RED! WHITE! RED! WHITE! RED! WHITE!
DORIS DAY!
There's rock-solid TV throughout this upcoming week of 1971, in fact ...
Plus, the KHSAA basketball tournament starts Wednesday ...
In the First Region tournament at Murray State, it was Carlisle County over Cuba, Murray over Paducah Saint Mary's, Paducah Tilghman over Fulton County and Symsonia over Benton in the first round; Carlisle over Murray (73-72) and Tilghman over Symsonia in the semis, and Carlisle over Tilghman (68-62) in the championship. The Comets of Bardwell are 34-3!
Curt Gowdy: "Western Kentucky has the lead for the first time, 56 to 55 ..."
ReplyDeleteWith four fouls, Jim McDaniels splits two Jacksonville rebounders to put in a WKU free-throw miss, and it's 70-68, Tops. He has 21 points ...
ReplyDeleteI want to see a play-by-play for this game. McDaniels was amazing down the stretch. When Coach Oldham sent him back into the game with four fouls, WKU is trailing, 62-59. The Tops are trying to pack a zone around Artis Gilmore and Jacksonville's other 7-footer, Pembrook Burrows, and the Dolphins seem content to simply dribble away a lot of time and then throw in long, barely contested jumpshots over the zone. This is where you can hear the Western fans madly chanting, "Get! That! Ball!" On offense, WKU doesn't seem to know what to do--there's a weird sequence where half of the Tops seem to be uncertainly trying to stall, and then they just toss the ball away under their own basket. And then, on the next play, Jacksonville dares Clarence Glover into attempting a jumpshot from near what would now be the three-point line, and he misses badly with basically no one under the goal to rebound.
DeleteBut then Oldham sends McDaniels back in and he quickly puts in a free-throw miss to put WKU back ahead, 67-66. Then he draws a foul rebounding a Jacksonville miss on the ensuing possession, and he comes down and gets a free throw to push Western out, 68-66. NBC gets a great shot of WKU's cheerleaders kneeling on the sideline with their crossed-fingers tightly clenched as McDaniels makes his foul shot.
Gowdy: "The winner of this game gets Kentucky down in Athens, Georgia. If Western Kentucky wins, it will be the first time Western Kentucky and Kentucky have ever played on a basketball court."
Delete72-70, and 37 seconds to go ...
ReplyDeleteMcDaniels also scored this bucket to put WKU back up. Jacksonville hit a jumper to tie at 70, and then McDaniels beat Gilmore back down the court on the inbounds play. He went in for a layup, and Gilmore was called for goaltending. McDaniels had 23 points, 11 rebounds and two blocks at this point in the game.
DeleteWestern trailed this game by 17 points!
ReplyDeleteGowdy: "It's been a nightmare second half for Jacksonville."
ReplyDeleteWith about 20 seconds, Jacksonville ties at 72! With McDaniels and Gilmore tied up under the basket, the Dolphins try a 15-foot jumpshot that misses. There's a scramble for the rebound, and a WKU player controls it as he's falling out of bounds. He fires a pass back into traffic in the key, and Jacksonville guard Chip Dublin intercepts. He sinks a jumper from about the free-throw line.
ReplyDeleteOr, as Gowdy says, "Dublin hits the clutcher!"
DeleteOne of the coaches take timeout, and Gowdy recaps that Marquette won the earlier game here at Notre Dame today, 62-47, over Miami of Ohio. Marquette (coached by future NBC color commentator Al Maguire) next plays Ohio State, the Big 10 champ, in Athens on Thursday, where and when UK plays this winner.
ReplyDeleteGowdy: "Incidentally, if Adolph Rupp is looking in, we hope he's feeling much better. He's been ill--the all-time winner in college basketball and the president of the National Basketball Coaches Association. We hope he's vastly improved."
And now things look really, really bad for the Tops. WKU quickly advances the ball upcourt to Jim Rose, who drives to the goal. Gilmore slams the ball against the backboard and out to a teammate, who calls timeout with 8 seconds to play and the game still knotted at 72.
ReplyDeleteBut on the inbounds play from the Jacksonville end, WKU blankets the potential recipient Dolphins. A frontcourt player rushes back unguarded to receive the Jacksonville pass. WKU continues to heavily defend the guards and leaves the Jacksonville big player alone. Obviously flummoxed, he picks up his dribble to pass, rethinks that plan and then begins to dribble again. Traveling! It'll be WKU ball with six seconds to play!
ReplyDeleteAnd then ensues probably the most famous play in WKU basketball history. There's the awful jump-ball toss against Michigan in the 1966 Mideast Regional. There's the 2008 Ty Rogers three-pointer to beat Drake. I'm certainly not in the class of the "Hilltopper Haven" historians, but those are the other two I think of right off the bat. But this play at the end of the Jacksonville game would be No. 1.
ReplyDeleteThank God (and user "Deanna Bates") for this NBC footage on YouTube, but it's pretty goopy. Nonetheless, you can see--just to the right and a little below the big "0:06" superimposed on the screen--a red, ballish figure as Jacksonville sets its defense ...
ReplyDeleteEx-Paducah Community College guard Gary Sundmacker is the inbounds passer, and he's in front of the WKU bench. Jacksonville has a defender on him. Western has guard Rex Bailey and forward Jerry Dunn behind the free-throw circle, and two Dolphins are chasing those guys. McDaniels is set up on the lane on the near side, and Gilmore is hanging all over him. There's another Jacksonville big guy--Burrows, presumably--in the middle of the lane.
ReplyDeleteBut where's Clarence Glover?
ReplyDeleteGlover's the unnoticed blob on the opposite side of the court.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, maybe this is where they got the idea for Big Red. Glover has himself balled up in a heap, trying to be as inconspicuous as he could be. He's roughly the shape of Big Red, and WKU is wearing the red uniforms this day at Notre Dame.
DeleteThis is an excellent theory, and I'm going to believe it to be so--that regardless of whether they consciously realized it, WKU got the whole idea of Big Red from Clarence Glover's miraculous deception here.
DeleteIt's like something on a playground. The official gives the ball to Sundmacker. Glover springs up behind the defense, waving his arms like crazy. Sundmacker's pass arrives before Gilmore or the other Jacksonville defender can get there, and Glover banks in the game winner with four seconds to play.
ReplyDeleteThe clock never stops. Dozens of people start to pour onto the court. Some of the Jacksonville players walk around dazed; a couple of them try to get going a half-court heave. It misses, and it appears to have gone off after the buzzer, anyway.
ReplyDeleteFrom the AP game story:
ReplyDelete"When the cat from Jacksonville double-dribbled and we got the ball out of bounds, I sorta sneaked down beneath the basket and knelt down behind a knot of Jacksonville players,” Glover said.
“I couldn’t yell for the ball because Jacksonville would have heard me. So as soon as the ref hands the ball to Gary (Sundmacker) I start wavin’ my arms like crazy.
“Fortunately, he saw me. It was a perfect pass-right here, chest high-and I just caught it and zipped it in the basket.”
Oldham said Glover, who finished with 16 points and 17 rebounds, set up the play by himself.
“I called a play—get it to McDaniels—but it didn’t work out that way,” Oldham said.
“Glover was on his own. Don’t give me credit for what Glover does.”
The AP story said that Rupp didn’t watch the game—that his doctors wouldn’t let him—but that he hoped to be in Athens for the next round. Joe B. Hall did attend, the AP said, as did Gov. Louie B. Nunn.
ReplyDeleteFollowing the great come-from-behind victory (Western trailed by 17 points with 16 1/2 minutes left to play), Western's 7-foot Jim McDaniels shouted: "We been waitin' 32 years to play them (Kentucky) and we're gonna get ‘em."
And Joe Jares in the March 22, 1971, Sports Illustrated:
ReplyDeleteThe victory was so much extra bourbon for those bluegrass folks who have waited forever for a meeting between the Hilltoppers and the University of Kentucky. Western has been fielding basketball teams for 52 years, Kentucky for 68—and they have never played each other. The main obstacle has been The Baron, Kentucky Coach Adolph Rupp, who does not fancy mixing with social inferiors. In part his aversion to the lower classes may stem from his team's loss to Louisville in the 1959 Mideast Regional.
The Westerners are sure to be out in force at Athens, waving their red towels and carrying on like Chairman Mao youth followers before the Forbidden City. They had better collect more ammunition than towels. Despite a season of nagging injuries and illnesses (including the hospitalization of Rupp) Kentucky won the SEC as usual and coasted into the playoffs for the 19th time. The Wildcats have balance, depth, excellent shooting (the first eight men are all hitting better than 50%) and a good big man in seven-footer Tom Payne, who has improved greatly. Much depends on the health of 6'4" Guard Kent Hollenbeck, who missed the last five games because of a groin injury.
Whichever team wins, it probably will be too emotionally drained to beat the winner of the Marquette-Ohio State game—most likely Marquette.
And of note from that same issue of SI: "COACHING CHANGES: Disagreement over administrative policies led Indiana University's basketball coach, LOU WATSON, to resign after six years ... HOWARD STACEY, interim basketball coach at the University of Louisville while John Dromo recovered from a heart attack, signed a three-year pact with Drake ..."
DeleteNice job by Dionne Warwick on "Let It Be."
ReplyDeleteBravo to the Grammy writers, rhyming "let it be" with "let us see."
ReplyDelete