During his tenure as Creighton University basketball coach, Tony Barone earned a reputation as a hard worker who set high standards for the members of his team — as players and as people.
Barone, a graduate of St. George High School in Evanston, Illinois, played college basketball at Duke. He lettered for three years and was a co-captain his senior year. Duke finished third in the NCAA tournament his sophomore year and qualified for the NIT the next two seasons.
Creighton named Barone, 37, as its head basketball coach in June 1985, selecting him from a list of more than 60 applicants.
Barone led CU from 1985 to 1991 — his teams combined for a 102-82 record.
He led the Bluejays to two NCAA tournament and one National Invitation Tournament appearances in his six seasons as coach. The Jays’ NCAA tournament win in 1991 was the program’s first in 17 years.
He coached several of Creighton’s legends, including Bob Harstad (CU’s third-leading all-time scorer), Chad Gallagher (fourth) and Porter Moser, who coached Loyola-Chicago to a Final Four in 2018.
After he announced in April 1991 that was leaving CU to become head basketball coach at Texas A&M, a World-Herald sports editor wrote this about Barone: “In six seasons as Creighton University basketball coach, he could be alternately charming, infuriating, funny, moody, inspiring, critical, jovial, sullen, sensitive, insensitive, sentimental, volatile, supportive and impatient.”
Barone was inducted into the CU Hall of Fame in 2015.
Barone died in 2019 after a long battle with lung and brain cancer. He was 72.
“Coach had our back. There was never a time when you didn’t know that,” Moser, current University of Oklahoma coach, said when Barone passed. “He pushed you to your limits. But it made us better.”