There's way too much going on in 2023 to focus on 1976 now, but I just didn't want to miss the chance to share this picture from today 1976's Courier-Journal ...
16 Mar 1976, Tue The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky) Newspapers.com
I'd never seen it. The headline for the story running with the picture is, "Wooden, the king, gives 'way to Knight, the wonderkid." I may or may not read it.
In the NIT tonight in 1976, we've got Kentucky vs. Kansas State and then Louisville vs. Providence, which is so weird. The winners are scheduled to play in the semifinals Thursday, March 18, in New York.
16 Mar 1976, Tue The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky) Newspapers.com
I had totally forgotten about "Junk Food Junkie" by Larry Groce.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Al McGuire, he and the Marquette Warriors are offering a mighty challenge to unbeaten Indiana in the Mideast Regional final on this Saturday, March 20, 1976. It's 36-35, Hoosiers, at the half.
ReplyDeleteIU is No. 1 in the country; Marquette, No. 2. This game is at LSU.
ReplyDeleteI watched some of this game. I had been more interested in the regional semifinal, when IU beat C.M. Newton's best ever team at Alabama, 74 to 69. I watched a lot of that game. Alabama went 22-4 that year, and was ranked number 6 in the country. They were really good. Back then, the Mideast Regional was brutal.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, I had mostly forgotten about Kentucky, who beat Kansas State 81-78 (James Lee had 20 points!) and then beat Providence 79-78. Jack Givens had 28 points in that one, but it was Larry Johnson's layup at the end that won it for the Cats.
DeleteSo the Cats will play UNCC on March 21 for the title.
DeleteYes! I'm very excited to tune in to this game today. I don't pay attention to the NITs (or CBIs, etc.) unless my teams are playing in them, but, when they are, I'm so appreciative that those tournaments exist. Nobody else cares, but it's fun to get to root for your team in a one-and-done tournament of any kind. A few years ago when WKU got to the NIT semifinals, I was about to flip my lid. And I'm excited to dial in to UK 1976 today.
DeleteIn 1975, UK entered the tournament ranked number 5, and Marquette was number 10, and they had to play each other in the first round.
ReplyDeleteFinal from Baton Rouge: No. 1 IU 65, No. 2 Marquette 56.
ReplyDeleteSome things about this broadcast:
1. I had forgotten how tense and gripping it was to listen to a stall in a big game on the radio.
2. I always had the mistaken impression that Jim Crews was a bit player on this Hoosiers team, but the future U of E coach was instrumental in this Hoosiers win.
3. It was really eerie in the second half when the emergency alert about the tornadoes came on.
4. This was a three-point game with 25 seconds to go, when Al McGuire got a technical foul coming out of a timeout. From there, the Hoosiers made six of seven free-throw attempts.
5. I remember all of the big-deal players from these two teams--Scott May, Quinn Buckner, Bobby Wilkerson, Kent Benson, Tom Abernathy, Earl Tatum, Bo Ellis, Jerome Whitehead, Butch Lee--but more from their handful of Topps cards from their brief NBA careers than from their NCAA stardom.
Oh, my gosh! Both UNC-Charlotte coach Lee Rose (of Irvine and Transylvania) and UK coach Joe B. Hall (of Cynthiana, UK and then Sewanee: The University of the South) are members of Crestwood Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Lexington! This NIT championship is going to be lit.
ReplyDeleteAt the time, a lot of people thought UK should have hired Lee Rose instead of Joe Hall.
DeleteHe had a really interesting career. His name would always come up in the early stages of WKU coaching searches in the late 1980s and 1990s. It looks to me, though, that he and his wife just totally fell in love with North Carolina, which I get.
DeleteHere’s the sports tease above the masthead for the March 21, 1976, Sunday Herald-Leader of Lexington:
ReplyDeleteWildcats Seek NIT Crown At 1 p.m. Today
It’s Indiana, UCLA, Rutgers and Michigan In NCAA Finals
Sacred Heart Wins Girl’s State Tourney …
All The Details in Section B
And here are the A-1 headlines:
— Patty Hearst Convicted
— Verdict Could Bring 35 Years In Prison
— Family Grieves Over Verdict
— Carroll Top Winner As Legislature Ends
— Cool, But Not As Wet
— 10-Year-Old Angler Hooks Big Surprise
(Spoiler alert: It was a 60-pound, 53.5-inch spoonbill catfish, caught from the Cumberland River in Whitley County.)
Through 20 games of CBK76, the Wildcats were 10-10. And Rick Robey was hurt. Since then, however, UK has won nine straight, and Mike Phillips has emerged as a bruising star. He is the only non-Kentuckian in Coach Hall's starting five today: guards Larry Johnson of Morganfield and Reggie Warford of Drakesboro, forwards Jack Givens and James Lee of Lexington and 6-foot-10, 235-pound center Phillips (down from 255 last season) of Akron, Ohio (but eventually Madisonville).
ReplyDeleteThe stars for Coach Rose's 24-5 Charlotte 49ers are forwards Lew Massey of Pineville and Charlotte and Cedric Maxwell of Kinston and point guard Melvin Watkins of Reidsville--all in North Carolina.
ReplyDeleteSuper Wikipedia:
ReplyDeleteMaxwell received the nickname "Cornbread" from his college teammate Melvin Watkins after the pair went to see the movie Cornbread, Earl and Me,[2] in which a 12-year-old boy is traumatized by the murder of his friend, a star basketball player. Watkins thought that Maxwell looked like the title character (played by Jamaal Wilkes) and so began calling him Cornbread. Since Maxwell did not like the nickname, it did not gain widespread use until Maxwell was named MVP of the NIT tournament in 1976, when, according to Watkins, "The New York media picked up on [the nickname]."[citation needed]
Cornbread, Earl and Me is on HBO this month, per the March 1976 HBO On Air, which I was browsing just yesterday! My gosh, I still love the Internet!
D.G. Fitzmaurice in the Herald-Leader, by the way, offers a little different, more precise take on the church-membership status of today’s coaches than did the TV broadcasters:
ReplyDeleteNEW YORK—Oh, to be the proverbial church mouse this morning when the Rev. Dave Blondell takes the pulpit at Crestwood Christian Church for this week’s Sunday sermon.
For under those somber ministerial robes, one may detect a pair of well-worn sneakers, and far from being blasphemous, the unusual footwear is particularly apt.
Because if Rev. Blondell keeps his sermon short, his parishioners will be able to rush home and watch one current, and one former member of the congregation vie for the 39th annual National Invitation Tournament trophy at 1 p.m. on Channel 27.
Both Kentucky’s Joe Hall, and Lee Rose, currently coaching at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, have attended services at Crestwood Christian, and both say they could use Blondell’s friendly offices today.
“I’ve already invited him as our guest,” smiled Hall in a pre-game conference.
“I wonder who he’s praying for,” interjected Rose.
“In any event,” responded Hall, “this has got to be some kind of NIT record—the first time the two finalists have come from the same church.”
I should've known, incidentally, that the newspaper guy got this little tidbit and someone read it to the TV guy, who then turned it up two notches.
DeleteFitzmaurice reports, by the way, that Robey, incidentally, could return to action in today's game after recovering from knee-ligament damage and the flu. And: "Win or lose, the Cats are scheduled to leave New York at 10:30 p.m. tonight via an Eastern Airlines flight and arrive in Lexington at 1:05 in the morning."
ReplyDelete6:22 left in the first half ... Kentucky 23, UNCC 22 ...
ReplyDeleteWBTV's Jim Thacker: "Statewide across the Old North State, fans are following a new star!"
ReplyDeleteWith about 45 seconds to go in the half, Maxwell forces a UK turnover and then draws the third foul on Phillips. Cornbread's free throws--his 17th and 18th points of the game--put the 49ers ahead, 35-34.
Phillips and Givens are both now on the sidelines with foul trouble. Hall is relying early on reserves Dwane Casey of Morganfield, Merion Haskins of Campbellsville and Bob Fowler of Dearborn Heights, Michigan. Fowler commits an offensive foul attempting to rebound Johnson's miss as the clock winds down. UNCC is in the bonus and makes both free throws: 37-34.
Fowler follows a miss, but his basket is waved off as having been attempted after the buzzer. Coach Hall logs a lengthy protest with the officials but to no avail. 49ers' three-point lead holds at the half.
WBTV goes to an interview with North Carolina Gov. James Holshouser, who "considered becoming a sports writer, and during his senior year he worked on the sports section of The Charlotte Observer. He later figured making a career out of sports would cause him to tire of them, so he decided to do what his father had done and become a lawyer."
The governor goes deep: "The thing that has to impress you, Kentucky has tried everything. They've tried to press. They've tried a tough man to man. They've tried a 1-3-1 zone that was very aggressive. But they still haven't been able to shut off the Charlotte offense. And Maxwell has not only put Mike Phillips on the bench with three fouls, but he's got Jack Givens on the bench with three fouls, and he's got a bunch of other personals on some others. They've tried to close it off and keep him from getting the ball, but every time he's gotten it, somebody's fouled him, just about."
WBTV, per Wikipedia:
ReplyDeleteThe station first signed on the air on July 15, 1949. When it debuted, WBTV was the 13th television station in the United States[2] and the first in the Carolinas; it is the oldest television station located between Richmond and Atlanta. Veteran Charlotte broadcaster Jim Patterson was the first person seen on the station, and remained employed there until his death in 1986. WBTV was originally owned by the Greensboro-based Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company, owners of WBT (1110 AM), the city's oldest radio station and the first fully licensed station in the South. At the time, the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company also had a 16.5% interest in the Greensboro News Company, licensee of WFMY-TV, which signed on from Greensboro two months after WBTV. Jefferson Standard had purchased WBT from CBS in 1947. Shortly before the television station went on the air, its call letters were modified from WBT-TV to WBTV. Jefferson Standard merged with Pilot Life in 1968 (although it had owned controlling interest since 1945) and became Jefferson-Pilot Corporation. In 1970, the media interests were folded into a new subsidiary, Jefferson-Pilot Communications.
WBTV received one of the last construction permits issued before the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) "freeze" on new television licenses, which lasted until the Commission released its Sixth Report and Order in 1952. As such, it was Charlotte's only VHF station for eight years, carrying affiliations with all four major networks of the time—CBS, NBC, ABC and DuMont. However, WBTV has always been a primary CBS affiliate, owing to WBT radio's long affiliation with the CBS Radio Network. It is the only commercial television station in the market that has never changed its primary affiliation. ...
... For many years, WBTV was one of the country's most dominant television stations. This was in part due to being the only reliably viewable station in town for nine years, as well as the station's long tradition of strong local news coverage. In fact, its dominance was so absolute that it was once said the dials of most Charlotteans' television sets were "rusted on channel 3."[19] To this day, WBTV has been one of CBS' strongest affiliates.
DeleteThe station claims credit for a number of television "firsts", among them being the construction of the first building in the United States built specifically for color television broadcasting. WBTV also claims to have been the first station in the world to record and rebroadcast programs on color videotape; to use a live camera and microwave relay inside a race car; and to have a fully computerized news operation. It claims to have been the first station in the country to develop computerized election return projections, to broadcast CBS' ExtraVision teletext service, and to produce a local newscast for a PBS member station (WTVI, channel 42). It claims to be the first station in the Southern U.S. to air color test patterns and color ID slides. WBTV was granted the first full-power construction permit for a digital television signal in the United States in 1998, which went on the air that year operating at 1 million watts[20]–equivalent to 5 million watts for an analog transmitter. ...
A much-remembered women's/homemaker's show, The Betty Feezor Show, aired on channel 3 from the 1950s until 1977 (usually after the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, and in its 15-minute format, Guiding Light). Feezor gave viewers tips on cooking, sewing, floral arranging, and other topics of interest to housewives and mothers. In 1965, the show was the third most-watched women's program in the United States.[20] Feezor's show was also carried on Richmond sister station WWBT after Jefferson-Pilot bought the station in 1968. Feezor retired in 1977 due to a brain tumor, an illness from which she died in 1978.
DeleteThe Betty Feezor Show was replaced by an hour-long midday news and variety show, Top O' the Day. Segments on the program included On the Square, in which Doug Mayes solicited opinions from various Charlotte-area residents about current news topics, as well as C. J. Underwood's Down Home with the Carolina Camera, where otherwise unknown or low-profile Carolinians were temporarily given celebrity status for their whimsical talents, novel collections, or for the way they impacted their communities. For its first five years, the show aired at 12:00 p.m., preempting The Young and the Restless. It shifted to 11:30 a.m. in 1982. To make room for Top O' the Day, WBTV aired The Price Is Right on a one-day delay at 10:30 a.m., preempting whatever game show CBS aired at that time. As a result, Child's Play, Press Your Luck, Card Sharks, and Now You See It never aired in Charlotte. The station didn't air the CBS version of Wheel of Fortune until late in that show's run. Top O' the Day ended in 1992, and was replaced by a conventional half-hour noon newscast. For most of the 1980s, WBTV aired the CBS Evening News on a half-hour delay at 7 p.m., due to its 6:00 p.m. newscast lasting an hour.
For many years, WBTV occasionally preempted some of CBS' Saturday morning cartoons as well. However, area viewers could watch those preempted shows on WSPA-TV in Spartanburg or WFMY through a strong antenna (WFMY and WSPA were and still are available on some cable systems in the Charlotte market, although non-local programming is subject to blackout due to network non-duplication and syndication exclusivity rules). Before the arrival of the Carolina Panthers, WSPA was also known to air a different NFL game than what aired on WBTV, giving most Charlotte-area viewers a second option for NFL games. This was especially true if the Washington Redskins and Atlanta Falcons played at the same time. WBTV favored the Redskins while WSPA favored the Falcons, in tandem with most CBS affiliates in their respective states. ...
From 1982 to 2019, WBTV was the flagship station of syndicated over-the-air coverage of Atlantic Coast Conference sports. Then-owner Jefferson-Pilot took over coverage of men's basketball from longtime producer C. D. Chesley in 1982 in partnership with Raycom, and became the sole producer of ACC football in 1984. Those rights passed to Lincoln Financial after its merger with Jefferson-Pilot in 2006.
DeleteUNCC 42, UK 37 ... Coach Hall timeout early in the second half ...
ReplyDeleteUNCC 54, UK 47 ... 10:12 to go in the second half ... biggest lead of the game ...
ReplyDeleteGivens got his fourth foul nine seconds in the second half; Phillips, 44 seconds later. Lee got his fourth foul at 10:37.
ReplyDeleteThe UK uniforms from 1975 to 1978 are pretty much the best uniforms they ever had.
ReplyDeleteSix-foot-4 forward “Frog” Fowler slips through the UNCC defense for a short banker to get UK back within 54-49, and then Hall gets back in Givens and Phillips despite their foul trouble.
ReplyDeleteAfter a free throw by the 49ers, Givens quickly fires in a 15-footer. Then the teams trade baskets.
Rose has shifted Maxwell off the taller Phillips (Thacker thinks it’s to decrease likelihood of "Cornbread’s" fourth foul), and he’s gone to a spread, more deliberate offense. Maxwell misses from near the free-throw line, and the Wildcat race to the other end for another smooth "Goose" jumper.
57-55 with eight minutes to go …
Fowler transferred to Iowa State after this one season at UK. He averaged a career-high 14.4 points a game in his redshirt sophomore season.
DeleteHe ended up back in Lexington, as an "independent thoroughbred horse agent." He and his wife, a dentist, lived in Nicholasville. Rest in peace, Robert Lee "Frog" Fowler (1956-1988).
49er free throws after a lengthy possession: good and good ... 59-55 ...
ReplyDeleteWildcats race ... Givens misses a short jumper ...
UNCC too quick with a miss ... Givens rebound ... Johnson jumper ... 6:55 ... 59-57 ...
UNCC miss; Phillips rebound … Phillips miss; Maxwell rebound … 5:45 …
ReplyDelete49ers travel … 5:12 … 59-57 …
UNCC 2-3 zone … Warford drives, draws defense and bounces to Fowler underneath the goal … hard foul … Fowler free throws: miss and make … 59-58 …
4:30 ...
Grim tension now clear in the WBTV voices ...
ReplyDeleteUNCC goes in to full stall ... 49ers standing still, guard holding ball on his hip ... Coach Hall waves his Wildcats out of their zone and into a man-to-man defense ... IMMEDIATELY, WARFORD STEALS AND STREAKS FOR A LAYUP: 60-59, KENTUCKY! ... 3:37 to go ...
ReplyDeleteBefore the shot clock, the play where you stole the ball from a team that was stalling was my favorite play in all of basketball.
DeleteI don't believe Thacker used the term in this broadcast, and I didn't think of it until listening to Tony Kornheiser yesterday talking about Larry Brown and Dean Smith (in context of Willis Read's death): "The Four Corners." Thacker kept on calling what UNCC was doing--which was putting one player at each of the four corners of the offensive half of the court, with the fifth player near the free-throw line--as "a slowdown" or "a spread." But I'm pretty sure he didn't call it, "The Four Corners," and I wonder if he and the rest of the Old North State reserved that term for when Dean Smith ran it.
DeleteThe WBTV announcers note that the Madison Square Garden crowd seemed to swing in favor of UK as soon as UNCC slowed down its offense.
ReplyDeleteThree minutes to go, Charlotte retakes the lead: 61-59.
2:11 to go, Charlotte is whistled for charging!
Sorry ... 61-60 here.
DeleteIt's Johnson who draws the charge on the UNCC drive, which Thacker surmises could turn out to be the biggest play of the game.
ReplyDeleteThen Johnson bottoms a 10-foot jumper to give the Wildcats back the advantage: 62-61.
Thacker notes UK's four NCAA and one NIT championship--"a rich basketball heritage."
Coach Hall reverts to a zone defense. Phillips, from the middle of the 2-3, dives for a bounce pass to Maxwell, but he's late. Cornbread banks in the short field goal, and it's 63-62, 49ers, with 1:27 to play ...
ReplyDelete"Cardiac moments," WBTV's Thacker comments, as Coach Rose huddles with his assistants, Everett Bass and Mike Pratt.
ReplyDeleteBass (an all-Lexington player at Henry Clay) starred for Rose at Transylvania in the early 1970s. He eventually followed Rose from UNCC to Purdue and was an assistant coach on the Boilermakers' CBK80 Final Four team. Then he followed Rose to South Florida, and then he got into waste management--in Texas and South Africa, at least ...
DeleteTransylvania University Alumni
DeleteOn #NationalPhilanthropyDay, Transylvania honors and thanks Everett Bass ’72. His classmates knew him as one of the (still!) best basketball players in Transy history, as well as “a super-nice guy.” After graduation, he parlayed his athletic abilities into multiple college assistant coaching jobs—following his former Transy coach Lee Rose. When his coaching career ended, he became an executive with Waste Management in Texas. He also spent time assisting Johannesburg, South Africa in setting up their own modern waste management system post-apartheid—changing the quality of life for its residents forever. Everett served as a member of our Board of Trustees for years and continues to give back to his alma mater as a President’s Circle member. When he stops by campus, he always brings with him an infectious smile and a passion for Transy. Thank you, Everett, for all you have done to help Transy students, and communities worldwide.
Pratt, of course, is Mike Pratt.
DeleteShame on me, I did not realize that Pratt followed Rose as the head coach at UNCC. By the time I got to WKU and started eating RAX and watching the Hilltoppers against UNCC in the Sun Belt, the 49ers coach was Jeff Mullins (who is a whole other Lafayette/vs.-Washington-Bullets/running-buddy-with-a-guy-I-went-to-church-with-in-Raleigh kettle of fish for me).
DeleteAnyway, point is this whole game and post has turned in to a whole sedimentary mineral strike on my sports and church lives (wait, my wife went to Transy!), and so that means we're probably just going to have to wait until tomorrow to close out the final 1:27.
DeleteMaxwell has five second-half points. Thacker credits UK's zone.
ReplyDeleteHall was good at using zones to neutralize big guys for the other team. This will come up again in the 1978 Tournament.
DeleteOh, my! Warford zips in a 12-foot dagger to make it 64-63 with 1:03 to play. That's 10 in the second half for the senior guard who averaged 6.5 per game this season for a career-high. Away from the ball, Maxwell is whistled for his fourth foul, and Phillips will be headed to the free-throw line with a chance to make it a four-point Wildcat possession! Coach Rose calls timeout ...
ReplyDeleteWBTV comes back from commercial with footage of UK AD Cliff Hagan standing through the timeout, and he appears to be the only one in his section behind his press row of Madison Square Garden doing so. Thacker: "He looks as young as he did when he came out of Owensboro Senior High School."
ReplyDeleteCoach Rose calls a second straight timeout before Phillips gets to the line for his one-plus-one opportunity ...
Phillips: Good! Good!
ReplyDelete66-63 inside a minute ... UK in the 2-3 ... TURNOVER, UNCC! ... Coach Hall timeout ... 46 seconds ...
"In the balance? The national championship," says Thacker.
ReplyDeleteOh, my gosh, UNCC steals the inbounds but then is immediately called for traveling. So then UNCC steals the next inbounds, and this time they immediately throw in a jumpshot! 66-65 ... WHAT A GAME! ...
ReplyDeleteI remember lots of games in the late 1970s and early 1980's where UK had a hard time inbounding the ball at the end of the game. One of the many things I liked about Pitino is that his teams never had that problem.
Delete34 seconds to go ... another UK timeout ...
ReplyDeleteThe second steal was by Maxwell, and the shot was made by Watkins, who made the winning basket against North Carolina State in the semifinals. Thacker: "This young man from Reidsville, North Carolina, his hometown fans looking in today, I'm sure, on WGHP in High Point."
ReplyDeleteIn 1958, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) assigned a third VHF channel frequency to the Piedmont Triad area. The channel 8 allocation was freed up by the move of Florence, South Carolina's WBTW, to channel 13, and was short-spaced to WCHS-TV in Charleston, West Virginia and WXEX-TV (now WRIC-TV) in Petersburg, Virginia. Applicants for the High Point channel 8 allocation included Jefferson Standard Broadcasting, owner of WBTV in Charlotte and WBTW. The owner of WTOB-TV (channel 26; whose channel allocation is now occupied by WUNL-TV) in Winston-Salem was also interested.[1]
DeleteSouthern Broadcast Company—which was 55 percent owned by former WTOB-TV principals, with the remainder owned by former Raleigh UHF station WNAO-TV and residents of High Point[2]—was awarded the license and signed on WGHP on October 14, 1963. It originally operated as an ABC affiliate, taking the affiliation from both WFMY-TV (channel 2) and WSJS-TV (channel 12, now WXII-TV), which previously shared secondary affiliations with the network, taking the Triad region 14 years to gain full-time affiliations for each of the three major networks. WGHP's original studios were located inside the Sheraton Hotel on North Main Street in downtown High Point. ...
As an ABC affiliate, the station occasionally delayed or declined some network programs; for example, it carried the paranormal-themed soap opera Dark Shadows during its network run on ABC, but in the mornings on a day-behind basis, choosing to run classic movies in the afternoons. On the other hand, it did not carry The Edge of Night during its 1975 to 1984 run. In its last years as an ABC affiliate, WGHP aired Nightline on a 30-minute delay in favor of running syndicated programs, most notably M*A*S*H.
Johnson and Warford deftly dribble and pass away 12 seconds, and Johnson will have a one-plus-one for his first free-throw attempts of the afternoon with 22 seconds remaining on the clock. Coach Rose calls timeout ...
ReplyDeleteThacker notes that the 49ers are scheduled to arrive at Douglas Airport in Charlotte via Eastern Airlines shortly after 8 p.m. Eastern.
ReplyDeleteA parade is already scheduled for downtown Charlotte at noon Monday, March 22.
ReplyDeleteJohnson: Good! ... Good! ... 68-65 ... the 49ers hustle up court ... long jumper miss, but UNCC follows ... 68-67 ... last UNCC timeout ... 11 seconds ... WOW! ...
ReplyDeleteTwo seconds elapse before Johnson is again fouled ...
ReplyDeleteMiss! ... BUT PHILLIPS REBOUNDS OVER MAXWELL AND SCORES ... AND IS FOULED ... Johnson hugs Phillips; 6-1 Warford leaps into the arms of 6-10 Phillips ...
ReplyDeletePhillips: Good. Miss.
ReplyDeleteFinal: UK 71, UNCC 67.
Tremendous game. Tremendous game!
I did not watch this game. But I remember playing somewhere in the house on Sunday afternoon -- maybe in the kitchen -- and suddenly hearing this EXPLOSION of noise from the den where my parents were watching the game. That was how I learned that UK had won the NIT.
DeleteSam Goldaper in the Monday New York Times:
ReplyDeleteYou can find a Reggie Warford on most any college basketball team in the country. He is the high school hotshot who gets lost in a wealth of other high school hotshots, all recruited for the same position.
But if he is lucky, there comes a day when a Reggie Warford can have his day. Like yesterday, when Reggie Warford, Kentucky's lone senior, led the Wildcats to a 71-67 victory over North Carolina at Charlotte (U.N.C.C.) in the final of the National Invitation Tournament at Madison Square Garden.
... The stage for Warford, who scored only 3 points in the previous three games -- all on free throws -- was set when Kentucky got into serious second-half foul trouble. Jack Givens, the team's leading scorer all season long, picked up his fourth foul after 9 seconds of the second half. Mike Phillips, the 6-foot-10 center, was charged with his fourth foul 44 seconds later and James Lee, who had sparked the Wildcats to victory in the first two tourney games, was slapped with his fourth violation with 10:37 left.
Warford, a 6-foot-1 backcourt man with 6.8-point season average, picked up the scoring lag with 10 of his 14 points. His driving left-side lay-up put Kentucky ahead, 60-59, and his 15-foot right side jump shot gave the Wildcats a 64-63 advantage, a lead they never relinquished. On that play Maxwell also fouled Phillips and he made both free throws.
Melvin Watkins cut the Kentucky lead to 66-65 with 39 seconds left, but two free throws by Larry Johnson restored the 3-point edge 17 seconds later. When Maxwell's second basket again cut the Wildcat edge to a point with 9 seconds remaining, Phillips' 3-point play 2 seconds later ended all hope for the Forty-Niners.
"It's my win," said Warford after the game, "and no one can take this one away. I'm the only one leaving from this team. It's all over for me. It's back to Drakesboro and the dirt courts when I can do all the shooting I want and there are no 13,000 people watching when you miss."
Drakesboro, Ky., is a town of 1,300 in the western part of the state in where Warford, a sociology major, collected 1,940 career points in leading his high school team to the regional final.
When someone asked Warford if he had any pro aspirations, he said, "I'm too smart for that. At 6-1 you don't think of things like that unless you are a Jo Jo White, a Nate Archibald or a Calvin Murphy and can do the things they can do. I'm realistic. I'd like to coach. I've seen both sides now. I have learned what discipline is all about."
Warford made his first start in three varsity seasons against Alabama in the final Southeastern Conference game. He started in three of the four N.I.T. game, missing against Kansas State when he tore a muscle in the warmup drill.
Warford said he considered leaving Kentucky during his sophomore season, but held out "because all the jokers told me I couldn't make it. I don't have to listen to anybody anymore."