Former assistant coach Lanny Van Eman remembers the day Wichita State basketball changed.
Van Eman, who played for the Shockers 1958-62, was in the Roundhouse’s basketball office when Dave Stallworth arrived by bus from Dallas to report for his freshman year at the University of Wichita. He carried two small bags and his sneakers over his shoulder.
From that modest beginning came a basketball career that lifted the Shockers into national prominence and set the stage for much of what the program became.
“He had talent and a superstar aura,” Van Eman wrote in a letter read during Friday’s memorial service at Koch Arena.