Wichita State legend Cleo Littleton, scoring king and trailblazer, dies at 93
He was not on the list.
Every summer, when Wichita State’s basketball legends
returned to town, there was one appointment they tried not to miss.
It was not in Koch Arena. Not at a banquet where old box
scores were pulled from memory and retold until the stories grew larger than
life.
It was at Cleo Littleton’s house in east Wichita.
Aubrey Sherrod would be there. Cheese Johnson would be
there. Xavier McDaniel and Antoine Carr and other former Shockers greats would
make their way there, too, drawn to the man whose name had been hanging above
them long before they ever pulled on a WSU jersey.
They came to visit one of the greatest players in program
history. They stayed to talk about almost anything but basketball.
“I looked forward to every summer when we would get a chance
to just sit and talk with him,” Sherrod said. “We had a lot of good old-time
talks about life.”
Littleton, the trailblazing Wichita State legend who became
the program’s career scoring leader, the first Black basketball star in WSU and
Missouri Valley Conference history and a cornerstone figure in the Shockers’
rise to national relevance, died Sunday at age 93, according to his son, Barry
Littleton.
“My father, the legendary Shocker Cleo Littleton, joined my
beloved mother last night,” Barry Littleton wrote in a social-media post
Monday. “He fought extremely hard the last 4 years, especially the last 3
months. Today I feel very broken.”
The news landed heavily across generations of Shocker
basketball.
To some, Littleton was the No. 13 jersey in the rafters at
Koch Arena, one of only four numbers retired by the program. To others, he was
the name still sitting atop WSU’s career scoring list with 2,164 points, a
record made more impressive by the era in which he played — before the 3-point
line, before expanded schedules and before modern players had as many games to
chase history.
To the men who came after him, he was something even more
meaningful.
“Cleo paved the way for us to come to Wichita State,”
Johnson said.
Littleton played for the Shockers from 1951 to 1955, when
the school was still known as the University of Wichita and home games were
played at the downtown Forum. The WU Field House — soon nicknamed the
Roundhouse — did not open until December 1955, after Littleton had already
completed one of the most consequential careers in school history.
He was 6-foot-3, graceful, quick and durable. He was coached
by Ralph Miller at Wichita East, then followed Miller to WU, where he became
the foundation of the Shockers’ first real climb into college basketball
prominence.
Littleton averaged at least 18 points in all four of his
seasons. He still owns the WSU freshman scoring record at 18.5 points per game.
He led the Shockers to a 27-4 record in the 1953-54 season and the program’s
first postseason appearance in the NIT. He remains the only men’s basketball
player in Valley history to be named first-team all-conference four times.
He also played in 184 consecutive games without missing one
from his sophomore year at Wichita East through his senior season at WU, a
stretch that included helping lead East to the 1951 Class AA state championship
over Newton.
He was drafted by the Fort Wayne Pistons in 1955, but
Littleton stayed in Wichita to play for the Vickers AAU team and begin a career
that would take him into banking, oil and construction.
Those numbers made him a legend.
What he endured made him a pioneer.
In 1951, Littleton became the first Black basketball player
to play in road games in the Missouri Valley Conference. It was a distinction
that came with pain. Other programs either refused to recruit Black athletes or
sharply limited how many they would allow on their rosters. On road trips,
Littleton could not stay in the same hotel as his teammates. WU would make
arrangements for him to stay with a Black family in the city where the Shockers
were playing. When the team ate together, even in Wichita, restaurants
sometimes seated the Shockers in the back because Littleton was with them.
He absorbed vicious verbal abuse on the road. He carried the
weight of being first in an era when first often meant alone.
“What is incredible to me is that he stayed strong and
committed to what he believed in,” Sherrod said. “You learn about the
conditions and some of the things he had to overcome and that had such a big
impact for myself being an African-American.”
Littleton had followed another WU trailblazer, football
great Linwood Sexton, who had arrived seven years earlier and offered him
advice. Then Littleton set the stage for Dave Stallworth, the next towering
figure in Shocker basketball history. Stallworth would help carry Wichita to
even greater heights in the 1960s, but those close to the program understand
the baton had first passed through Littleton’s hands.
“That’s why I will always put Cleo and Dave above guys like
myself, Antoine and Cliff,” McDaniel said. “You have to remember the things
that they had to endure. We didn’t have to experience all of those things that
they did. I stayed in nice hotels. I could go eat in restaurants. It is
remarkable how many points Cleo was able to score during an era when black
people weren’t always accepted.”
Littleton’s barrier-breaking did not end on the road.
After graduating, he and his wife, Eloise, saved enough
money to buy a plot of land in north Wichita, then an all-white area. There
were protests about the Littletons moving there. One neighbor came over to try
to talk him out of building.
Littleton built anyway.
And somehow, through all of it, those who knew him say
bitterness never hardened him.
He stayed even-keeled. Jovial. Gentle. Easy to be around. A
man who valued relationships. A man who could have filled every conversation
with his own accomplishments and instead chose to lift up everyone else.
“He would never talk about his playing days,” Sherrod said.
“He always wanted to talk about and praise the present. But we would always try
to make sure we acknowledged his greatness, both for the university and in the
community.”
Johnson said the same.
“He had so much wisdom and knowledge,” Johnson said. “That’s
how you learn. You learn from history. I’m going to miss him.”
For later Shocker stars, Littleton was not a distant name in
a record book. He remained a presence around the program. In his younger years,
he regularly attended games. Even later in life, he tried to make it back to
the Roundhouse when he could.
The stars of the 1980s remembered him being around after
games, offering encouragement rather than critique. He was not the kind of
former great who reminded current players how much better the game used to be
or how he would have handled them in his prime.
He did not need to tell them how good he had been.
The record book did that.
McDaniel spent his senior season chasing Littleton’s scoring
record. He averaged 27.2 points, earned All-American honors and became one of
the most dominant players in the country. Around campus, he would sometimes see
Littleton’s daughter, who worked for WSU, and joke that he was coming for her
father’s record.
He nearly got there.
McDaniel finished with 2,152 career points — 12 short of
Littleton.
With time, McDaniel has come to see it differently. Chasing
Littleton, he said, helped push him to greatness. Falling short allowed the
record to remain with someone he believes deserved to keep it.
“A lot of times we didn’t even talk basketball,” McDaniel
said. “We just talked about life. Those were some incredible conversations.”
McDaniel said he believes WSU should find a way to honor
Littleton this season.
“I think the team should wear a patch in his honor,”
McDaniel said. “Cleo was a true legend and a real ambassador for the school and
represented Wichita State very well. They really should honor him like that.”
Longtime journalist Bob Lutz, who covered the Shockers for
decades for The Eagle and has long studied the program’s history, said
Littleton can be difficult for modern fans to fully appreciate because so few
people remain who saw him play.
“A lot of Shocker fans are probably aware of the name Cleo
Littleton, but there’s not many around who actually saw him play and the impact
he had on the program,” Lutz said. “I think you can point to that era as the
beginning of Shocker basketball.”
Lutz said he has often ranked Littleton among the top-5
Shockers ever, typically behind Stallworth, McDaniel and Carr. But the more he
thinks about Littleton’s production, the era, the barriers and the accounts
from those who did see him, the more he wonders if even that has not been high
enough.
“I’ve probably underrated Cleo forever,” Lutz said. “Boy, I
feel like I didn’t give him his due and that’s probably been the case for
everyone. Because we didn’t see him play and we saw those other guys play, so
maybe we sold Cleo a little bit short.”
Littleton was a charter inductee into the Wichita State
Sports Hall of Fame in 1979 and later became a member of the MVC Hall of Fame.
The Kansas Sports Hall of Fame recognized him as the cornerstone of Wichita
State’s first move into national basketball relevance.
But to Bob Powers, Littleton’s greatness was never confined
to points, banners or Hall of Fame plaques.
Powers played for the Shockers from 1964-66, saw Stallworth
up close and has spent much of his life working to preserve the legacy of
former WSU athletes through the Lettermen’s Club. He revered Stallworth. He
revered Littleton, too.
There were times when Littleton would stop by Powers’
office, sit down and have coffee. The conversations could drift anywhere. What
Powers remembers most is the feeling of being around him.
“Personality-wise, he was an awful lot like Dave
Stallworth,” Powers said. “He was a very kind and gentle man.”
That is the part that stayed with so many people Monday.
Littleton had every reason to be bitter. He had endured the
loneliness of road trips without his teammates, the cruelty of opposing crowds,
the humiliation of being treated differently in hotels and restaurants, the
racism that followed him from the basketball floor to the neighborhood where he
wanted to build a home.
He endured so much hate.
All he ever seemed to give back was love.
“It’s truly unbelievable that he was that good of a man,”
Powers said. “From all of my years, spending time with Cleo was always a time
in my life where I just enjoyed being with somebody. I’m going to miss him. I’m
going to miss him a lot.”
He was drafted by the NBA Fort Wayne Pistons in 1955, but on
the advice of coach Ralph Miller, he opted to stay in Wichita, playing with the
Vickers AAU team, and beginning his business career. In 1987, he started his
own construction company, Litco Inc., which he still managed as of 2000. He
was named the 2004 Small Business Administration's (SBA) Graduate of the Year
.jpg.webp)
