Daryel Garrison, the leading scorer in the long and successful history of Missouri State University men’s basketball, will become the fourth player in Bears’ history to have his uniform and number permanently retired. The retirement for Garrison’s No. 32 will take place the evening of Feb. 23, when the Bears host Central Michigan University in an O’Reilly ESPNU BracketBusters game at Hammons Student Center at 7:05 p.m.
  Garrison thus joins former Bears No. 43 Jerry Anderson (1951-55), No. 54 Curtis Perry (1966-70) and No 22 Winston Garland (1985-87) in the special honor category of jersey retirement. Anderson was the Most Valuable Player in back-to-back NAIA national tournaments in 1953 and 1954, Perry is the school’s all-time leading rebounder and Garland was the driving force behind the Bears’ first NCAA Division I Tournament team in 1987. Lady Bears Jeanette Tendai, Melody Howard and Jackie Stiles have also had their numbers retired at Missouri State.
 The Feb. 23 presentation to Garrison will take place at halftime of the Missouri State-Central Michigan game and will be made by Director of Athletics Bill Rowe and former Bears’ head coach Bill Thomas (1964-80), who was Garrison’s coach with the Bears.
 Garrison, a 2007 inductee into the Springfield Area Sports Hall of Fame and a 1986 selection for the Missouri State Athletics Hall of Fame, punched up a career point total of 1,975 and made that number easy to remember by finishing his 1971-75 career on the same number.
 Garrison had the distinction of breaking Perry’s previous Missouri State career scoring mark of 1,835 and Don Anielak’s previous Missouri State single game scoring record of 39 with the same basket in the Bears’ record-setting 130-106 win over Central Missouri in McDonald Arena on Feb. 8, 1975; 33 years to the day before the announcement of his selection for jersey retirement.
 A product of Sumner High in Kansas City, Kan., Garrison was a four-year starter for the Bears and his 1,975 point total still well exceeds all the four-year players who have come after him even though his entire career was completed 12 years before the introduction of the three-point field goal. He played for MIAA championship teams as a sophomore and junior and both advanced to the NCAA Division II Tournament. The Bears in 1972-73 were eliminated in the NCAA Regional Tournament in McDonald Arena but the 1973-74 ballclub reached the Division II national title game in Evansville, Ind., before losing in the finals to Morgan State. That 21-9 Cinderella Bears’ ballclub, which featured Garrison and former high school teammate Dennis Hill at the forwards, Springfieldians Randy Magers and Andy Newton at the guards, William Doolittle at center and the Chinese Bandits in reserve, captured the imagination of the area with its iron-man starting five and a ballclub that was able to use a full-court press throughout entire ballgames.
 Garrison played in 107 Missouri State games and 21 people since have reached or exceeded that total but he still holds MSU career marks in 20-point games (46), double-figure games (97), field goals (830) and field goal attempts (1,755).
 Daryel Garrison’s Missouri State career statistics:
Year G FGM-FGA FG% FTM-FTA FT% REB AVE PF PTS AVE AST
1971-72 23 124-267 .464 70-102 .686 111 4.8 56 318 13.8 83
1972-73 28 195-442 .441 72-95 .758 103 3.7 77 462 16.5 106
1973-74 30 260-566 .459 97-122 .795 204 6.8 77 617 20.6 91
1974-75 26 251-480 .523 76-98 .776 129 4.9 75 578 22.2 97
Totals 107 830-1755 .473 315-417 .775 547 5.1 285 1975 18.5 374
