No Tall Tale, This Big Country 7-Footer Bryant Reeves Puts Tiny Gans, Okla., On Ncaa Basketball Map

One stop sign. One general store. One school. One part-time police officer. It takes just one mile to get through Gans, home of one 7-foot center who in these parts has become a legend.

In any other town, Oklahoma State’s Bryant Reeves might have made the folks back home proud - Big Eight player of the year as a sophomore, first team AllBig Eight three straight years and now a berth in the Final Four.

Reeves did more than that: He put Gans on the map.

“People never would have known where it was,” school superintendent Charles Ballard said Tuesday. “But anyone who follows college basketball knows about Bryant Reeves, and anyone who knows about Bryant Reeves knows about Gans.”

Gans, population 218, is located 15 miles west of the Arkansas border. Most residents either raise cattle or, like Reeves’ father, work in Fort Smith, Ark.

The high school has about 280 students and for years had just one sport until baseball was added this year. Drivers in pickup trucks wave at everyone they pass.

The community is so tight that Reeves once rejected suggestions that he move to a bigger school to improve his chances of playing major-college basketball.

“Bryant didn’t want to,” said his mother, Carolyn, a teacher’s aide. “He said this was his home. And they found him.”

Indiana coach Bob Knight came to Gans, and so did Eddie Sutton from Oklahoma State. Tom Kennedy remembers “a large crowd - about 30” turning out for Sutton’s visit.

“We had a big supper and he talked about Bryant, how he wanted to take him up there to Stillwater and see what he could do,” said Kennedy, who lives a few houses down from Reeves’ grandmother. “Ol’ Sutton had some faith. Bryant was awkward because he was growing so fast. But coach Sutton knew more than the rest of us.”

Reeves indeed was a project at Oklahoma State. Sutton said he had hoped Reeves could contribute by the time he was a sophomore.

But Reeves was starting as a freshman and was Big Eight player of the year the next season. As a junior, he hit a halfcourt shot at the buzzer to send a game against Missouri into overtime. He set a school record with 20 rebounds, along with 30 points, in a win over Kansas this year.

Big Country kept getting bigger.

“His whole career has been like a fairy tale,” said Carolyn Reeves, who flew on an airplane for the first time when the family traveled to Baltimore for East regional wins over Drexel and Alabama. “I never dreamed he would get this far.” The townsfolk, aware that Reeves had potential because of his size alone, also admit being a little surprised at how much he has developed. Frank Anglen held his hand to knee level to show how long he’s known Reeves, then gradually raised his hand as high as he can.

Anglen pointed beyond his house to a slab of concrete in a field where Reeves once played - it was the only basketball court in town besides the high school gym. Sutton and his assistants once urged Reeves to go to the “big city” to find off-season competition and hone his game. Reeves went to Sallisaw.

“He couldn’t play with anyone around here,” Anglen said. “But everyone knew from the time he was a teenager that he was going to play, because he started growing and kept growing.”

For those who know him, Big Country is still Bryant. He still calls men “sir” and women “ma’am.” And he loves to fish - a bulletin board in the general store called the “Brag Board” shows Reeves with a dozen stripers.

They see him when he comes home and ask him about bass and crappie, not rebounds and blocks.

To everyone else they meet, however, the talk is all basketball and all about Big Country.

The day after the Cowboys beat Massachusetts to win the East regional, Gans was deluged with media - television stations and their helicopters, a phone call from a radio station in Chicago, express carriers with overnight mail trying to find the home of Carl and Carolyn Reeves.

“That’s Big Country’s parents, right?” the carrier asked Jamie Van Zandt, who runs the Gans General Store.

The carrier says he wouldn’t mind seeing Reeves and Oklahoma State go up against Arkansas, who “have a couple of big guys who might be too much for Reeves.”

“But Bryant is from a little ol’ town,” Van Zandt replied. “And that makes him better.”