Photo via Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame
Former Ohio State captain and Ohio Basketball Hall of Famer Gene Millard died on Tuesday at 90 years old.
Millard was a guard for the Buckeyes from 1954-57 under head coach Floyd Stahl, averaging 6.0 points across that span (62 games) on 41.3 percent shooting. His best season came when he was a team captain his senior year in 1956-57, when he averaged 12.2 points and 1.7 rebounds per game and helped lead Ohio State to a 14-8 record and third-place finish in the Big Ten standings.
It was also in that year when Millard scored the first basket in the history of St. John Arena, doing so in a 98-82 win over Butler on Dec. 1, 1956.
Millard, who went 51-37 overall and 2-1 against Michigan in his four-year stint with the Buckeyes, found even more success as a high school boys’ basketball coach later in his life. He spent four years leading Washington Court House from 1958-62 before coaching and serving as athletics director at Bexley for 29 seasons (1962-87, 1992-96). He won 486 games, 15 league championships and eight district titles at Bexley while also leading them to the 1983 state Class AA championship. He also came out of retirement for one year to coach Bexley’s girls’ basketball team, guiding them to a 21-3 record and Division II district championship.
Those successes helped earn him an induction into the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame as part of the class of 2011.
“It was quite a life,” John Betz, who was a sophomore on the 1983 team and an assistant to Millard in the 1990s, told The Columbus Dispatch. “Anything he touched, he had a knack for getting the best out of everyone he was around.”
Millard is survived by three children, 10 grandchildren and four great-children. Funeral services for Millard have yet to be revealed.
