There is a small fraternity of Indiana high school basketball players who can claim the feat of winning IndyStar Mr. Basketball and a state championship.
Phil Cox was among those in that prestigious circle. Cox, the 1972 Mr. Basketball and state champion at Connersville, diedTuesday in Kokomo, his hometown since the mid-1980s. According to those close to Cox, he had been battling health issues in recent months. He was 64.
“The thing I always come back to with Phil was the way he related to people,” said former Connersville and Kokomo coach Basil Mawbey. “There was nobody better. He built a legacy that will never be forgotten.”
Even among the small circle of those who can claim the Mr. Basketball and state champion double, Cox was unique. During Connersville’s state championship season, Cox sang the national anthem before home games. When then-Indiana High School Athletic Association commissioner Phil Eskew heard Cox sing the anthem at the semistate at Hinkle Fieldhouse, he asked Cox to sing again at the state finals at Assembly Hall in Bloomington
Cox agreed. In front of more than 17,000 fans, he sang the anthem and then led Connersville to its first state championship with an 80-63 win over Gary West.
“(Singing) could have been his profession,” Mawbey said. “How many people can say they were Mr. Basketball, a state champion and sang the national anthem before their championship game?”
Cox sang the national anthem for years, as recently as three weeks ago when Kokomo hosted Zionsville in the sectional baseball championship game. Since joining Mawbey’s staff at Kokomo in 1986, Cox impacted a hundreds of young athletes. Donnie Bowling, a 1993 Kokomo graduate, was one of these.
“One thing people probably forget now is that he was the first black varsity assistant at Kokomo,” Bowling said. “So that was a big deal for a kid like me to see somebody who looked like me who was a coach. One of the things that you never forget was that he was always so upbeat when he saw you. He would yell out your name and you knew who it was. He was just always around. Some coaches, you wouldn’t see them out in the community but he was everywhere.”
At Connersville, the 6-5 Cox scored 1,301 points and had 905 rebounds. He spent one year at Butler, where averaged 8.8 points per game, before transferring to then-NAIA Gardner-Webb and playing from 1976-78. He was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009.
Cox returned to Connersville to coach in Mawbey’s system in 1982 as an eighth-grade coach. “He was a great helper to me,” Mawbey said. “He would scrimmage against my players in open gym.” Connersville went on to win another state championship in 1983.
Mawbey did not have any assistants coming with him when he took the Kokomo job. The superintendent saw Cox working with kids at Mawbey’s summer camp and hired him as an attendance coordinator, a position he held for more than three decades. As the years ticked by, Cox became as much associated with Kokomo as Connersville.
“If there is anybody who had two hometowns, it was Phil Cox,” said Charlie Hall, a Kokomo native who worked on Mawbey’s staff with Cox. “I sent out a group text to about 15 or 20 people (Tuesday) and almost everybody came back with the response that ‘he was one of us.’ He could relate to anybody and connect to anybody. Race, gender, age —it didn’t matter. When Phil walked in a room, it would light up.”
As the basketball coaches changed through the years, Cox remained a constant as an assistant coach. He worked with post players, including 1995 graduate Jason Snyder.
“He was truly a bigger than life personality,” Snyder said. “There are people who have a presence and stand out —that was him. When I was a kid at basketball camp, we would all line up on that line and want to be just like coach Cox. I was fortunate enough to learn a lot of skills from him.”
When Fishers coach Matthew Moore coached at Kokomo from 2014-17, his staff nicknamed Cox “Hoff” for his Hall of Fame status. The team visited the Hall of Fame in New Castle one day to watch the 1972 Connersville-Gary West championship game.
“I think that was a proud moment for him,” Moore said. “There is a whole generation of players who probably didn’t really fully understand what he accomplished as a player. But more than that, he was a special person. He brought enthusiasm to work every day. I try to emphasize with my players that your job is to add value to the program. I have not been around many who have added value the way Phil Cox did.”
Snyder, who was the Kokomo athletic director until taking an elementary principal job in the system in May, had a meeting with a sports apparel salesman at the school recently. When the salesman mentioned his hometown was Connersville, Snyder mentioned Cox worked at the school.
“His eyes got big like he was a little kid,” Snyder said with a laugh. “He said, ‘Phil Cox is here in this building? Can I meet him?’ That made his day.”
Cox’s widow, Darlene, and family are still working out the details for his arrangements.
Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6644.
