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"Ex-Maroon (Scott) Thompson has persevered over rocky road" - Quad-City Times
By Don Doxsie
Posted: Apr 25, 2020
"As an elementary school kid in Moline in the 1960s, Scott Thompson pretty much lived at Wharton Field House. If he wasn’t watching his father’s Moline High School basketball teams play in front of overflow crowds in the old arena, he was pedaling his bicycle down the street to shoot baskets there or to just hang out while the Maroons practiced.
He couldn’t have imagined then where it would take him. Thompson ended up being an all-state basketball player at Moline and an All-Big Ten player at Iowa, spent nearly a quarter century coaching basketball at six universities and then enjoyed a highly successful third career in which he has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research and medical facilities....
That made Thompson an even hotter commodity on the coaching market and although he liked Rice, he accepted an offer to become the head coach at Wichita State. Thompson recalled how the Shockers had defeated Iowa on their home floor in the opening round of the 1981 NCAA tournament, but the program had fallen into disrepair in the years since. Within his first two years on the job, the university changed presidents a couple of times and went through three athletic directors. "It was just unstable at the time and I just couldn’t get it turned," Thompson said.
After four straight losing seasons, he was fired but quickly caught on as the head coach at Cornell in the Ivy League. It was another situation where his team was in the shadow of more powerful and established programs in its conference.
“I wouldn’t trade the experience I had at Wichita or at Cornell,’’ he said. “I wouldn’t trade those experiences. You met great people.’’..."
By Don Doxsie
Posted: Apr 25, 2020
"As an elementary school kid in Moline in the 1960s, Scott Thompson pretty much lived at Wharton Field House. If he wasn’t watching his father’s Moline High School basketball teams play in front of overflow crowds in the old arena, he was pedaling his bicycle down the street to shoot baskets there or to just hang out while the Maroons practiced.
He couldn’t have imagined then where it would take him. Thompson ended up being an all-state basketball player at Moline and an All-Big Ten player at Iowa, spent nearly a quarter century coaching basketball at six universities and then enjoyed a highly successful third career in which he has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research and medical facilities....
That made Thompson an even hotter commodity on the coaching market and although he liked Rice, he accepted an offer to become the head coach at Wichita State. Thompson recalled how the Shockers had defeated Iowa on their home floor in the opening round of the 1981 NCAA tournament, but the program had fallen into disrepair in the years since. Within his first two years on the job, the university changed presidents a couple of times and went through three athletic directors. "It was just unstable at the time and I just couldn’t get it turned," Thompson said.
After four straight losing seasons, he was fired but quickly caught on as the head coach at Cornell in the Ivy League. It was another situation where his team was in the shadow of more powerful and established programs in its conference.
“I wouldn’t trade the experience I had at Wichita or at Cornell,’’ he said. “I wouldn’t trade those experiences. You met great people.’’..."
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