The Associated Press used to poll Arizona newspapers, large and small, for a weekly Top 10 list of high school basketball teams. There were no restrictions, no classifications. Vote for the best teams was the only mandate.
The final poll of the 1969 regular season was Tucson-heavy at the top:
Tucson High.
Tempe.
Mesa Westwood.
Palo Verde.
Rincon.
None of that raised an eyebrow. But when small-school Marana High School finished No. 8 in that poll — before the state playoffs — there was no longer any secret about what coach Norm Patton had built.
Marana beat Flowing Wells 79-64 in a December showdown, which gave it instant credibility. Flowing Wells, the defending Class 3A state champion, finished the season ranked No. 9 in the state.
The Class 2A Tigers had finished No. 2 in the state finals in 1968 and were even better in ’69, going 24-0 and blowing out 26-1 and defending state champion Parker 86-67 in the championship game.
Patton would then coach Marana to another state title in 1970 and put another undefeated season, 25-0, into the books in ’72.
But it was Patton’s ’69 team that broke the ice and earned statewide respect covering all classifications
When the Star selected its 1969 All-State team, it chose Marana point guard Ray Alexander as the captain of the team. That was unprecedented for a small-school player from Southern Arizona. The Star’s first-team All-Star club included Tucson High point guard Delano Price, whose club won the big-schools state championship with a 29-1 record, North Phoenix High standout Mark Wasley, Flowing Wells scoring champ Steve Ziegler and Tucson High’s Kenny Ball.
The Star described Alexander as a “fancy little guard.” He averaged 20.2 points per game.
Patton built his Marana basketball dynasty from a small group of ballplayers in a rural setting, some of them from the tiny community of Rillito. It was indeed a special group, one that included center Ken Sherman, who was also an All-State football lineman, and those like Mike Sanchez and Tony Komadina, who went on to be a standout baseball pitcher at ASU, drafted in the seventh round by the Chicago White Sox in 1974.
The other key contributors were Theodis Campbell, Kirby Colter and Bob Rice.
The man who made it all work was Patton, son of a rancher in rural Eastern New Mexico who was just getting started on a Hall of Fame coaching career.
“I never saw youngsters work so hard,” Patton told me. “They work so hard in practice. They just work, work, work.”
The ’69 Tigers led the state not just in winning percentage, but points scored per game. Marana tied a state-record with 130 points in a December game and scored in excess of 100 points six times, improving its record to 20-0 with a 100-35 victory over San Manuel a month before the state playoffs.
By the time Marana reached the state tournament at Phoenix Veterans Memorial Coliseum in March, they were 21-0. That merely set the tone for a 95-56 victory over Monument Valley and an 88-55 win over Camp Verde in the semifinals, with Alexander scoring 22.
Patton coached Marana through the ’72 season. After his Tigers won a second undefeated state championship, he was offered and accepted the head coaching job at Pima College, which chose Patton to start the school’s first basketball program.
Patton went 168-40 at Marana and followed that by going 111-83 at Pima College before leaving to become the head coach at ACCAC rival Central Arizona College. He coached there from 1981-94, winning six league titles.
In 2019, Marana High School named its basketball facility the Norm Patton Gymnasium.
