time.
“I’ll tell you how rabid [the fans] were. My grandmother hardly went to any games, but she went to that one. A person was getting after me, I guess, and she finally hit him on the head, I think, with her purse.” Sexson laughed uproariously, then added, “If you knew my grandmother, you’d know she never did that. So it must have been pretty bad. But I think they were just rabid fans. After the game, here’s how bad they were from that standpoint, and it didn’t bother me at all. Some little kid, which I’ve always liked young kids, came up to me. His mother came up and said, £Come here, honey, get away from him, he’ll grab you or he’ll take you away. Yeah, he’ll steal you,’ or something.”
That game might have triggered the telegram sent from Kokomo to the late IHSAA commissioner, L.V. Phillips, protesting the selection of Sexson for the Trester Award. Kokomo school officials and student body representatives later sent apologies to the IHSAA and Sexson.
“I don’t know that I did anything to cause them to feel that way,” said Sexson, “but there must have been a group or it might gave been one guy who wrote in. I don’t know.” Sexson says it didn’t detract from his award.
Sports weren’t specialized the way they are today when Sexson was growing up on Indianapolis’ south side. He earned 13 letters at Tech: four in baseball and three each in football, basketball and track. In baseball, Sexson played the outfield and shortstop, in football left halfback and on defense, in basketball center at 6-foot-3, and in track he ran the 100 and 220.
“My track coach, Paul Myers, wanted me to give up the other sports and concentrate on track,” said Sexson. “He thought I could be an Olympian, but I didn’t do it. I just wanted to keep having a good time playing all the other sports.”
Sexson remembers a football game against Richmond when the Red Devils had Lamar Lundy, Jimmy Peters, and Dick Murley, all of whom went to Purdue. “We ran a fake reverse,” said Sexson. “They centered the ball to me, and I took it toward the right halfback, faked it to him, then was going around end. And there was Lundy. Needless to say, he swallowed me up.”
As a sophomore, Sexson’s Tech basketball team “ran into Spence Schnaitter and the Madison state champs. Madison beat us, 55-46, in the semifinals. In ‘52 we got beat in the final game by Danny Thornburg and the Muncie Bearcats,” when the North Central Conference “was very good. Tech is no longer in that conference.”
That loss was a big disappointment, says Sexson. “You get to the final game you want to win the state championship. But [the Bearcats] were just too quick for us and too good. In fact, they had beaten us 19 during the regular season, then 19 again in the final game.”
Receiving the Trester Award for mental attitude and being named Mr. Basketball for the Indiana All-Star team were very meaningful to Sexson. He does think “the Trester Award has been watered down now. We have a Trester Award in every division in basketball, but I am sure it means a whole lot to each young man.”
Of the chance for small-town teams to stand on the winners’ stand in class basketball, Sexson says, “I think it’s wonderful for those young kids in the different classes, very honestly. The reason I think that is because of everything I’ve read, and everything I see now when I see the championship games. Those kids are so excited and feel so good about winning.”
After leaving Tech, Sexson talked to several Big Ten schools. He made a visit to Indiana, and spent the weekend with Dick Farley, a member of the Hoosiers’ 1953 NCAA championship team. He even pledged a fraternity.
“But after I thought about it, I felt Purdue gave me the best opportunity to play earlier,” said Sexson. “That’s the reason I went to Purdue.”
Sexson went out for football as a Boilermaker freshman, but he wasn’t allowed to practice until he had a hernia repaired. Sexson decided to leave the gridiron and concentrate on basketball and baseball.
“My years at Purdue were just great,” he said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t win any championships. I got to travel a lot, and we played in the Big Ten, which was very competitive.” Sexson set a career scoring record of 1,095 points in basketball that has been broken several times since (the career record of 2,323 is now held by Rick Mount).
On the day Sexson graduated from Purdue, he and Donna flew to Detroit to work out for the Tigers. While there, he hit a baseball out of the old Tiger Stadium. The Tigers wanted to sign him to a contract, but he says he didn’t have a strong enough arm. “I was gonna have to be a first baseman. I assume that’s why they wanted to start me real low. At that time they weren’t paying that much, and I didn’t see any future there.” Sexson was also drafted by the NBA’s Knicks, but never went to New York.
Instead, he took a job coaching and teaching at Southwestern High School, a new consolidation near Lafayette, Indiana. He was there a year, then spent two years coaching and teaching at Scecina High School in Indianapolis. From there, Sexson returned to his alma mater, and spent 18 years as assistant basketball coach and head baseball coach.
Purdue finished runner-up to UCLA in the 1969 NCAA basketball tournament, and won the NIT in 1974 when Sexson was on the staff. “We had Terry Dischinger, along with Rick Mount, and they were probably the outstanding players at the time I was there, along with Frank Kendrick. Frank was really hot at the time we won the NIT.”
After the 1976-77 college basketball season, Sexson got a phone call from Bill Sylvester, Butler athletic director. “He was looking for a coach,” said Sexson, “and it didn’t look like I was going to get to be the head coach at Purdue, so I went to Butler and had 12 great years.”
Sexson was 143-188 with the Bulldogs, the Indiana Collegiate Conference coach of the year in 1978, and Midwestern Collegiate Conference coach of the year in 1984. Sexson’s 1984-85 team (19-10) played Indiana in the NIT at Bloomington. IU won, 79-57.
“Bobby Knight was very nice,” said Sexson. Laughing, he added, “Of course, he beat us. I loved the kids on our team and was looking forward to going to IU to play that game, until I found out that every one of the kids that was playing for me had wanted to go to IU”
“Chad Tucker was the best all-around player I had at Butler,” said Sexson. “Darrin Fitzgerald, [NCAA record-holder for three-pointers in a season with 158 in 1986-87], was the best shooter I had. I never thought in coaching I would set blocks out that high for a guy to shoot the ball. But he could shoot that three-pointer from a mile away.”
After leaving Butler in 1989, Sexson and Donna, also a Tech graduate, bought the Big Pine golf course in Attica, Indiana. They kept it five years, then retired. The couple has three sons and nine grandchildren.