Hall of Fame
Ray Nacke guided the Charger men’s basketball team to 22 consecutive winning seasons at the Cliff and forged BC's internationally renowned "Panama Pipeline”.
Nacke was named the head coach of Briar Cliff men's basketball on April 2, 1971. During his 26 seasons as Briar Cliff's head coach (between 1971-1997), Nacke's teams compiled a 507-254 record, making him one of the winningest coaches in NAIA history. He guided the Chargers to nine NAIA District 15 championships, two Midwest Independent championships and 11 trips to the NAIA Division I national tournament. His Chargers finished with a No. 1 ranking in the final NAIA poll of 1981, the same year his "Panama Pipeline" — a connection with through which Nacke recruited some of the tiny Central American country's top basketball talent — was thrust into the national spotlight as the focus of a Sports Illustrated article.
Nacke was inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame in 2008. He is also a member of the Greater Siouxland Hall of Fame and the Westmar College Hall of Fame. On Feb. 4, 2012, Briar Cliff named its home basketball court "Ray Nacke Court" in the coach's honor.
Four of Nacke's "Panama Pipeliners" were drafted into the NBA — Frazer, Eddie Warren, Ernesto "Tito" Malcolm and Mario Butler — but they each opted to head back home and play for Panama's national team instead. For much of the 1980's, Panama's national team featured an all-Briar Cliff starting lineup.
One of Nacke's proudest achievements was to spearhead fundraising for the construction of the Newman Flanagan Center, which is still home to Briar Cliff basketball. His plan worked, and by 1982 construction on the Newman Flanagan Center was complete. It was built quite literally, into "The Cliff".
