Austin Peay's 46th Athletics Hall of Fame Class, will be inducted during ceremonies held Feb. 23-24, 2024, includes baseball's Tyler Rogers and Alex Robles, men's basketball's Chris Horton, volleyball's Ashley Slay, athletic trainer Joni Johnson, and football's Philip Farinella. The athletics department will recognize the class at halftime of the men's basketball game against Lipscomb on Saturday, Feb. 24. Tickets for that day's basketball doubleheader, which includes the women's basketball game against North Alabama, are available for purchase online through Ticketmaster.
No basketball player in Austin Peay history can claim a career arc quite like Chris Horton's
From the first time he put on an Austin Peay uniform, when he would go on to be named Ohio Valley Conference Freshman of the Year, he was a difference-maker on the defensive end. If he'd never learned so much as a single post move, added an ounce of muscle to his wiry frame or honed his shooting touch with hours upon hours in the gym, Horton's defensive presence would have made him a legendary figure. The combination of agility, size, leaping ability and timing meant Horton was able to—from day one—control the interior of any game he was a part of. Teams didn't go inside; Horton was either going to alter the shot if he was the primary defender—a possibility verging on certainty given his length and preternatural twitchiness—and that was the best outcome a shooter could hope for.
Because coming from the weakside as a help defender, Chris Horton's whole thing was predicated on ruining your life, your world and your shot attempt.
"Chris was a guy I really enjoyed coaching," said Dave Loos, Horton's head coach during his Austin Peay career. "The thing I'm most impressed with was where he started and where he ended—he just improved so much. That's what stands out the most in my mind."
There are different kinds of blocked shots, and they all matter for slightly different reasons. They don't show up differently in the box score, but not all blocked shots are created equally. It probably goes without saying, but Horton was a savant at nearly all of them.
"It was great playing with him," said Tre' Ivory, a teammate during Horton's junior and senior season. "I knew I could pressure the ball and he would be there on the back end to protect the rim. It helps you guard the ball better to have someone like that back there. His presence alone kept people from coming down there, and he could cover up for a lot of people's defensive mistakes."
The first kind of block is the kind that happens in the run of play. A fingertip here, a panicked and trapped shooter flinging the ball toward the net there, these things happen. Because he was so tall and because he had such long arms—and because, later in his career, he mastered the art of defending these kinds of plays perfectly without fouling—Horton could clean up on this sort of blocked shot in the way an average big might not be able to replicate.
The second kind of block is purposeful. Later in his career, Horton developed the ability to control his blocks to a degree that he could occasionally start a break by timing and directing his tips to the right person. This is expert-level, final-boss shot-blocking prowess. This is the kind of thing Bill Russell did. It's not common at any level of the sport anymore; by the time he was a senior, it felt like Horton was good for one of these per game.
The third kind of block isn't credited as a block at all, and it's the kind I never saw before Horton patrolled the paint in an Austin Peay uniform and I haven't seen since. So fearful would opponents be of Horton disdainfully tossing their pitiful offerings into the netherworld that they would alter their approach, their mechanics and their timing before they ever bothered to shoot, just because they thought it might serve them better than the straightforward approach. Needless to say, this did not often work. The first time I saw it, it seemed like an insane choice to make—as time went on, it just became another effect he had on opponents.
The last kind of block is the best kind—the kind that makes SportsCenter, the kind that deflates a run. The kind where an entire crowd—home or road—will let out a low-pitched ooohoooooo after seeing it. That run-killing, vibe-shattering, hate-in-your-heart block meant to separate the ball from the court and head of the person in Row Four from their shoulders—that kind of block. Horton would dust off that block the same way Steph Curry drains a particularly poignant three—you might not have known where he was until that point, but you're dang sure paying attention now, aren't you?
"When you have a guy like that, it's impossible to see the full effect," Loos said. "Yes he blocked some shots and yes he was a presence, but think about what went on in an opponent's mind—they knew he was lurking, and there were people that just wouldn't attempt shots because he was in the neighborhood."
By the time it was all said and done, Horton was Austin Peay's career leader in blocked shots with 325. Shots altered, deterred or otherwise thought better of: probably somewhere in the thousands. By the way, we're more than 700 words into this and we've barely discussed his offense—for his first two seasons, he was a putback artist and lob threat, but rarely someone you could simply toss a ball to and wait on magic to be created. In fact, he slumped badly as a junior, hitting barely 45% of his shots from the floor.
Everything crested for Horton as a senior. The defense was on point. The rebounding—somehow an underrated part of his game despite the fact that he finished nine total rebounds short of averaging a double-double for his career—rose to 12.0 per game, a top-five mark nationally alongside his 25 double-doubles. That season saw him become one of three players in program history with 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds. And that offense? A career-best 18.8 points on 59.9 percent shooting for the season,
The Govs snuck into the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament for the first time in Horton's career that season, an eight seed on the final day. It seemed like this storied career would have little to no tournament memories to bore grandchildren with one day.
Or not.
"Me and Horton had developed a relationship away from the court, where we'd hang out and listen to music or go eat and we'd gotten pretty tight," Ivory said. "I remember being in the hotel before the Tennessee Tech game and he knew he was about to go crazy in that game. It was his senior year, he wanted to win and he was just locked in."
Locked in might be an understatement. He opened the tournament with a one-man thrashing of Tennessee Tech, posting 37 points and 21 rebounds, then followed that up with 15 points, 12 boards and three blocked shots in a comeback win against Tennessee State.
That set the stage for a semifinal matchup against Belmont. Horton was Herculean (30 points, 16 rebounds) against OVC Player of the Year Evan Bradds, Belmont got a potential game-tying shot off a split-second too late and the Govs were on to the title game.
So immaculate were the vibes by that point that not even a Horton ankle sprain could slow them down. The Captain gamely willed himself back onto the court, the Govs won the title and Horton brought home a well-deserved Tournament MVP honor after averaging 22.5 points, 13.5 rebounds on 66.7 percent shooting to bring home Austin Peay's first title since 2008.
Horton has continued terrorizing opponents since his time at Austin Peay, first in the G-League and across the globe in France, Greece, Hungary, Israel and Russia and was a two-time French Pro A League All-Star. But no matter where he goes, his star will always shine brightest in Clarksville.
