Murry Kinard

By DAVID HAYS
Lander Sports Information

Winning a tournament in Ireland, scoring the winning points to silence a trash talker, playing on some of Hall of Fame Coach Finis Horne’s best teams, and building a foundation toward a career as an attorney are among the reasons why Lander basketball alum Murry Kinard says, “I would not trade my college experience there with anybody else’s college experience.”

Kinard, now 42, practices law at Kinard & Jones, LLC, Attorneys at Law, in his hometown of Lexington, S.C.

From 1986-90, Kinard played on some of Horne’s most successful teams with some of the best players in program history, including Russell Blackmon, Greg Haynes and Chris Spann.

The then Lander College Senators were just 10-18 when Kinard was a freshman, but went 25-6, 26-8 and 23-7 the next three years, twice losing to the College of Charleston for the NAIA District 6 championship that left Lander one win shy of the national tournament.

Kinard was an All-Region player as a senior at Lexington High School, and his most memorable game as a high school player happened to be in the same city where he would play college ball.

“My most memorable game was probably at Greenwood High School my senior year when we played against David Holloway who ended up playing at Anderson College and Ernest Phelps who wound up playing against me at Newberry College,” Kinard remembers.

“I think the final was like 90-80 (Greenwood won) and it was the most points that I ever scored. It was 35 or 38. I don’t remember which. That was before the 3-point shot. There was no 3-point basket in high school basketball back then.”

Kinard also played AAU basketball in the Columbia area and was noticed by Horne’s assistant coach W.C. “Red” Myers, who was a former Erskine College head coach and a member of the South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame.

“Coach Red Myers came to one of the AAU practices and asked if I would be interested in coming up (to Lander) for a visit,” Kinard says. “This would have been the spring of my senior year. I said, ‘yes.” I enjoyed what I saw and the people that I met.

“I just wanted to keep playing basketball, and they offered me an opportunity. They were going to pay for everything and I said, ‘I am in.’”

Kinard says he drew some interest from Newberry College and from some small schools in North Carolina.

“I had been accepted to go to Clemson as a student. But I got a chance to go to Lander and keep playing,” he says.

The Senators struggled during Kinard’s freshman year, winning only 10 games. But the next recruiting class brought in Blackmon and Spann, and Haynes followed the next season.

“Russell (Blackmon) was easily the best player during the time that I was there,” Kinard says of the standout point guard who still holds the school record for most points in a season (672 points in 1988-89). “He did so many things that made it so much easier for everybody.

“At one point during my senior year, I was shooting maybe 58, 59 percent from the floor and I remember saying during an interview with The Index-Journal that ‘it’s not hard because Russell penetrates and draws people to him and I get wide open looks with nobody in my face. I ought to make those shots.’ Russell was just dynamic.”

Spann was only at Lander for one season, but was a big presence in the post. He averaged 17.5 points per game and shot 54 percent from the floor.

“Chris Spann had an uncanny ability to get to the free-throw line. He was a big, strong guy who could score around the basket,” Kinard says.

Haynes was an explosive wing whose best season was 1989-90, when he averaged 23.5 points per game, second in program history to James King’s 23.7 points per game in 1974-75.

“There were three left-handers that I played with who had the smoothest strokes,” Kinard says. “Derrick Galloway was one and his nickname was ‘Silk.’ Greg was another and the third was Rob Pittser. Greg just looked like he was going through the motions. And you would look up and he would have 26 points.”

Another standout was Rohn Mulkey, a North Florida Junior College transfer who, like Spann, played for only one season.

“Rohn was 6-foot-5, was unbelievably strong and could shoot it from the perimeter,” Kinard recalls. “He could flat out play.”

While Lander fell one game shy of the district championship during Kinard’s sophomore and junior years, his senior season started out very promising for him and the team.

In November 1989, the Senators won the Roy Curtis Invitational Tournament in Ireland.

“The whole experience in Ireland was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Kinard remembers fondly. “We were like rock stars. Everywhere we went, they wanted our autographs. We played professional teams from Russia and Sweden and somehow wound up winning that tournament.”

As a member of the winning team, each player won a Waterford Crystal piece. Kinard has his in their home’s china cabinet.

“It’s the one piece of hardware that I got in athletics that I will cherish and hold on to for the rest of my life,” he says.

Lander also won a tournament at Trevecca Nazarene in Nashville, Tenn., and was among the favorites to win the district, especially since the College of Charleston moved up to a new division.

But six players were ruled academically ineligible over Christmas break. The Senators started the season off at 16-2 and wound up 23-7. They did not play for the district championship.

“We really had a chance to do something special that year,” Kinard believes. “You reflect back and think how good we could have been.”

Personally, it was a good year for Kinard.

“I had a really good preseason. Fortunately, I kept shooting well and had a really good year. I probably averaged 15, 16 per game my senior year. Greg (Haynes) drew a lot of attention and I had a lot of opportunities to score.”

The loss of six ineligible players also pushed Kinard’s roommate Derrick Bell into action for the first time.

“He did not play at all as a freshman and sophomore, and all of the sudden Derrick is the starting point guard,” Kinard remembers, with a laugh.

But Bell, as did the rest of the team, made the best of the situation and recorded 194 assists that year, fifth most in program history.

Kinard, who once beat Spring Valley with a game-winning layup at the buzzer in high school, does have a heroic memory at Lander. The Senators were playing High Point in a tournament at Francis Marion during his junior year. High Point was led by North Carolina State transfer Kenny Drummond, a standout point guard.

“Kenny Drummond and Russell (Blackmon) had a war that night,” Kinard says. “They were ACC level point guards. Russell fouled out with maybe 30, 40 seconds to go. I remember when Russell fouled out, Coach Horne looked at Coach Myers and said, ‘what are we going to do now, Coach?’ Coach Myers looked back at him and said, ‘we don’t have a choice. We’ve got to put Murray in!’”

It was a story that Kinard told at Lander’s 40th anniversary basketball celebration in 2008 that drew a lot of good-natured laughing.

“So I went in, and ended up getting fouled with less than five seconds to play. Kenny Drummond was telling me how scared that I must be, and said some other not too nice things,” Kinard recalls, while laughing.

“I end up making both ends of the one-and-one, and we won by a point (90-89).”

Kinard looks back at a lot of victories and his own personal achievements, but he is most proud of playing for Coach Horne, who was elected into the S.C. Athletic Hall of Fame in 2011. He will be inducted in May.

“The older I get, the more I appreciate Coach Horne,” Kinard says. “The thing that I look back at with Coach Horne is what a huge heart he had. He felt like if he could get somebody into the program, he could save them. No matter what their background was or where they came from, if he could get them into school, they would get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get a degree and make something of their lives. And he wanted that for all of us.

“He always told us we weren’t going to get to play basketball forever. We needed to make something of ourselves.”

Kinard played his games at the Greenwood Civic Center. But Lander would eventually move into the Finis Horne Arena in 1993.

“I remember Coach with a set of blueprints. He would take these blueprints on the bus. And, of course, they were the blueprints for the new arena. He was so proud of that new arena,” Kinard says.

Kinard says Horne is very deserving of state Hall of Fame recognition.

“I am surprised that it has taken this long for Coach Horne to get elected,” he says. “Coach Horne is an icon. He is one of the legends of small college basketball in South Carolina. And he came from Kentucky (in 1968) and creates the program. They would practice at the YMCA and things like that. And to see the heights that he brought the program and the new arena. I can’t think of anyone more in this state more deserving.”

Kinard appreciates what Horne did for him and his teammates now more than ever.

“He took care of every little detail whether it was ordering Dixie cheeseburgers or taking us to the Ranch (restaurant). I look back now at what I didn’t appreciate when I was 18, 19, 20 years old. He took care of everything. He ran the program.”

Kinard says small college basketball isn’t the same now as it was when Horne was in his heyday, when USC Spartanburg and College of Charleston won NAIA national championships, and Lander was competing for district titles, when games against Erskine, Presbyterian, Newberry and Limestone colleges meant something.

“To me, Coach Horne is small college basketball in this state. One of the things that I hate about where basketball is going is the feeling that these schools have to transfer to Division I.

“Growing up in South Carolina, even before I went to Lander, I remember waking up every morning and looking at the State newspaper for the NAIA standings. It was Coastal Carolina, Winthrop, Wofford, Presbyterian and College of Charleston, all these schools who have gone on to Division I.

“From a financial standpoint, it clearly is (better). But what it takes away from is the great rivalries that small colleges had in South Carolina. I can still see Coach Myers being nervous going back to Erskine. It meant so much to him, and it (playing Erskine) meant so much to us.”

Kinard graduated from Lander in 1990 with a degree in Political Science.

“I went (to Lander) with the idea that I would major in math and that I would coach basketball. I did that (major) for a year, and I decided teaching wasn’t what I wanted to do,” he recalls. “I decided over the summer after my freshman year that I wanted to go to law school.”

Kinard credits former Lander President Larry Jackson in helping him in his successful quest to go to law school at the University of South Carolina.

“President Larry Jackson wrote a letter of recommendation for me to go to law school. How lucky was I to have the president of Lander College write a letter of recommendation for me?

“The only reason President Jackson knew who I was is because I played basketball. He and Mrs. Jackson would come to all the home games and go to a lot of the away games. The degree in political science gave me some preparation, but a lot of it is the people you get to know and the connections that you make.”

Kinard took the LSAT (Law School Admission Council) test the weekend that Hurricane Hugo hit in September 1989, and was accepted into law school during his senior year at Lander.

Kinard nearly wound up practicing law in Greenwood but went back home to Lexington.

“I was really close to staying in Greenwood,” Kinard says. “I clerked for Judge (Thomas) Hughston in Greenwood for a year. I got to know several of the lawyers in Greenwood and was actually offered an opportunity to stay in Greenwood. Greenwood and Lexington are a lot alike, both small towns, but not too small. But I wanted to come back to where I grew up.”

Kinard practiced law with former Newberry College basketball player Billy Walker at the Walker, Morgan & Kinard firm in the Columbia area for approximately a decade, but decided he wanted to go out on his own.

The wife of former Presbyterian College star Bret Jones, Ashby Jones, had the same interest. The two would start the Kinard & Jones firm in Lexington.

“I told her we will give it a shot and see what happens. Seven years later, things are still going well. It was just something that evolved over time.”

His areas of practice have included personal injury, wrongful death, workers’ compensation, workplace injuries, real estate, and criminal law.

Kinard and his wife Amy Fitzsimmons Kinard, who is also a Lander graduate and a registered nurse, have three children, son Harrison (age 13, eighth grade) and daughters Bryce (12, sixth grade) and Ellie (8, second grade). They all play basketball, and Harrison played on the middle school team.

They live on Lake Murray and Kinard’s parents also live on the property.

“To me, this is Heaven,” he says.

Kinard says he doesn’t get back to Lander “as often as I would like. The girls are playing basketball and soccer, and Harrison is playing basketball and baseball. Like other families, we are at three different places. But I stay in touch with (former Lander teammates) Rohn Mulkey in Charlotte, and Maurice Walker is here in Columbia, and occasionally Tim Faulhaber who is in Spartanburg.

“I would love to talk to Russell (Blackmon) and Chris Spann and Greg (Haynes). The one (teammate) that I really miss is Dale Fleming. We were the only two of that class who stayed and graduated. If I could run somebody off Dale’s screen, they didn’t come with me, and I had an open shot. They just stopped when they ran into Dale. He was 6-foot-4, probably weighed 240 pounds, and was built like a rock. He passed away a couple of years ago.”

Kinard said he might attend Horne’s Hall of Fame induction in Columbia, and that Lander is never far from his mind. As he says he often tells his children, “I would not trade my college experience there with anybody else’s college experience.”