Cornie Collin

CORNIE COLLIN SNARES HONORS, 1960

CORNIE COLLIN

1952, Argus-Leader, Dick Dozer

South Dakotans agree, with a year to go, [Jim] Iverson might well write the biggest basketball headlines for his home state since Cornie Collin of Huron played with Creighton’s titans in the early 1930’s.

Collin is one of the brightest names in South Dakota basketball history.

As a freshman in 1927, Collin was a member of Huron high school’s state championship team that went to the finals of the national prep tournament in Chicago.  Collin was the only freshman ever selected to the all-national tournament team.  Included in the 1927 Huron lineup was Sam Perrin, later an all-time great at Carleton College who set a national tournament single scoring mark against Lincoln, Neb. in the 1927 tournament, and Percy Washabaugh, now superintendent of schools at Wolsey.

Collin topped off his remarkable prep career by leading Huron’s 1930 team to another state championship in his final year.  By then, however, the national tournament had been abandoned.

The Huron flash enrolled at Creighton University in Omaha when the Bluejays were a power in Midwestern basketball.  His cage deeds there stand as all-time records at Creighton.

He is now head coach at South high school in Omaha, where his record as a tutor closely approaches the fame he won as a competitor in his high school and college days.

Hall of Fame Notes: In 1933 Collin was an All-America selection in basketball after leading the Missouri Valley Conference in scoring.  He was an outstanding ballhandler, once dribbling away the final nine minutes of a win over Syracuse.

He coached many years at Nebraska’s largest high school, Omaha South, coaching football, basketball, and baseball.

At one time he was the only public school coach in Nebraska to have state champion teams in football, basketball, and baseball.