Burnell Glanzer, one of the most successful high school basketball coaches in South Dakota history, has announced his retirement from coaching.
In 37 seasons, Glanzer built a record of 617-209 at Armour (now Tripp-Delmont/Armour) and produced some memorable teams.
The coach guided teams to the state tournament 12 times and captured Class B state titles in 1978, 1979 and 1997.
Glanzer’s 1979 Armour team is regarded as one of the best in state history, and the Packers’ overtime win over Beresford in that year’s state championship game is a classic. Here’s a story I wrote about that game in 2005, when the Argus Leader chose it as the greatest game in state prep history:
The hot dogs started flying as soon as Dennis Tiefenthaler’s name was announced.
No buns or mustard. Just cold, skinny frankfurters flung to the court by the most mischievous of 11,500 fans who filled the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center in Rapid City.
It was March 10, 1979, and Armour High School, featuring Tiefenthaler as its most visible star, was ready to face Beresford for South Dakota’s Class B state basketball championship.
As players and coaches scanned the monstrous crowd, they couldn’t escape the feeling that this was a night that would reside forever in their memory - whether they wished it to or not.
For thousands watching Jim Burt and Mike Schirmer call the game on KELO-TV, the hot dogs were barely visible. But the boos rang loud and clear.
It was a familiar greeting for the defending champion Armour Packers, who pursued their place in history with top-tier talent and a brimming brand of cockiness.
“It was us against the world,” recalls longtime coach Burnell Glanzer, whose team arrived at the 1979 finals with a 26-0 record and 51-game win streak. “We stressed team over self - and the fact that everyone was against us made that an easier sell.”
Armour’s grating superiority was symbolized by Tiefenthaler, an astounding multi-sport athlete whose style played like a strut. When the hot dogs hit the floor, the all-state junior took it personally.
“They broke for a commercial and started to clean those things off the court,” says Tiefenthaler, whose brother, Jeff, was a key sophomore reserve for Armour. “They tried to sweep them off, and pieces of the hot dogs got caught in the grooves of the floor. Our cheerleaders had to help dig them out, and for some reason that made me really angry.”
Of course, tempers had flared ever since the Packers arrived in Rapid City to seek their third straight trip to the Class B finals.
“We’d be walking across the street to McDonald’s, and there were people stopping in their cars to tell us how much we sucked,” recalls Dan Freidel, an all-state junior point guard that year. “That’s how vile we had become. As a 17-year-old kid, you start thinking to yourself, `Is this really worth it?’ “
Such pressure was nothing new to Armour, which played before overflow crowds in South Dakota’s largest venues. But the weight of the streak was taking its toll. In the first two rounds of the 1979 tournament, the Packers had to surge from behind to defeat Hamlin and McLaughlin.
“Anyone can be beaten,” said Beresford coach Jim Sorensen, a Sioux Falls native who had guided the school to its first state tournament in 12 years. The Watchdogs were 23-1 behind the post play of 6-foot-5 sophomore Keith Larson and a solid group of seniors.
If they toppled Armour and the streak, they could claim their own piece of history while giving their school its first-ever title.
With these matters in mind, the teams took the floor to an expectant roar. Those suspicions about the magnitude of this matchup would soon be confirmed.
Time to shine
Larson wins the opening tip. Looking back, this sophomore seems an unlikely player to emerge as the focal point of Armour’s defensive strategy.
Raised on a farm northwest of Beresford, Larson learned the game by shooting baskets with his brothers and sisters on a concrete court built inside a bunker silo.
“He came off that farm and nobody knew much about him,” says Mike Conklin, a Beresford resident who has followed the town’s sports teams for four decades. “The majority of the town didn’t even realize what they had until the middle of his freshman year.”
Larson would eventually lead three different sets of seniors to the state tournament - the last group being his own class in 1981.
But his post-up skills already command respect in 1979.
To slow him down, Glanzer turns to center Brian Bindert, a sturdy 6-4 senior who scored 25 points in Armour’s 67-45 regional finals win over Wagner.
Showing big-game experience, Bindert blocks Larson’s first attempt and holds Beresford’s post weapon to three points in the first quarter and just 16 for the night.
But the Watchdogs get a boost from senior forward Kirk Knight, who scores eight points in the final four minutes of the opening period to give his team a 15-14 lead.
Heroes and villains
Until 1986, South Dakota used a two-class system for basketball, and the small-school Class B tournament ruled the roost.
In a rural state without professional or major college sports, raw emotion was reserved for the annual eight-team spectacular known as the “Big B.”
Fan interest was such that the state activities association - flooded each March with ticket requests - would hold a crude drawing by pulling names out of a cardboard box in its Pierre office.
For those left out, salvation arrived when KELO began doing live broadcasts of the `B’ tournament in 1962. These must-see events fueled the phenomenon of high school kids becoming household heroes and villains.
“Growing up at the time, that’s all there was,” says Freidel, who played at Augustana from 1980-84. “I remember watching Randy Jencks, Terry Long, Steve Brown and Mike Begeman - and those guys could really play. It was all part of the `B’ lore and the `B’ spectacle, and that’s where you wanted to be.”
Armour’s top gun
Smirking through his mustache, Tiefenthaler is on his way to torching Beresford for 18 points in the first half.
Though his town’s name invites hot dog references, the pregame incident reminds him that hostility boosts adrenaline.
“To be a winner, you were willing to accept all the jeering and negative stuff,” says Tiefenthaler, who played professional baseball in the Baltimore Orioles’ system and now lives in Prescott, Ariz. “My philosophy is that I don’t mind people who are a little bit cocky, as long as they can back it up. I was one of those people.”
In fact, Tiefenthaler was approaching celebrity status before tearing up his knee as a senior quarterback in football. His track bests in the 400 (48.6) and 800 (1:54.8) still rank among the fastest ever in South Dakota, and he regularly received fan mail as a 16-year-old in high school.
“Denny was probably one of the greatest athletes ever to come out of the state,” says Freidel. “He was a very confident person, and that confidence was seen as cockiness. We all brought on some of that `hot dog’ stuff, but Denny liked it more than most - that element of putting it in people’s faces. He reveled in that.”
So the second quarter becomes a personal statement to the largest high school crowd in state history.
Every time Beresford misses a shot or brings pressure with its backcourt of Brian Bak and Dave Mohr, the Packers push the pace and find Tiefenthaler on the wing.
“He was making that shot over and over,” says Sorensen. “That’s what was killing us in the first half, so we had to get out of that press. I think it was the first time we had to abandon our press all season.”
Still drawing heat from the crowd, Armour’s top gun scores four straight points late in the second quarter to give his team a 29-23 lead. But Larson refuses to let Armour pull away. He scores twice off rebounds in the final two minutes, pulling the Watchdogs within 29-27 at halftime.
“I later met a guy from Wagner who said he was in a hotel room watching that game, and he and his friends were choosing up players,” says Tiefenthaler. “This guy had to drink a beer every time I scored, and he was passed out by the third quarter.”
New man in town
In the summer of 1975, Burnell Glanzer was 22 years old and seeking his first full-time job after graduating from the University of South Dakota.
While student-teaching in his hometown of Freeman earlier that year, he served as assistant coach when the Flyers beat Dell Rapids St. Mary for the first state basketball title in school history.
When Freeman coach Ron Bennett heard that Armour superintendent Dick Fuller was in the market for a math teacher and basketball coach, he suggested Glanzer, and a deal was struck.
Armour, an old railroad town 35 miles southwest of Mitchell, drew its name from Chicago meatpacking magnate Phillip Danforth Armour. Glanzer knew that many of the town’s 900 residents were knowledgeable and passionate about basketball, despite their lack of success.
After finishing as Class B runner-up in 1939 and 1942, the Packers had not returned to the state tournament. In fact, they hadn’t advanced out of their district in 25 years.
“They were hungry,” recalls Glanzer, who still coaches at Armour and ranks fifth on the state’s all-time list with 499 wins. “And it became apparent that the kids were ready and willing to listen.”
For some residents, though, the young coach was an acquired taste. Serious and sullen with a stooped posture and black-rimmed glasses, Glanzer didn’t instantly inspire confidence.
“He worked very hard not to create a good first impression,” recalls Maurice “Mac” Nielsen, a former school board member who ran a local insurance agency.
“I remember seeing him out on the field, playing catch with some of the kids. I asked who he was, and someone said, `That’s our new basketball coach.’ My reaction was something like, Oh boy.”
But Glanzer silenced skeptics with a no-nonsense system that stressed player conditioning, man-to-man defense and a team-first mentality. Plus, there was plenty of talent on the way.
Glanzer’s inaugural 1975-76 squad finished 15-5. By that time, most everyone knew Armour’s basketball fortunes were headed for a radical turn.
The biggest boost arrived in the form of future first-team all-state guard Barry Glanzer - a sizzling scorer who also happened to be Burnell’s younger brother.
With his junior year approaching, Barry transferred from Freeman to Armour in 1976 to live with Burnell. Their mother, Gladys, was fighting a losing battle with cancer, and the family decided Barry shouldn’t live at home.
Paul Glanzer, a teacher and part-time carpenter, acquired a camper so he could travel with his sick wife to California and Mexico in their search for a cure.
“The conventional stuff wasn’t working, and they got desperate,” says Burnell, who also welcomed brother Brent to Armour in 1978, the year Gladys died. “It was one of those situations where you reach out for something.”
Despite that misfortune, many in Freeman and other towns saw a talent like Barry Glanzer heading to Armour and accused Burnell of stealing him away.
“It’s probably happening all over the world, where parents are sick or die and the older sibling fills in as parent,” says Burnell. “Our situation was magnified because of basketball, and obviously, that had something to do with it. There’s no use denying it. We knew we had a very good team and that Barry was a very good player. If people can’t handle that, I guess that’s too bad.”
Setting the stage
Tiefenthaler hits two more jumpers, causing play-by-play man Burt to plead with Beresford to guard him more closely. When Freidel scores on a fast break, Armour has a solid-looking 35-29 lead late in the third quarter.
But Tiefenthaler will soon turn cold firing over Beresford’s zone as the Packers shoot 30 percent for the game. Normally, they create easy baskets off turnovers, making perimeter shooting less crucial.
But the turnovers aren’t coming.
Bak holds up well in the face of pressure from Freidel, whose quick hands and tenacity have sent point guards into hysterics all season.
“(Bak) was one of the few guys back in that era that I could not rattle,” says Freidel, who lives in Paynesville, Minn., and runs basketball camps and tournaments for Pacesetter Sports. “He had great composure, and he did a nice job of slowing the pace and not giving up turnovers.”
Tiefenthaler hits from the left side to reach 24 points, putting Armour up 39-34 with four minutes left in the quarter. He won’t score again until the final moments of regulation.
Meanwhile, Beresford has rediscovered Larson, who takes a pass in the paint for an easy layup that cuts the lead to 39-38.
“That’s what they have to do!” screams a revived Burt.
Enter Jeff Tiefenthaler, who hits a jumper and steals the ball from Bak for a layup. But Beresford’s Jerry Zeimetz scores off a rebound at the buzzer, pulling the Watchdogs within 43-40 entering the fourth quarter.
Agony of defeat
With Barry Glanzer joining Dave Fuller in the lineup along with front-line players Bindert and Tom McFarland, the Packers seemed destined for big things in 1976-77.
Just as exciting was the emergence of freshmen Dan Freidel and Dennis Tiefenthaler, products of proud athletic backgrounds.
Freidel was a slick, ultra-competitive point guard whose family includes six brothers. His stint at Armour followed Mike, a bruising football standout who is now USD’s defensive coordinator. It was succeeded by Pat, a stellar point guard who led Armour to the 1983 state finals and remains Augustana’s career assists leader.
Freidel and Tiefenthaler were quick learners. But despite their advanced skills, Burnell Glanzer didn’t make them regular starters until they were juniors.
By maintaining that pecking order, Glanzer backed up his talk of teamwork and discipline. His temper could be tough to take, but his players saw him as fair.
“He didn’t have to talk us into jumping off a cliff,” says Freidel. “He just told us when.”
The fourth-ranked Packers entered the 1977 state tournament in Sioux Falls at 23-0. It was their first `Big B’ appearance in 35 years, and fans embraced this high-energy outfit and towel-waving coach. Armour downed No. 5 Mobridge and No. 2 Custer and was one win away from the eighth perfect `B’ season in South Dakota history.
But everything fell apart in the finals against underdog Webster. Sparked by a 29-point effort from Dave Waldowski, the Bearcats stunned Armour 63-49.
“All year long we had been in control, but that game was different,” says Dennis Tiefenthaler, who was held to six points. “Have you ever had that slipping-away type of feeling? That’s exactly how it felt.”
Fuller, the lone senior, was the only Armour player in double figures with 28 points. His devastation over the loss caused him to leave the court without participating in the postgame medal ceremony. Barry Glanzer and Tiefenthaler went with him.
That breach of sportsmanship irritated state activities officials, who later reprimanded Burnell and set off a long-running feud. Worse yet was the well-traveled rumor that the coach took the runner-up trophy and smashed it to pieces in the locker room.
For many, that trophy story became the basis for much of the anti-Armour fervor. But Glanzer and his players insist that the incident never happened.
“No, the trophy did not get smashed; it’s still in our display case right here,” says the coach. “I don’t know how people think they would have seen it, because it would have been in the locker room. If people are so against Armour that they want to think that happened, they can think that forever. It doesn’t make any difference to me.”
Dean Minder, a longtime sportswriter for the Mitchell Daily Republic, was in the locker room after that 1977 title game and backs up Glanzer’s claims.
“When I went to interview Burnell, the trophy was sitting right there on the training table.” says Minder. “There wasn’t a dent on it.”
A shot for the ages
Early in the fourth quarter, Freidel steals the ball and feeds Tiefenthaler on the break. It’s an open layup to put Armour up by five points, but Dennis misses. As Tiefenthaler tumbles to the floor, Beresford seizes a chance to steal the momentum and later takes the lead on a Larson layup.
The Packers, looking tentative against the zone, fail to score on four straight possessions. Freidel is called for a foul while chasing a rebound with 55 seconds left.
Bak nails both free throws for a 50-47 lead. When Freidel’s shot is blocked moments later by Larson, Dennis Tiefenthaler is forced to foul Bak with 25 seconds remaining and Armour trailing by three.
“When I fouled him, I turned to the crowd and they were completely in my face,” says Dennis. “It was so loud in there. But I can’t blame them, I guess. I mean, they had us.”
Mac Nielsen, the loyal Armour supporter, recalls sitting stone-faced on the fringe of the Beresford cheering section, waiting for the dam to burst.
“They had the door closed,” says Jeff Tiefenthaler. “They just forgot to lock it.”
Bak misses the first free throw but sees Larson snare the rebound, giving Beresford a chance to kill more clock. But officials rule that Jeff Tiefenthaler was in the lane early, sending Bak back to the stripe.
He hits the first free throw for a 51-47 lead and eyes his second, which could essentially seal the win. In the days before 3-pointers, a five-point lead with 25 seconds left meant it was time to warm up the bus.
“You don’t get much closer to winning a state title than that,” says Sorensen, whose 36-year coaching career ended last week with 473 wins. “If that free throw goes in, we’d have a chance to salt it away.”
But Bak misses his second attempt, and Dennis Tiefenthaler bursts downcourt. He passes off to Jeff, who misses, but big brother grabs the offensive rebound and scores over Larson to make it 51-49.
Armour fouls Larson with 11 seconds left, sending a steady hand to the line who has not missed a free throw the entire tournament. Glanzer, looking dejected in his brown suit, tosses down his trademark towel and reminds his players to stick around for the postgame medal ceremony.
But Larson’s front-end attempt bounces on the rim and falls off. Armour snares the rebound and quickly calls timeout.
In nine seconds, the Packers must go the length of the floor and score to force overtime. Though Beresford has a foul to give, Sorensen doesn’t realize it and takes his chances that Armour will run out of time.
Glanzer looks for leadership from Freidel.
“Burnell said to push the ball upcourt and find the open man,” recalls Freidel. “And as I was bringing it upcourt, I could see Brian breaking to the top of the key.”
Bindert was named first-team all-state in 1979, but the quiet senior was often overshadowed by more boisterous teammates. Most people didn’t realize that he was a deadly perimeter shooter.
“The announcers were thinking Dennis would take the last shot - but I happened to be there,” says Bindert, who lives in De Smet and works at People’s State Bank. “I wasn’t where I normally would be. I probably should have been closer to the basket, but I drifted out past the free-throw line and (Freidel) threw me the ball.
“We had done a lot of shooting practice, so the motion of letting it go was pretty natural. There wasn’t enough time to think, so I just turned and shot it. If I had thought about it, I probably would have missed it.”
Instead, Bindert drains an earth-shattering 18-footer, tying the score 51-51 and sending Armour’s supporters into hysterics.
Brent Glanzer, a sophomore guard on the Armour bench, gets so excited that assistant coach Rick Clark has to hit him in the head so settle him down.
Near midcourt, Freidel and Dennis Tiefenthaler rush to embrace Bindert, whose buzzer-beater puts the Packers in position to save both season and streak.
Purple-clad Beresford fans react with stunned silence.
“The prevailing thought was that it was going to be tough for our boys to come back from that,” says longtime booster Mike Conklin. “You’re sitting in the stands with a four-point lead and 25 seconds left, and you’re high as a kite. A few moments later, you feel like you’ve been punched in the stomach.”
Dynasty in motion
Coming off its shattering loss to Webster in 1977, Armour entered its next season with a festering chip on its shoulder.
This time, the Packers would not be denied.
With Tiefenthaler and Freidel taking larger roles, Armour began its streak by sprinting past opponents by an average margin of 27 points. That included a 74-36 drubbing of Webster in a revenge-minded rematch at the Freeman Classic.
When the activities association sent Glanzer a letter implying that such lopsided scores showed poor sportsmanship, the coach challenged his team to reach 100 points the next night.
On another occasion, the increasingly volatile coach told his players to beat an opponent by at least 20 or they would do running drills after the game.
“We won by 18,” recalls Bindert. “But it was important for him to stay true to his word.”
Armour opened a new gym in 1977-78, and expectations were high. The Packers exceeded them all.
“They were great athletes, and they did things that other kids weren’t able to do,” says former Hamlin coach Wayne Carney, whose teams lost to Armour in the first round of the state basketball tournament in 1978 and ‘79.
Facing Elk Point in the 1978 state `B’ championship, the Packers secured a 57-53 victory - the only game they hadn’t won by double digits all season.
It was the school’s first-ever state basketball title, and the flood of emotion showed how small-town basketball can stir the most stubborn of souls.
“There was a line of cars a couple miles long as we were coming back from Sioux Falls,” recalls Dennis Tiefenthaler. “I remember the towels that were hanging out of the car windows.
“I’ll never forget the look on my mom’s face when we came back, and she was waiting for us as we turned down Highway 281. I’m decades from that now, living in Arizona, and it’s not the same as it was. I tell people, `You just can’t believe the excitement that a small town can create through basketball.’”
Redemption, rage
For Sorensen, watching helplessly from Beresford’s bench, the three-minute overtime is heartbreak in slow motion. His team fails to score a point.
“I think we still had some fight in us,” says Sorensen. “But we weren’t patient, and we didn’t make shots.”
Larson misses an opening drive, and Armour ignites the fast break for a soaring layup by Jeff Tiefenthaler to make it 53-51.
After a Jeff Tiefenthaler steal, the Packers employ their trademark four-corner offense to pull Beresford out of its zone.
“We used the four-corner not as a stall, but as a way to exploit mismatches and force teams to guard our quickness,” explains Glanzer. “It was very seldom unsuccessful.”
Beresford sees its chance when Armour gets sloppy and commits an over-and-back violation. But the Watchdogs fail to find Larson, and Todd Allmendinger’s 14-foot jumper rattles in and out.
“That was sort of the end of the line,” sighs Sorensen, whose team fouls Jeff Tiefenthaler with 14 seconds left and watches him seal the 55-51 victory with two free throws.
After a weekend of hostility, with boos still raining down, Armour’s aggressive celebration smacks of redemption and rage.
“Sure, there was an in-your-face element to it,” says Glanzer. “I’d be lying if I said that’s not how all of us felt. We came from behind in all three games in front of 11,000 people who wanted us to fail. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t feel that way.”
The coach takes the trophy and feels himself being lifted onto the shoulders of his players. His impulse is to point at the crowd with defiant stabs of his finger - an accusation and an answer for those outside his world.
Life after legacy
Armour’s streak reached 64 games the following season, breaking the all-time state boys record set by Arlington from 1937-39. The mark still stands today.
With poetic justice, it was Beresford that snapped the string with a 47-45 overtime win over Armour in the Freeman Classic before 7,000 fans at the Sioux Falls Arena.
The Watchdogs advanced to the state finals that year but suffered another gut-wrenching loss, this time to Lyman. They also lost the 1986 `A’ title game to Hanson.
“It’s a game of inches,” shrugs the 60-year-old Sorensen, watching a tape of the 1979 finals in his classroom on a recent afternoon. “We went to the finals three times, and three times it went down to the wire. It’s natural to say that if you had made the right decision or gotten the right break, you could have been three-time champions. But you take what is thrown at you. I don’t think our players look at it as a disaster in their lives. I think they did something that most kids don’t get a chance to do, and it was a tremendous experience.”
As for Bindert, Armour’s unlikely hero had to lock away the videotape of the greatest high school basketball game in South Dakota history. His two sons watched it so much that Bindert feared the image of his heroic shot would be worn away forever. As if we could ever forget.
