The Ringmaster - Bartow had ability to get the best effort from his talented Tigers
By Zack McMillin
Originally published 02:12 p.m., April 1, 2003
Updated 02:12 p.m., April 3, 2008
Handed a technical foul by the Southeastern Conference officials, the Memphis State coach turned to his bench along the baseline at Vanderbilt's Memorial Gym and motioned to his players.
Jack Eaton, Memphis State's popular radio play-by-play broadcaster, told those listening on WMC radio that Bartow had beckoned the Tigers to head to the locker room. It was the beginning of the second half - and he was ordering them to just up and leave?
The players, bewildered, walked toward Bartow and huddled.
It was Dec. 30, 1972, and the Tigers were squandering the best half of basketball they had played in this 1972-73 campaign.
For the 2,000 or so Memphis State fans who made the trip, the joy of seeing their Tigers finally fulfilling the massive preseason expectations quickly evaporated. Vanderbilt, ranked 10th in the country, had started to rally and the fans in the old opera house had started to roar.
"It was,'' says Jim Rothman, a 30-year Tiger season-ticket holder, ``the loudest I have ever heard any gym anywhere at anytime in my entire life.''
Thirty years later it is still hard to say whether Bartow's gesture was a momentary lapse in judgment, a shrewd motivational tool or simply a misunderstood reaction to the technical foul.
For those who knew Bartow, the man his players called "Clean Gene," it was an astonishing, electric moment.
``If he said, `Dammit,' it caught your attention,'' says Wes Westfall, one of the team's junior-college transfers. ``You never saw him lose his cool, unless maybe he threw a piece of chalk at the chalkboard.''
Bartow had applied for the Memphis State job after six years at Valparaiso, then a Division 2 school in Indiana. At 42, Bartow had already climbed farther in the coaching profession than he could have imagined when he took his first job, at Shelbina High in Missouri. When he won a state championship at St. Charles (Mo.) High in the St. Louis suburbs, Bartow started dreaming bigger dreams and when he took Valparaiso to the Division 2 NCAA Tournament, he thought maybe he could duplicate that success on a larger scale.
When Memphis State fired Moe Iba in 1970, after successive six-win seasons, Bartow got his chance.
Like Bob Vanatta in the '50s, Bartow took to selling the program to the city. As the story goes, Bartow would give his speaker-circuit speech to a crowd of three guys standing on the corner.
``Gene could apply the salve better than anybody I've known,'' says Wayne Yates, one of Bartow's assistants and his eventual successor as coach. ``He was a great PR man.
``He had Memphis totally sold.''
On this night, however, Bartow felt the referees were disrespecting him and his team. Hence, his outburst and this sudden dramatic moment.
As Bartow gathered the team, Eaton wondered aloud what might happen next.
If Bartow did have thoughts of forfeiting - and he still adamantly denies any such intention - he quickly changed his mind. The huddle dispersed, the roar began building to a crescendo and the Tigers poised themselves for a wild finish.
``We were in a fight for our lives - several things had gone wrong - and I had to get some attention,'' Bartow would say after the game.
The final 13 minutes foreshadowed similar gut-wrenching finishes by this Tiger team.
With four players fouled out - including starters Ronnie Robinson, Wes Westfall and Bill Laurie - the decisive plays came not from reliable hometown hero Larry Finch nor from Larry Kenon, the Tigers' emerging superstar.
They came from the bench.
Kenny Andrews, called Buffalo because his face looked like a buffalo nickel, tipped in a miss.
Clarence Jones, a rangy freshman from Alabama, hit a key free throw.
Doug McKinney - wild man McKinney - dropped in a layup.
The result - a 74-71 win that showed exactly why Bartow would go on to win 647 college basketball games, no matter that some did not consider him a strategic genius.
He knew how to reach people from all backgrounds and convince them to follow his plan for their success.
``We were all young and dumb and crazy, but he was a master genius at supervising everything,'' says Billy Buford, the team's sixth-man. ``He really knew how to narrow things down, and just had that ability to blend us all together.''
Calculated or not, Bartow's antics on the sidelines at Vanderbilt had a galvanizing effect, not just on that game, but on the ongoing process of forging so many disparate personalities into a team.
``I told him on his postgame show," Eaton says, "it was the greatest coaching move I ever saw."
Coming together
``Why, of all places,'' Sen. Bill Bradley once asked, is the ideal of integration ``closest to being achieved on the basketball court?"
Bradley would have fit well into Memphis State's basketball tradition. Like the first two great Tiger players, Forrest Arnold and Win Wilfong, Bradley grew up in a small Missouri town, not far from the Mississippi River. His destiny would lie in other places - as a Rhodes scholar at Princeton, as an NBA champ with the New York Knicks, as a senator from New Jersey - but in his book, Values of the Game, he wrote about basketball in a way that described the 1972-73 Tigers.
``I believe,'' he wrote, answering his own question, ``it's because the community of a team is so close that you have to talk with one another; the travel is so constant that you have to interact with one another; the competition is so intense that you have to challenge one another; the game is so fluid that you have to depend on one another; the high and low moments so frequent that you learn to share them; the season is so long that it brings you to mutual acceptance.''
Billy Ted Turnipseed is an ol' country boy from Lexington, Tenn., who has served as an administrator for elementary schools on overseas U.S. military bases for more than a decade. He has traveled the world, collected untold numbers of friends and collected a couple of storage sheds of memories.
Turnipseed was one of two student managers for the 1972-73 team. He washed the uniforms, made sure Ronnie Robinson's lucky socks did not get washed, made sure the locker room radio was dialed to WDIA.
He still remembers the camaraderie on that team, and he sometimes finds himself referencing it when he's making a point about teamwork to those working for him.
``I never had a sense of whiteness or blackness anytime in all my tenure there,'' says Turnipseed, now living in Naples, Italy. ``There was just a tremendous amount of respect. I think they loved each other, I really do.''
It started for this Tiger team in the pickup games before the season.
It extended to the early season practices, too.
Everyone remembers the day Kenon soared through the lane and threw down a vicious dunk - dunks were illegal in 1972-73 - to make a point about respect.
``I cannot remember, before or since, being with a tighter-knit group, on and off the court,'' says Jim Liss, a backup point guard who won the Arkansas game with a free throw. ``I don't think people can ever understand the respect we had for one another.''
There was no disputing the team's three stars - Finch, Robinson and Kenon - accounted for 67 percent of the scoring.
But throughout the season - just like that memorable night at Vanderbilt's Memorial Gym - the difference between winning and losing often fell to role players.
It might have been gritty point guard Laurie, applying his defense or diving for loose balls.
Or maybe McKinney, the spirited senior with the playboy looks and fearless attitude.
Though Kenon overshadowed them with his playing genius, the team's other junior-college transfers, Buford and Wes Westfall, would carry their own memories of individual glory out of 1973.
This does not happen for teams with fractures between personalities and friction between egos.
``There is no question a lot of the success of our team came because everybody stuck together and knew their role,'' says Laurie.
It even pertained to the coaching staff.
Yates, former Tiger star and Los Angeles Laker, got the best players.
Leroy Hunt - ``Draw 'Em Up Leroy,'' Buford called him - provided the Xs and Os.
Bartow brought the vision together, built enormous confidence in each of the players and created the atmosphere conducive to harmony and, thus, to winning.
``They were a dynamite mix, like three perfect pieces to a puzzle," Turnipseed said. "I always watched 'em in awe.''
Yates, for his part, believes that Finch was the key to it all.
He was a great player, yes. He was a great leader, too.
``The person who should get the most credit for the blending is Larry Finch,'' says Yates. ``He helped establish a great atmosphere, and kept everything positive.''
Headed into the first game of the Missouri Valley season, the Tigers weren't difficult to scout. Robinson and Finch were givens, and Kenon was emerging as the best big man in the country east of UCLA's Bill Walton.
But how does one stop camaraderie? How does one defend cohesion?
``The right path,'' Bradley wrote, ``is really very simple: Give respect to teammates of a different race, treat them fairly, disagree with them honestly, enjoy their friendship, explore your common humanity, share your thoughts about one another candidly, work together for a common goal, help one another achieve it."
One way in
In 1972-73, the NCAA Tournament's calculus was unforgiving. If you played in a conference, there was one way to earn a bid - by winning your conference outright.
To go to the NCAAs, Memphis needed to win the regular-season championship of the Missouri Valley Conference.
That task began on the always perilous Valley road.
To be precise, it began on an icy Iowa highway three days into 1973, aboard a bus going 20 mph through the frozen Midwestern night.
Beating Drake at Drake could be tough enough in normal circumstances. Doing it after a harrowing night of travel made the task more daunting.
``I thought we were going to die,'' says Bill Cook, a freshman guard who, like most Tigers, was not accustomed to severe winter weather. ``There were these mounds of snow in the parking lot; they looked like big ol' igloos.''
The Commercial Appeal beat writer, Bob Jones, described the Tigers' Missouri Valley Conference opener with Drake as ``a double-overtime thriller that had a Veterans Auditorium crowd of 11,100 constantly clutching at its heart.''
It also had the Drake fans searching their programs for the bundle of energy wearing No. 20 for Memphis State, one Billy Buford.
``Billy Bipp,'' Larry Finch would tell Sports Illustrated later that season, ``he's our fire man.''
In other words, B.B., as many called him, supplied the spark. He came off the bench to rescue the Tigers in times of crisis.
By February, Buford would come to relish his role, but, as the Tigers prepared for Drake, he still believed he should be treated as a star.
He'd been a star at Glasgow High and Paducah Junior College in Kentucky. He'd been an all-American in junior college and turned down a slew of big-time schools eager to add a smooth 6-7 forward to their roster.
``I struggled with that,'' says Buford. ``A lot of that had to do with my ego and my pride.''
The 51-year-old Billy Buford understands things the 21-year-old Billy Buford was only beginning to realize. A former heroin addict who now is a supervisor for an alternative drug sentencing program in Bowling Green, Ky., Buford takes great pride in, as he puts it, ``being a Tiger.''
What's that mean? Try this: During the 2000 season, upon watching Louisville lay a first-half whipping on the Tigers, Buford bolted out of the luxury suite at The Pyramid and angrily confronted the Tigers before they returned to the floor.
Buford remains one of the greatest talkers in the history of Tiger basketball, and his brash confidence spilled onto the basketball court.
``Billy didn't walk, he be-bopped," said Turnipseed. "He was like Will Smith before there was Will Smith.''
Unlike Will Smith, Buford was not handed a starring role in this production. For Buford, finding his place on a team with three undisputed stars - Finch, Robinson and Kenon - meant redirecting some of his enormous pride.
``For me, the breakthrough came with the removal of me trying to prove something,'' Buford says. ``I personally made the commitment that this ain't about me, this is about my team's success. I just needed to play the time I was getting.''
In the Tigers' 50-minute battle with Drake, Buford found his moment.
It came in the second overtime, after McKinney - of all people - hit a 15-foot jumper over two defenders to tie it at the buzzer.
It was one of only 15 shots McKinney would hit all season.
When Drake took a quick two-point lead in the second overtime, Buford went to work, scoring 10 of the Tigers' next 13 points.
The Tigers won their league opener, 97-92.
They'd trundle through the snow to make it 2-0 two nights later at Bradley.
That game was televised back to Memphis, so Tiger fans could see Finch break the school record for points scored in three seasons. Finch didn't get the 13 points he needed to break the record - he scored just 8 - but even that couldn't stop the Tigers.
As Bartow left the court, an angry Bradley fan delivered an elbow to his stomach.
Clean Gene did not make an issue of it. It's marvelous, how winning can improve a man's humor, and, besides, the Tigers had seven straight home games ahead of them.
The team that left Memphis not yet secure in its championship ambitions returned to the city ready to seize control of its destiny. With busing set to begin in the city schools in just a few weeks, with those B-52s still bombing away ahead of a Vietnam cease-fire, the city prepared to rally around the Tigers for a month-long homestand.
``We have the possibility of being a great team,'' Bartow said after the game. ``And we just might be getting there.''
Sunday, April 06, 2008
1973 - Rough Start - Tigers tumble early in season, despite their stars
Rough Start - Tigers tumble early in season, despite their stars
By Zack McMillin
Sunday, March 30, 2003
Wayne Yates never much liked airplane travel, so as the turbulence buffeted the Continental flight, the dapper Memphis State assistant coach tried to calm himself.
Headed to Amarillo, Texas, to see a junior-college recruit named Larry Kenon, Yates stared straight ahead as the West Texas squall threatened to knock the plane from the sky.
"Folks," the pilot said, coming over the intercom, "this is what we call threading the needle."
As the lead recruiter for Tiger basketball coach Gene Bartow, Yates endured airplane travel as a part of his profession, and the trip to Amarillo had become a common destination.
Yates knew he needed to do more than just find replacements for senior big men Don Holcomb and Fred Horton. To compete for a national title - and this was the goal for Memphis State in 1972-73 - the Tigers needed impact players to help Larry Finch and Ronnie Robinson, best buddies from Orange Mound.
With the plane tossing one way and his stomach turning another, Yates just hoped he'd make it to Amarillo.
"It was a real white-knuckler," says Yates. "It was awful. I remember wondering, `Is this really worth it?' "
If Yates required any reassurance, he needed only reflect on how far the basketball program had traveled in the two years under Bartow - and remind himself how much the city was counting on the 1972-73 squad to do something special.
"From the end of Larry's and Ronnie's junior year, everyone . . . felt that if we could get just a little help, we'd get to the Final Four," Yates says. "That's all that was talked about. Everyone believed in it. It was like a religion."
Finch and Robinson had exceeded all expectations after joining the varsity squad as sophomores (freshmen were not then eligible to play) for the 1970-71 season.
Their decision to play for Memphis State - so unpopular in and around their Orange Mound community - had been more than vindicated.
As Finch and Robinson rejuvenated the program, the embrace of the Tiger faithful grew stronger, and as the affection for them grew, they seemed to respond with even better basketball. It was a cycle that constantly seemed to regenerate.
It was just as Verties Sails, their mentor at Melrose, had predicted when Finch frustrated many in his neigborhood by signing with the Tigers and then-coach Moe Iba.
"You go out there," Sails had told him, "and you do well and everybody that didn't want you to go, they gonna jump on the bandwagon like most fans."
When Bartow replaced Iba in 1970 after successive six-victory seasons, he installed an up-tempo offense and Finch and Robinson thrived, making the All-Valley squad as sophomores and juniors.
In 1970-71, the Tigers won 14 of their first 16 games and the Mid-South Coliseum began selling out regularly for the first time since it opened in 1965.
In 1971-72, with Finch earning league player of the year honors, the Tigers beat Louisville twice to tie the Cardinals for the regular-season championship of the Missouri Valley Conference. It took a wildly controversial Valley playoff game with Louisville, in Nashville, to keep the Tigers from the NCAA Tournament and a likely run to the Final Four.
But if the basketball was inspired, the reaction to the team was unprecedented.
Thousands of fans made that trip to Vanderbilt for the ill-fated playoff game, and those who remained home remember a Saturday night with streets empty of traffic.
Unlike the 1957 team that made the NIT finals, this team truly looked like all of Memphis - some white players, some black - and the two star players, Finch and Robinson, grew up one neighborhood removed from the university.
"This team has unified the city like it's never been unified before," Mayor Wyeth Chandler said after that season. "Black and white, rich and poor, young and old are caught up in its success."
It was against this backdrop that Yates pursued Kenon, and not even that rough plane ride could shake Yates's belief that Kenon was the missing piece to a championship puzzle.
"I went to see him play many, many times; I was never disappointed," says Yates. "I never lost my focus. He showed me every night he could play."
Billy Buford and Wes Westfall, two other junior-college recruits, possessed their own charms as basketball players, and Memphis State's main high school recruits - Bill Cook and Clarence Jones chief among them - were highly coveted, as well.
But anyone who saw Kenon knew his presence would transform the Tigers. Many describe his hands as the largest they have ever seen - Kenon's palms made the basketball look like a grapefruit - and, for someone so long and so lanky, Kenon possessed astonishing agility and balance to go with explosive leaping ability.
Even though he did not play organized basketball until his junior year at Birmingham's old Ullman High, Kenon was a natural. He averaged 27.6 points and 25.1 rebounds his sophomore year at Amarillo, and earned the honor of trying out for the 1972 Olympic team.
"It was pretty clear he was a pro," says Denny Crum, then the Louisville coach.
Add Kenon to the team's two homegrown superstars - Finch and Robinson - and the Tigers would have a starting lineup on an equal footing with every college team in America save UCLA.
Yates found recruiting much easier once he brought players to campus, where they found Finch earnestly entreating them to join him and black Memphians like Leonard Draper and Isaac Hayes helping woo them.
Not to mention a city all agog with Tiger basketball.
"Tigers to NCAA - '73," it read on the Owen Lumber marquee over on Summer.
"The credit to that great recruiting year goes to the atmosphere that existed in Memphis at that time," says Yates. "Everyone, without exception, was behind the basketball program."
In other ways, Memphis faced enormous challenges.
Like so many other places in America, and especially in the South, Memphis was going through a kind of adolescence in 1972-73 - enduring the pains of growth and coping with an ever-expanding set of new realities.
Busing had started in the city, with more than 7,000 students leaving the school system.
In Vietnam, B-52 bombers hit Hanoi, trying to achieve what President Nixon called "an honorable peace."
Memphis considered putting a dome on Memorial Stadium to enhance its NFL chances, and Memphis State unveiled unfunded plans for a 16,000-seat on-campus arena.
The Supreme Court decided, in Roe vs. Wade, for a woman's right to choose.
The city grappled with how - and whether - to approve cable TV ventures.
Presidents Truman and Johnson died. Nixon defeated McGovern in a landslide, and, according to a Gallup Poll, was the man Americans most admired, far ahead of the No. 2, Billy Graham.
Memphis moved up to No. 16 in a list of the nation's largest cities, two spots behind San Francisco and two in front of Boston.
Apollo's 17th and final mission ended.
Bellevue Baptist Church welcomed a new pastor to Midtown, a Florida man with a "golden deep voice" and "magnetic appeal" named Adrian Rogers.
Chief Justice Lewis F. Powell, in a speech to the American Bar Association, condemned a "new ethic" in America, saying, "The overriding concern - not merely of the youth but of large segments of our people - often seems to be a highly individualized self-interest. One's chief allegiance is to his own conscience and his own desires."
In Memphis, at least, basketball had found a way to unite large numbers of people with uncommon interests.
When Kenon pledged to become the cornerstone of an eight-player recruiting class, the Tigers emerged as favorites to win the Valley and a darkhorse pick to make the Final Four in St. Louis.
The sports information director at Memphis, a sparkplug of ideas named Bill Grogan, captured the city's basketball fever with his own interpretation of the old song, Meet Me in St. Louis, Louie.
There in the preseason media guide, Grogan called out a challenge to mighty UCLA, winner of six straight national championships.
Meet me in St. Louis, Wooden,
Beat your Bruins there!
By August, there were no season tickets available - the Mid-South Coliseum was sold out for the entire season. In November, just two weeks before the season opened, Bartow announced that UCLA had added Memphis to the schedule for the 1974-75 season.
Such was the mood when the Tigers opened the season Dec. 2 against Missouri-Western at the Coliseum, with Tiger fans giddy to greet the season.
"Everybody could not wait for the ballgames - it was like the greatest show in town," says Bill Cook, who turned down offers from across the nation. "That old roundhouse over there, man, it got very vocal and very rocking.
"I just wanted to be a part of it."
And yet, just 18 minutes into the first half of the first game all the buildup seemed suddenly like a cruel taunt.
Robinson, the Tigers' senior big man, lay still on the hardwood, and his shouts of pain indicated the worst. His trick knee had given way, sending the man everyone called Big Cat collapsing to earth.
The next morning, The Commercial Appeal ran a picture of Robinson's long, lean body stretched across the floor, head cradled in his arms.
"I remember looking over there and seeing Bartow ready to swallow his tie," says Bob Jones, the beat writer for The Commercial Appeal. "It was a scary moment."
Scary, because Robinson had overcome doubts about his ability and become the Tigers' warrior. It was hard to conceive of winning a Missouri Valley Conference title - and its lone NCAA Tournament bid - without his inside power.
"Ronnie, being from Orange Mound, he'd go out on the court and he'd say, `Come on and get some of this, you ain't gonna do nothing with this team,' " says Buford, the Tigers energetic sixth-man. "He's the one who would tell us, `C'mon, fellas. Let's go. Let's get busy.' "
Robinson had a unique style. Stronger than he looked and blessed with athleticism, Robinson would time missed shots just so, bounce high off the ground, squeeze the basketball and then kick his legs out, wide as you please.
He more than retrieved missed shots. He snatched them forcefully and cleared out space with those arms and legs all akimbo.
On offense, who could forget that lefthanded turnaround jumper, as sweet as the coconut cakes and sweet potato pies Momma Robinson used to bake for the team?
Tiger radio man Jack Eaton tagged Robinson with his nickname because, as he put it, "when I saw this cat jump over the fence in my backyard, it was just like Ronnie Robinson going up for a rebound and so he was the Big Cat."
His knee problems dated back to high school, though Robinson did not have surgery to repair them until his freshman year at Memphis.
Sails, Robinson's assistant coach at Melrose, believes the procedure did more than simply repair old damage in the knee. Eight days of inactivity combined with regular hospital meals transformed Robinson.
"They brought him his clothes," remembers Sails, "and he couldn't fit into any of them. He'd gained 20 pounds."
With the knee flaring up again, nobody could know for certain how long Robinson would need to recuperate. A preseason Bartow described as ragged already had the coaching staff concerned about effectively blending talented newcomers with the established stars like Finch and Robinson.
Robinson's injury only added to their early season frustrations.
"We weren't what I would describe as a fine-tuned machine," says Bartow. "We weren't hitting on all cylinders."
In the season's second game, at Louisiana State, Robinson played only 17 minutes and the Tigers lost by 13 to a team that, with new coach Dale Brown, was picked to finish last in the SEC.
Like the city itself, the Tigers were struggling to find harmony.
"The chemistry hadn't arrived," Bartow said.
That LSU game began a troubling seven days for the Tigers. They would lose three of four games, hitting bottom after blowing a 10-point second-half lead to Texas at the Coliseum. It was only the third time in three years the Tigers had lost on their home floor.
Buford sat crying in the locker room after the one-point loss, a moment Kenon recalls as a turning point for the team.
"It had a profound effect," says Kenon. "For some reason, I felt like we'd be a good team after that."
It was hard to see then, but Kenon's premonition was a good one.
Bartow, the basketball coach with the mad scientist glasses, was about to work his basketball alchemy.
By Zack McMillin
Sunday, March 30, 2003
Wayne Yates never much liked airplane travel, so as the turbulence buffeted the Continental flight, the dapper Memphis State assistant coach tried to calm himself.
Headed to Amarillo, Texas, to see a junior-college recruit named Larry Kenon, Yates stared straight ahead as the West Texas squall threatened to knock the plane from the sky.
"Folks," the pilot said, coming over the intercom, "this is what we call threading the needle."
As the lead recruiter for Tiger basketball coach Gene Bartow, Yates endured airplane travel as a part of his profession, and the trip to Amarillo had become a common destination.
Yates knew he needed to do more than just find replacements for senior big men Don Holcomb and Fred Horton. To compete for a national title - and this was the goal for Memphis State in 1972-73 - the Tigers needed impact players to help Larry Finch and Ronnie Robinson, best buddies from Orange Mound.
With the plane tossing one way and his stomach turning another, Yates just hoped he'd make it to Amarillo.
"It was a real white-knuckler," says Yates. "It was awful. I remember wondering, `Is this really worth it?' "
If Yates required any reassurance, he needed only reflect on how far the basketball program had traveled in the two years under Bartow - and remind himself how much the city was counting on the 1972-73 squad to do something special.
"From the end of Larry's and Ronnie's junior year, everyone . . . felt that if we could get just a little help, we'd get to the Final Four," Yates says. "That's all that was talked about. Everyone believed in it. It was like a religion."
Finch and Robinson had exceeded all expectations after joining the varsity squad as sophomores (freshmen were not then eligible to play) for the 1970-71 season.
Their decision to play for Memphis State - so unpopular in and around their Orange Mound community - had been more than vindicated.
As Finch and Robinson rejuvenated the program, the embrace of the Tiger faithful grew stronger, and as the affection for them grew, they seemed to respond with even better basketball. It was a cycle that constantly seemed to regenerate.
It was just as Verties Sails, their mentor at Melrose, had predicted when Finch frustrated many in his neigborhood by signing with the Tigers and then-coach Moe Iba.
"You go out there," Sails had told him, "and you do well and everybody that didn't want you to go, they gonna jump on the bandwagon like most fans."
When Bartow replaced Iba in 1970 after successive six-victory seasons, he installed an up-tempo offense and Finch and Robinson thrived, making the All-Valley squad as sophomores and juniors.
In 1970-71, the Tigers won 14 of their first 16 games and the Mid-South Coliseum began selling out regularly for the first time since it opened in 1965.
In 1971-72, with Finch earning league player of the year honors, the Tigers beat Louisville twice to tie the Cardinals for the regular-season championship of the Missouri Valley Conference. It took a wildly controversial Valley playoff game with Louisville, in Nashville, to keep the Tigers from the NCAA Tournament and a likely run to the Final Four.
But if the basketball was inspired, the reaction to the team was unprecedented.
Thousands of fans made that trip to Vanderbilt for the ill-fated playoff game, and those who remained home remember a Saturday night with streets empty of traffic.
Unlike the 1957 team that made the NIT finals, this team truly looked like all of Memphis - some white players, some black - and the two star players, Finch and Robinson, grew up one neighborhood removed from the university.
"This team has unified the city like it's never been unified before," Mayor Wyeth Chandler said after that season. "Black and white, rich and poor, young and old are caught up in its success."
It was against this backdrop that Yates pursued Kenon, and not even that rough plane ride could shake Yates's belief that Kenon was the missing piece to a championship puzzle.
"I went to see him play many, many times; I was never disappointed," says Yates. "I never lost my focus. He showed me every night he could play."
Billy Buford and Wes Westfall, two other junior-college recruits, possessed their own charms as basketball players, and Memphis State's main high school recruits - Bill Cook and Clarence Jones chief among them - were highly coveted, as well.
But anyone who saw Kenon knew his presence would transform the Tigers. Many describe his hands as the largest they have ever seen - Kenon's palms made the basketball look like a grapefruit - and, for someone so long and so lanky, Kenon possessed astonishing agility and balance to go with explosive leaping ability.
Even though he did not play organized basketball until his junior year at Birmingham's old Ullman High, Kenon was a natural. He averaged 27.6 points and 25.1 rebounds his sophomore year at Amarillo, and earned the honor of trying out for the 1972 Olympic team.
"It was pretty clear he was a pro," says Denny Crum, then the Louisville coach.
Add Kenon to the team's two homegrown superstars - Finch and Robinson - and the Tigers would have a starting lineup on an equal footing with every college team in America save UCLA.
Yates found recruiting much easier once he brought players to campus, where they found Finch earnestly entreating them to join him and black Memphians like Leonard Draper and Isaac Hayes helping woo them.
Not to mention a city all agog with Tiger basketball.
"Tigers to NCAA - '73," it read on the Owen Lumber marquee over on Summer.
"The credit to that great recruiting year goes to the atmosphere that existed in Memphis at that time," says Yates. "Everyone, without exception, was behind the basketball program."
In other ways, Memphis faced enormous challenges.
Like so many other places in America, and especially in the South, Memphis was going through a kind of adolescence in 1972-73 - enduring the pains of growth and coping with an ever-expanding set of new realities.
Busing had started in the city, with more than 7,000 students leaving the school system.
In Vietnam, B-52 bombers hit Hanoi, trying to achieve what President Nixon called "an honorable peace."
Memphis considered putting a dome on Memorial Stadium to enhance its NFL chances, and Memphis State unveiled unfunded plans for a 16,000-seat on-campus arena.
The Supreme Court decided, in Roe vs. Wade, for a woman's right to choose.
The city grappled with how - and whether - to approve cable TV ventures.
Presidents Truman and Johnson died. Nixon defeated McGovern in a landslide, and, according to a Gallup Poll, was the man Americans most admired, far ahead of the No. 2, Billy Graham.
Memphis moved up to No. 16 in a list of the nation's largest cities, two spots behind San Francisco and two in front of Boston.
Apollo's 17th and final mission ended.
Bellevue Baptist Church welcomed a new pastor to Midtown, a Florida man with a "golden deep voice" and "magnetic appeal" named Adrian Rogers.
Chief Justice Lewis F. Powell, in a speech to the American Bar Association, condemned a "new ethic" in America, saying, "The overriding concern - not merely of the youth but of large segments of our people - often seems to be a highly individualized self-interest. One's chief allegiance is to his own conscience and his own desires."
In Memphis, at least, basketball had found a way to unite large numbers of people with uncommon interests.
When Kenon pledged to become the cornerstone of an eight-player recruiting class, the Tigers emerged as favorites to win the Valley and a darkhorse pick to make the Final Four in St. Louis.
The sports information director at Memphis, a sparkplug of ideas named Bill Grogan, captured the city's basketball fever with his own interpretation of the old song, Meet Me in St. Louis, Louie.
There in the preseason media guide, Grogan called out a challenge to mighty UCLA, winner of six straight national championships.
Meet me in St. Louis, Wooden,
Beat your Bruins there!
By August, there were no season tickets available - the Mid-South Coliseum was sold out for the entire season. In November, just two weeks before the season opened, Bartow announced that UCLA had added Memphis to the schedule for the 1974-75 season.
Such was the mood when the Tigers opened the season Dec. 2 against Missouri-Western at the Coliseum, with Tiger fans giddy to greet the season.
"Everybody could not wait for the ballgames - it was like the greatest show in town," says Bill Cook, who turned down offers from across the nation. "That old roundhouse over there, man, it got very vocal and very rocking.
"I just wanted to be a part of it."
And yet, just 18 minutes into the first half of the first game all the buildup seemed suddenly like a cruel taunt.
Robinson, the Tigers' senior big man, lay still on the hardwood, and his shouts of pain indicated the worst. His trick knee had given way, sending the man everyone called Big Cat collapsing to earth.
The next morning, The Commercial Appeal ran a picture of Robinson's long, lean body stretched across the floor, head cradled in his arms.
"I remember looking over there and seeing Bartow ready to swallow his tie," says Bob Jones, the beat writer for The Commercial Appeal. "It was a scary moment."
Scary, because Robinson had overcome doubts about his ability and become the Tigers' warrior. It was hard to conceive of winning a Missouri Valley Conference title - and its lone NCAA Tournament bid - without his inside power.
"Ronnie, being from Orange Mound, he'd go out on the court and he'd say, `Come on and get some of this, you ain't gonna do nothing with this team,' " says Buford, the Tigers energetic sixth-man. "He's the one who would tell us, `C'mon, fellas. Let's go. Let's get busy.' "
Robinson had a unique style. Stronger than he looked and blessed with athleticism, Robinson would time missed shots just so, bounce high off the ground, squeeze the basketball and then kick his legs out, wide as you please.
He more than retrieved missed shots. He snatched them forcefully and cleared out space with those arms and legs all akimbo.
On offense, who could forget that lefthanded turnaround jumper, as sweet as the coconut cakes and sweet potato pies Momma Robinson used to bake for the team?
Tiger radio man Jack Eaton tagged Robinson with his nickname because, as he put it, "when I saw this cat jump over the fence in my backyard, it was just like Ronnie Robinson going up for a rebound and so he was the Big Cat."
His knee problems dated back to high school, though Robinson did not have surgery to repair them until his freshman year at Memphis.
Sails, Robinson's assistant coach at Melrose, believes the procedure did more than simply repair old damage in the knee. Eight days of inactivity combined with regular hospital meals transformed Robinson.
"They brought him his clothes," remembers Sails, "and he couldn't fit into any of them. He'd gained 20 pounds."
With the knee flaring up again, nobody could know for certain how long Robinson would need to recuperate. A preseason Bartow described as ragged already had the coaching staff concerned about effectively blending talented newcomers with the established stars like Finch and Robinson.
Robinson's injury only added to their early season frustrations.
"We weren't what I would describe as a fine-tuned machine," says Bartow. "We weren't hitting on all cylinders."
In the season's second game, at Louisiana State, Robinson played only 17 minutes and the Tigers lost by 13 to a team that, with new coach Dale Brown, was picked to finish last in the SEC.
Like the city itself, the Tigers were struggling to find harmony.
"The chemistry hadn't arrived," Bartow said.
That LSU game began a troubling seven days for the Tigers. They would lose three of four games, hitting bottom after blowing a 10-point second-half lead to Texas at the Coliseum. It was only the third time in three years the Tigers had lost on their home floor.
Buford sat crying in the locker room after the one-point loss, a moment Kenon recalls as a turning point for the team.
"It had a profound effect," says Kenon. "For some reason, I felt like we'd be a good team after that."
It was hard to see then, but Kenon's premonition was a good one.
Bartow, the basketball coach with the mad scientist glasses, was about to work his basketball alchemy.
1973 - Memphis State: quite a commitment
Memphis State: quite a commitment
By Zack McMillin
Sunday, March 30, 2003
Larry Finch could flat shoot the cover off a basketball. Dirty Red, as they called him over in Orange Mound, had hands strong as a bricklayer's, a barrel chest and arms built sturdy in the old-fashioned way, by play and by work and by nature. Nobody ever accused him of explosive leaping ability, but Finch could hover longer than one might imagine.
Because of his strength and his gift for judging trajectory, every time Larry Finch took a shot, it had a chance.
"He put more spin on the ball," says Larry Kenon, one of his famous teammates, "than anybody I ever played with."
So when Ronnie Robinson tipped the ball to him on the late fall evening of Dec. 1, 1970, Finch took four dribbles, eyed the basket 25 feet away, rose up, pointed his right elbow at the rim and loaded the basketball with backspin.
History does not tell us if the 7,123 at the Mid-South Coliseum that night made like a Melrose crowd and let out a collective "whoosh!" when Finch shot.
Newspaper accounts do tell us what happened next. The ball ripped into the cotton netting, and the Coliseum exploded with joy that had been bottled up too long.
Six seconds into his first varsity game for the Memphis State Tigers basketball team, Larry Finch had the first two points of a career that would produce 1,869 points in only three seasons. He finished with 24 that night against California-Davis, and, in the first game for charismatic new coach Gene Bartow, the Tigers scored more points - 99 - than they had in any game of the previous five seasons.
It was the opening scene in a three-year saga that forever changed Tiger basketball, and the unbridled cheers from that crowd began a kind of catharsis in Memphis, on and off the court. Because while nearly all the fans inside the Mid-South Coliseum that night were white, all five Memphis State starters were black - a rarity for a program in the Deep South in 1970.
Maybe basketball lacked the power to solve the city's racial divisions, but it provided both a welcome distraction and a needed point of hope. When Finch, Robinson and company ended their journey with a loss to UCLA in the 1973 national championship game, the Tigers had more than just captivated Memphis with their talent and enthusiasm for playing a simple game.
They had, in the process, helped people in the city learn to get along.
Tiger fans in St. Louis at that 1973 Final Four brandished signs that said, simply: "Believe in Memphis." It captured the mood of that unforgettable season.
"Memphis State and the rest of the city was racially divided," says Maxine Smith, former executive director of the NAACP. "Sport played such an overwhelming part in our community breaking down barriers."
At some level, it's a preposterous claim. Basketball breaking down racial barriers? Barriers that seem, at times, to be as intractable and forbidding today as ever?
But most anyone who lived through that moment in Memphis's history will attest that it's true. The 1972-73 Memphis State basketball team gave something to citizens from every corner of every neighborhood. It spread a collective joy that sports is uniquely equipped to generate, and the way people describe the city's response to that team has turned into a kind of local folklore.
On the 30th anniversary of that Final Four week in St. Louis, The Commercial Appeal will examine the impact that timeless Tiger team had on the city.
How much influence could a college basketball team have in a city polarized by race and class? To what extent did the city change, and did those changes last? Did that team really help white folks and black folks find common ground? Or is it all a happy myth?
And what were the players really like, anyway? While people tend to recall the team as a powerful social force, it was a collection of characters, too, individuals who didn't seek to change their corner of the world, but might have done so, just the same.
There was the coach so square they called him "Clean" Gene Bartow, who came from a Division 2 school to develop a basketball team powerful enough to put a scare in the best team in the history of college basketball.
There was transcendental Larry Kenon, who helped forever change the options available to talented young basketball players.
There was Billy Buford, one of the all-time great voices in the Tiger locker room, and L'il Bill Laurie, a gritty point guard who became a billionaire.
And at the center of it all were Finch and Ronnie Robinson, sons of mothers who earned their livings as what were then called "domestics," who emerged from Orange Mound to become the unlikeliest of heroes for a city in a slump.
When these two buddies took their spots on the varsity squad in December of 1970, the city was just 30 months removed from perhaps its lowest point, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony at the Lorraine Motel.
Black Memphians detested Memphis's mayor at the time, Henry Loeb, who was described by Stax star and Tiger basketball fan Isaac Hayes as a "staunch racist."
In the following three years, the city's public school system would be riven by a federally mandated busing desegregation plan.
The day before Finch and Robinson began their Tiger careers, the city council met with legendary New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, whose company was in the process of purchasing a Memphis TV station. He asked them to name Memphis's biggest problem. The answer was obvious: race.
Things had improved, but the city was at a crossroads.
Councilman James L. Netters: "There is as much polarization at the grass roots level as ever, maybe more. One serious event, one big event could ignite it again."
Council chairman Mrs. Gwen Aswumb: "We're still very far behind."
Councilman Robert James: "The fever is raging."
On the December day of Finch and Robinson's debut, the wind along the river had cooperated just enough to allow workers to put down the first girder on what then was called the Interstate 40 bridge. Looking back, it's hard not to connect the two events.
Downtown, city fathers celebrated the construction of a new, modern bridge, one that would become a symbol of the city, one that would connect Memphis to the national interstate running clear to California.
In Midtown, in a civic building halfway between the Memphis Country Club and Melrose High, a mostly white crowd celebrated Larry Finch hitting a 25-foot jumper.
It is easy to recall the thicket of problems and frustrations facing the city and the nation in the early '70s, and easy to forget something else. There was idealism then, too. The palpable sense that anything was possible, even amid the chaos of a rapidly changing world.
Men were still landing on the moon twice a year, after all.
Believe in Memphis?
Why not?
A short walk, a long trip
Larry Finch and Ronnie Robinson grew up within easy walking distance of the Mid-South Coliseum in the area of Memphis known as Orange Mound, a place where pride has always run deep.
Finch lived over on Select Street, the oldest of Maple Finch's seven children.
His father, who drove a cab, died when Finch was 13, and his mother worked as a domestic, earning $5.50 a day, the two quarters serving as her bus fare.
Finch learned the game on the outdoor courts in and around Orange Mound, and by pestering older players to include him in their games and practices.
"Larry would be out there, as short as he was, trying to look in and see what we were doing," says Charles Hudson, the golf pro at Pine Hill who played for Melrose in the early '60s. "I would see him out in the cold and I said, `There's that little kid, Finch.' "
Ronnie Robinson lived in a three-room house over in Magnolia - "kind of a suburb of Orange Mound," Robinson says - with his mother and seven siblings.
"One of my goals, I said if I ever get up, I want the biggest bedroom I can find," says Robinson. "It was a pretty tough life growing up, but we didn't know it. To us, that was just the way this life works."
Robinson arrived at Memphis State skinny - 6-8, 175 pounds - in part because he would literally compete with his older brother, Neal, at dinnertime.
"The coaches at Melrose used to wonder why me and Neal got showered and dressed so fast after practice," Robinson says. "I told 'em I had to get home before Neal so I could get something to eat."
Finch and Robinson did not meet until junior high, but by the time they began playing together at Melrose, they were inseparable. As two of the city's most prominent athletes - in any sport, on any level - Finch and Robinson led Melrose to a famous city championship victory at a sold-out Mid-South Coliseum.
Memphis State and then-coach Moe Iba pursued Finch from the time he was a sophomore in high school, but convincing him to sign with the Tigers would be difficult.
Black Memphians did not trust Memphis State, and not without reason.
"They felt like it was a tokenism attitude toward blacks," says Leonard Draper, a black Memphian working in local community centers who Iba enlisted to help recruit.
In those days, black high schools played in what were known as the Negro Leagues, and Charlie Cavagnaro covered them for The Commercial Appeal. He can remember watching the best black players in the city - Charlie Paulk, Rick Roberson, Bobby Smith et al - and thinking Memphis State could have won a national title by putting them together.
"There were these absolutely marvelous basketball players coming along in the city," says Cavagnaro, who later became Tiger athletic director. "Every college but those in the South were in here recruiting. Some great ones got away."
Until 1964, the athletic department did not permit coaches to recruit black athletes. Even when the athletic department declared itself open to black student-athletes, there were complications.
It is still not clear what went wrong with the recruitment of Bobby Smith, a fluid forward from Melrose who many still argue is the best basketball player Memphis ever produced.
When Penny Hardaway signed with the Tigers in 1990, many compared him to Smith in an effort to capture the magnitude of his talent. So when Smith signed with Memphis State and then-coach Dean Ehlers in the spring of 1965, the Tigers were poised to begin a new tradition.
It was a move former Tiger guard Mike Butler, as a student in the mid-60s, had urged the administration to make.
"It needed to happen," says Butler, who often ventured to black neighborhoods for pickup games. "Growing up, I had seen all these great black players going away to school. It really didn't make sense.
"Actually, segregation didn't make sense if you really want to get down to it."
Just before Smith was to enroll, however, the athletic department said he did not meet certain requirements on an entrance exam and denied him admission.
Though Smith would land at Tulsa and go on to enjoy a long and prosperous professional career, the episode created an even-larger divide between Memphis State and black Memphians, especially those in the neighborhood right next door, in Orange Mound.
"People in Orange Mound were really disturbed with Memphis State at the time," says Draper.
When Iba took over the program in 1966, at age 27, the Tigers were preparing to move into the Missouri Valley Conference, then considered one of the best basketball leagues in the country.
It was also considered a "black" league, a crude way of saying most teams in the league featured good black players.
To compete in the Valley, Iba knew he had to cultivate the fertile talent of the Memphis Negro Leagues. The only black player on Iba's first team, Herb Hilliard, was an unrecruited walk-on with modest skills.
There would be other reasons for the Tigers' woeful 3-45 league record those first three seasons in the Valley - Iba's plodding offense, for one - but it was impossible to ignore the head start other Valley schools had in recruiting black players.
"We had a mostly all-white team and it was quite an adjustment for the talent we had," says Iba, a part-time NBA scout now living in Fort Worth, Texas. "Memphis State had just never recruited black athletes. We had to break some ground."
This is what Iba was facing in his recruitment of Finch. Memphis State had never recruited, signed and played a black Memphian out of high school.
"He had to recruit some athletes to stay home," Cavagnaro says. "It's why Larry was so important."
Finch could think of many reasons to stay home and become a Tiger: His family, his growing friendship with Draper, the trust Iba had built with Melrose assistant coach Verties Sails and the commitment the Tigers made to also offer a scholarship to Robinson.
Even with all that, there was immense pressure on Finch within the community to sign elsewhere.
"Larry said, `Coach, if you say not to go, I won't go,' " says Sails, the local junior-college coach who is now a Memphis coaching icon. "I said, `Larry, if you want to go, I'd be crazy if I didn't tell you to do what you want to do.'"
Sails could handle the heat, he told Finch.
"The key was," remembers Sails, "could he handle the heat?"
When Iba assured Sails he was committed to the package deal of Finch-Robinson, Finch finally decided to follow his heart and sign with the Tigers.
William Collins, Larry and Ronnie's coach at Melrose, like many in Orange Mound, felt hurt by the decision. He refused to attend the signing ceremony.
By Zack McMillin
Sunday, March 30, 2003
Larry Finch could flat shoot the cover off a basketball. Dirty Red, as they called him over in Orange Mound, had hands strong as a bricklayer's, a barrel chest and arms built sturdy in the old-fashioned way, by play and by work and by nature. Nobody ever accused him of explosive leaping ability, but Finch could hover longer than one might imagine.
Because of his strength and his gift for judging trajectory, every time Larry Finch took a shot, it had a chance.
"He put more spin on the ball," says Larry Kenon, one of his famous teammates, "than anybody I ever played with."
So when Ronnie Robinson tipped the ball to him on the late fall evening of Dec. 1, 1970, Finch took four dribbles, eyed the basket 25 feet away, rose up, pointed his right elbow at the rim and loaded the basketball with backspin.
History does not tell us if the 7,123 at the Mid-South Coliseum that night made like a Melrose crowd and let out a collective "whoosh!" when Finch shot.
Newspaper accounts do tell us what happened next. The ball ripped into the cotton netting, and the Coliseum exploded with joy that had been bottled up too long.
Six seconds into his first varsity game for the Memphis State Tigers basketball team, Larry Finch had the first two points of a career that would produce 1,869 points in only three seasons. He finished with 24 that night against California-Davis, and, in the first game for charismatic new coach Gene Bartow, the Tigers scored more points - 99 - than they had in any game of the previous five seasons.
It was the opening scene in a three-year saga that forever changed Tiger basketball, and the unbridled cheers from that crowd began a kind of catharsis in Memphis, on and off the court. Because while nearly all the fans inside the Mid-South Coliseum that night were white, all five Memphis State starters were black - a rarity for a program in the Deep South in 1970.
Maybe basketball lacked the power to solve the city's racial divisions, but it provided both a welcome distraction and a needed point of hope. When Finch, Robinson and company ended their journey with a loss to UCLA in the 1973 national championship game, the Tigers had more than just captivated Memphis with their talent and enthusiasm for playing a simple game.
They had, in the process, helped people in the city learn to get along.
Tiger fans in St. Louis at that 1973 Final Four brandished signs that said, simply: "Believe in Memphis." It captured the mood of that unforgettable season.
"Memphis State and the rest of the city was racially divided," says Maxine Smith, former executive director of the NAACP. "Sport played such an overwhelming part in our community breaking down barriers."
At some level, it's a preposterous claim. Basketball breaking down racial barriers? Barriers that seem, at times, to be as intractable and forbidding today as ever?
But most anyone who lived through that moment in Memphis's history will attest that it's true. The 1972-73 Memphis State basketball team gave something to citizens from every corner of every neighborhood. It spread a collective joy that sports is uniquely equipped to generate, and the way people describe the city's response to that team has turned into a kind of local folklore.
On the 30th anniversary of that Final Four week in St. Louis, The Commercial Appeal will examine the impact that timeless Tiger team had on the city.
How much influence could a college basketball team have in a city polarized by race and class? To what extent did the city change, and did those changes last? Did that team really help white folks and black folks find common ground? Or is it all a happy myth?
And what were the players really like, anyway? While people tend to recall the team as a powerful social force, it was a collection of characters, too, individuals who didn't seek to change their corner of the world, but might have done so, just the same.
There was the coach so square they called him "Clean" Gene Bartow, who came from a Division 2 school to develop a basketball team powerful enough to put a scare in the best team in the history of college basketball.
There was transcendental Larry Kenon, who helped forever change the options available to talented young basketball players.
There was Billy Buford, one of the all-time great voices in the Tiger locker room, and L'il Bill Laurie, a gritty point guard who became a billionaire.
And at the center of it all were Finch and Ronnie Robinson, sons of mothers who earned their livings as what were then called "domestics," who emerged from Orange Mound to become the unlikeliest of heroes for a city in a slump.
When these two buddies took their spots on the varsity squad in December of 1970, the city was just 30 months removed from perhaps its lowest point, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony at the Lorraine Motel.
Black Memphians detested Memphis's mayor at the time, Henry Loeb, who was described by Stax star and Tiger basketball fan Isaac Hayes as a "staunch racist."
In the following three years, the city's public school system would be riven by a federally mandated busing desegregation plan.
The day before Finch and Robinson began their Tiger careers, the city council met with legendary New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, whose company was in the process of purchasing a Memphis TV station. He asked them to name Memphis's biggest problem. The answer was obvious: race.
Things had improved, but the city was at a crossroads.
Councilman James L. Netters: "There is as much polarization at the grass roots level as ever, maybe more. One serious event, one big event could ignite it again."
Council chairman Mrs. Gwen Aswumb: "We're still very far behind."
Councilman Robert James: "The fever is raging."
On the December day of Finch and Robinson's debut, the wind along the river had cooperated just enough to allow workers to put down the first girder on what then was called the Interstate 40 bridge. Looking back, it's hard not to connect the two events.
Downtown, city fathers celebrated the construction of a new, modern bridge, one that would become a symbol of the city, one that would connect Memphis to the national interstate running clear to California.
In Midtown, in a civic building halfway between the Memphis Country Club and Melrose High, a mostly white crowd celebrated Larry Finch hitting a 25-foot jumper.
It is easy to recall the thicket of problems and frustrations facing the city and the nation in the early '70s, and easy to forget something else. There was idealism then, too. The palpable sense that anything was possible, even amid the chaos of a rapidly changing world.
Men were still landing on the moon twice a year, after all.
Believe in Memphis?
Why not?
A short walk, a long trip
Larry Finch and Ronnie Robinson grew up within easy walking distance of the Mid-South Coliseum in the area of Memphis known as Orange Mound, a place where pride has always run deep.
Finch lived over on Select Street, the oldest of Maple Finch's seven children.
His father, who drove a cab, died when Finch was 13, and his mother worked as a domestic, earning $5.50 a day, the two quarters serving as her bus fare.
Finch learned the game on the outdoor courts in and around Orange Mound, and by pestering older players to include him in their games and practices.
"Larry would be out there, as short as he was, trying to look in and see what we were doing," says Charles Hudson, the golf pro at Pine Hill who played for Melrose in the early '60s. "I would see him out in the cold and I said, `There's that little kid, Finch.' "
Ronnie Robinson lived in a three-room house over in Magnolia - "kind of a suburb of Orange Mound," Robinson says - with his mother and seven siblings.
"One of my goals, I said if I ever get up, I want the biggest bedroom I can find," says Robinson. "It was a pretty tough life growing up, but we didn't know it. To us, that was just the way this life works."
Robinson arrived at Memphis State skinny - 6-8, 175 pounds - in part because he would literally compete with his older brother, Neal, at dinnertime.
"The coaches at Melrose used to wonder why me and Neal got showered and dressed so fast after practice," Robinson says. "I told 'em I had to get home before Neal so I could get something to eat."
Finch and Robinson did not meet until junior high, but by the time they began playing together at Melrose, they were inseparable. As two of the city's most prominent athletes - in any sport, on any level - Finch and Robinson led Melrose to a famous city championship victory at a sold-out Mid-South Coliseum.
Memphis State and then-coach Moe Iba pursued Finch from the time he was a sophomore in high school, but convincing him to sign with the Tigers would be difficult.
Black Memphians did not trust Memphis State, and not without reason.
"They felt like it was a tokenism attitude toward blacks," says Leonard Draper, a black Memphian working in local community centers who Iba enlisted to help recruit.
In those days, black high schools played in what were known as the Negro Leagues, and Charlie Cavagnaro covered them for The Commercial Appeal. He can remember watching the best black players in the city - Charlie Paulk, Rick Roberson, Bobby Smith et al - and thinking Memphis State could have won a national title by putting them together.
"There were these absolutely marvelous basketball players coming along in the city," says Cavagnaro, who later became Tiger athletic director. "Every college but those in the South were in here recruiting. Some great ones got away."
Until 1964, the athletic department did not permit coaches to recruit black athletes. Even when the athletic department declared itself open to black student-athletes, there were complications.
It is still not clear what went wrong with the recruitment of Bobby Smith, a fluid forward from Melrose who many still argue is the best basketball player Memphis ever produced.
When Penny Hardaway signed with the Tigers in 1990, many compared him to Smith in an effort to capture the magnitude of his talent. So when Smith signed with Memphis State and then-coach Dean Ehlers in the spring of 1965, the Tigers were poised to begin a new tradition.
It was a move former Tiger guard Mike Butler, as a student in the mid-60s, had urged the administration to make.
"It needed to happen," says Butler, who often ventured to black neighborhoods for pickup games. "Growing up, I had seen all these great black players going away to school. It really didn't make sense.
"Actually, segregation didn't make sense if you really want to get down to it."
Just before Smith was to enroll, however, the athletic department said he did not meet certain requirements on an entrance exam and denied him admission.
Though Smith would land at Tulsa and go on to enjoy a long and prosperous professional career, the episode created an even-larger divide between Memphis State and black Memphians, especially those in the neighborhood right next door, in Orange Mound.
"People in Orange Mound were really disturbed with Memphis State at the time," says Draper.
When Iba took over the program in 1966, at age 27, the Tigers were preparing to move into the Missouri Valley Conference, then considered one of the best basketball leagues in the country.
It was also considered a "black" league, a crude way of saying most teams in the league featured good black players.
To compete in the Valley, Iba knew he had to cultivate the fertile talent of the Memphis Negro Leagues. The only black player on Iba's first team, Herb Hilliard, was an unrecruited walk-on with modest skills.
There would be other reasons for the Tigers' woeful 3-45 league record those first three seasons in the Valley - Iba's plodding offense, for one - but it was impossible to ignore the head start other Valley schools had in recruiting black players.
"We had a mostly all-white team and it was quite an adjustment for the talent we had," says Iba, a part-time NBA scout now living in Fort Worth, Texas. "Memphis State had just never recruited black athletes. We had to break some ground."
This is what Iba was facing in his recruitment of Finch. Memphis State had never recruited, signed and played a black Memphian out of high school.
"He had to recruit some athletes to stay home," Cavagnaro says. "It's why Larry was so important."
Finch could think of many reasons to stay home and become a Tiger: His family, his growing friendship with Draper, the trust Iba had built with Melrose assistant coach Verties Sails and the commitment the Tigers made to also offer a scholarship to Robinson.
Even with all that, there was immense pressure on Finch within the community to sign elsewhere.
"Larry said, `Coach, if you say not to go, I won't go,' " says Sails, the local junior-college coach who is now a Memphis coaching icon. "I said, `Larry, if you want to go, I'd be crazy if I didn't tell you to do what you want to do.'"
Sails could handle the heat, he told Finch.
"The key was," remembers Sails, "could he handle the heat?"
When Iba assured Sails he was committed to the package deal of Finch-Robinson, Finch finally decided to follow his heart and sign with the Tigers.
William Collins, Larry and Ronnie's coach at Melrose, like many in Orange Mound, felt hurt by the decision. He refused to attend the signing ceremony.
Memphis players taking coach, fans, city along on joyous NCAA ride
Memphis players taking coach, fans, city along on joyous NCAA ride
By Geoff Calkins (Contact)
Sunday, April 6, 2008
SAN ANTONIO -- Chris Douglas-Roberts cut in along the baseline, took the slick pass from Antonio Anderson, soared in for his customary layup and thought, you know, why not dunk?
So he dunked.
He dunked for Larry Finch, watching from a Memphis hospital. He dunked for Larry Kenon, sitting in the Alamodome. He dunked for John Calipari, who wasn't supposed to be clever enough to win this game. He dunked for Detroit, which will always be his home.
Mostly, though, he dunked for Memphis, for the city and the school, and for the collection of players who never let the expectations of others shape their expectations of themselves.
"They didn't think I could get that high," he said.
Someone put that on a T-shirt, quick.
They didn't think Memphis could get this high, either, clear into Monday and the national championship game.
Thirty-five years after UCLA defeated Memphis in the 1973 championship game, the Tigers earned a second shot at the title Saturday night with a resounding 78-63 victory over UCLA.
"Revenge is sweet," said Vickie Finch, watching from the stands. Finch was at the Final Four in St. Louis 35 years ago, when her true love, Larry, scored 29 points in the loss. Now she was dancing and laughing and taking pictures with her son, Larry Jr.
"It's awesome," she said, "you can't beat this."
Not far away, former '73 forward Larry Kenon sat with Gene Bartow, his old Memphis coach, and exulted in the win.
"If they go, we all go," said Kenon.
Put that on a T-shirt, too.
Because they're going to the national championship game, these Tigers, and they're carrying all of Memphis along.
"I think we'll win it," Kenon said, "we have the best team."
And who can doubt that this morning, after watching the Tigers dismantle a UCLA team that so many thought was perfectly designed to stop what the Memphis players do best?
UCLA had the size, the experience and -- this was the big thing -- the genius on the bench.
That would be Ben Howland, the smartest kid in the coaching class, who is to timeouts as Mendel was to peas.
"There was a column in the Los Angeles Times today that said this was a coaching mismatch," someone told Calipari after the game.
Calipari pondered this.
"I don't think Ben is that bad," he said.
Big laughs all around.
What a wonderful moment that had to be for Calipari, even if he won't admit to it publicly. The guy is not a favorite with the national media. He has never met a fight he couldn't pick. But saying Calipari can't coach is like saying Derrick Rose can't run.
Can't coach?
Then why do his guys play so hard?
Can't coach?
Then why do they defend better than anyone else?
Can't coach?
Then why does he have an entire city believing in this team and, maybe, even themselves?
Calipari has never thought coaching is about proving you're smarter than the other guy. He thinks it's about recruiting great players, teaching them a system, helping them to believe in themselves, and then unleashing the result on an unsuspecting world.
It's almost hilarious, at this point. Every game is the same. The wise guys figure out all these reasons that Memphis might lose. Then the game starts and the wise guys are suddenly muttering and shaking their heads and drawing up post-game questions like these: "Derrick did some things on the court today that left a lot of us slack-jawed ..."
Slack-jawed.
Put that on a T-shirt, too.
They were slack-jawed over Rose (25 points, nine rebounds, four assists and one turnover), they were slack-jawed over Douglas-Roberts (28 points), they were slack-jawed over the free-throw shooting (87 percent) and they were slack-jawed over Joey Dorsey's single-mindedly ferocious game (zero points and 15 rebounds).
Dorsey did write another story for this one, by the way. It was called "No Love for UCLA." It could have been subtitled, "No Collison, either," because that's the way it worked out.
UCLA's Kevin Love had 12 points, but just 2 in the second half. Point guard Darren Collison had two points on 1-of-9 shooting from the field. Calipari might not be much of a coach, but for the 832nd straight game he figured out how to make the other team's best players disappear.
"I coached like I do in every game," he said.
Pause.
"According to some, in a very poor way."
More big laughs. Could it be that Calipari is the genius now?
It certainly can't be Howland who, in addition to ordering up Collison's fifth foul, went out of his way to "credit Memphis State."
Memphis State? Yo, Ben. It's been 14 years!
But this isn't a time for gloating, just dancing, and chest-bumping, and toasting a team that set a national record Saturday with its 38th win of the year.
CBS analyst Billy Packer reminded Calipari about the record in his postgame interview. The Memphis players, circled around Calipari, wondered if they'd heard it right.
"That's it, that's the most wins?" one of them asked.
"No," Calipari said, "you've got to get to 39."
To reach Geoff Calkins, call him at 529-2364 or e-mail calkins@commercialappeal.com
By Geoff Calkins (Contact)
Sunday, April 6, 2008
SAN ANTONIO -- Chris Douglas-Roberts cut in along the baseline, took the slick pass from Antonio Anderson, soared in for his customary layup and thought, you know, why not dunk?
So he dunked.
He dunked for Larry Finch, watching from a Memphis hospital. He dunked for Larry Kenon, sitting in the Alamodome. He dunked for John Calipari, who wasn't supposed to be clever enough to win this game. He dunked for Detroit, which will always be his home.
Mostly, though, he dunked for Memphis, for the city and the school, and for the collection of players who never let the expectations of others shape their expectations of themselves.
"They didn't think I could get that high," he said.
Someone put that on a T-shirt, quick.
They didn't think Memphis could get this high, either, clear into Monday and the national championship game.
Thirty-five years after UCLA defeated Memphis in the 1973 championship game, the Tigers earned a second shot at the title Saturday night with a resounding 78-63 victory over UCLA.
"Revenge is sweet," said Vickie Finch, watching from the stands. Finch was at the Final Four in St. Louis 35 years ago, when her true love, Larry, scored 29 points in the loss. Now she was dancing and laughing and taking pictures with her son, Larry Jr.
"It's awesome," she said, "you can't beat this."
Not far away, former '73 forward Larry Kenon sat with Gene Bartow, his old Memphis coach, and exulted in the win.
"If they go, we all go," said Kenon.
Put that on a T-shirt, too.
Because they're going to the national championship game, these Tigers, and they're carrying all of Memphis along.
"I think we'll win it," Kenon said, "we have the best team."
And who can doubt that this morning, after watching the Tigers dismantle a UCLA team that so many thought was perfectly designed to stop what the Memphis players do best?
UCLA had the size, the experience and -- this was the big thing -- the genius on the bench.
That would be Ben Howland, the smartest kid in the coaching class, who is to timeouts as Mendel was to peas.
"There was a column in the Los Angeles Times today that said this was a coaching mismatch," someone told Calipari after the game.
Calipari pondered this.
"I don't think Ben is that bad," he said.
Big laughs all around.
What a wonderful moment that had to be for Calipari, even if he won't admit to it publicly. The guy is not a favorite with the national media. He has never met a fight he couldn't pick. But saying Calipari can't coach is like saying Derrick Rose can't run.
Can't coach?
Then why do his guys play so hard?
Can't coach?
Then why do they defend better than anyone else?
Can't coach?
Then why does he have an entire city believing in this team and, maybe, even themselves?
Calipari has never thought coaching is about proving you're smarter than the other guy. He thinks it's about recruiting great players, teaching them a system, helping them to believe in themselves, and then unleashing the result on an unsuspecting world.
It's almost hilarious, at this point. Every game is the same. The wise guys figure out all these reasons that Memphis might lose. Then the game starts and the wise guys are suddenly muttering and shaking their heads and drawing up post-game questions like these: "Derrick did some things on the court today that left a lot of us slack-jawed ..."
Slack-jawed.
Put that on a T-shirt, too.
They were slack-jawed over Rose (25 points, nine rebounds, four assists and one turnover), they were slack-jawed over Douglas-Roberts (28 points), they were slack-jawed over the free-throw shooting (87 percent) and they were slack-jawed over Joey Dorsey's single-mindedly ferocious game (zero points and 15 rebounds).
Dorsey did write another story for this one, by the way. It was called "No Love for UCLA." It could have been subtitled, "No Collison, either," because that's the way it worked out.
UCLA's Kevin Love had 12 points, but just 2 in the second half. Point guard Darren Collison had two points on 1-of-9 shooting from the field. Calipari might not be much of a coach, but for the 832nd straight game he figured out how to make the other team's best players disappear.
"I coached like I do in every game," he said.
Pause.
"According to some, in a very poor way."
More big laughs. Could it be that Calipari is the genius now?
It certainly can't be Howland who, in addition to ordering up Collison's fifth foul, went out of his way to "credit Memphis State."
Memphis State? Yo, Ben. It's been 14 years!
But this isn't a time for gloating, just dancing, and chest-bumping, and toasting a team that set a national record Saturday with its 38th win of the year.
CBS analyst Billy Packer reminded Calipari about the record in his postgame interview. The Memphis players, circled around Calipari, wondered if they'd heard it right.
"That's it, that's the most wins?" one of them asked.
"No," Calipari said, "you've got to get to 39."
To reach Geoff Calkins, call him at 529-2364 or e-mail calkins@commercialappeal.com
One to go: After UCLA romp, Tigers eye Jayhawks
One to go: After UCLA romp, Tigers eye Jayhawks
National Championship game comes down to Memphis vs. Kansas on Monday night
By Tom Charlier (Contact)
Sunday, April 6, 2008
SAN ANTONIO -- When Memphis forward Joey Dorsey furiously swatted away a UCLA fast-break attempt with less than four minutes to play on Saturday, Tiger faithful everywhere just knew.
They knew that UCLA, the perennial basketball power that had ruined deep tournament runs by the University of Memphis in 1973 and 2006, would not do it again this year. They knew that the legions of skeptics who had derided the Tigers as a weak-conference team that would crack against elite competition had been proven wrong again.
The fans who began chanting "JO-EY, JO-EY" knew, most importantly, that the UofM would win -- as it did by a score of 78-63 -- to advance to Monday night's national championship game of the NCAA men's basketball tournament against Kansas.
Well, everyone but Martha Moore that is. She was hiding in the restroom, too nervous to watch.
"With six minutes left I had to leave," the 1978 Memphis grad said just after the game ended. "I went to the restroom and called my son, and he said, 'Mom, you've got to go watch; it's history.'"
History it was, and not just for the 38-1 Tigers, who will seek their first-ever title on Monday against the 36-3 Jayhawks.
It was also history because with that 38th win, the Tigers set an NCAA record for victories in a season. They did it with a virtual repeat of their dominating performances in the South Regional last weekend -- by dismantling and overwhelming a quality team with an aggressive drive-and-kick offense, relentless defense and a breathtaking running game.
Little more than halfway into the first half, Bruin players -- even the normally steady guard Russell Westbrook -- looked exhausted and bewildered.
"We played kind of like we've played all year," Tigers coach John Calipari said. "We defended. You know, made it hard on a team that shoots a high percentage."
All-America guard Chris Douglas-Roberts, who led Memphis with 28 points, said the team is distinguished by its unselfishness and positive attitude.
"We believe in ourselves," he said after the win. "So that's all that really matters to us. When we hear (negativity), we laugh because we don't understand it."
It all happened before a national television audience and a revved-up army of UofM fans among the announced Alamodome crowd of 43,718.
For more than two hours Saturday, the liveliest part of the stadium was its northwest corner, where thousands of Tiger fans cheered early and often.
They roared when the team took the floor beneath a tunnel banner that read, "And then there were four." They roared when Douglas-Roberts scored the first Memphis basket 2:20 into the game. They roared when an Antonio Anderson three-pointer two minutes later gave the Tigers their first lead, 11-10.
And they roared loudest -- jumping up and raising their arms -- when the Bruins signaled their submission by refusing to foul with less than a minute left.
Through it all, the fans enjoyed not a game but a spectacle called the Final Four.
"It's a great experience and a lot of fun," said Tiger supporter Scott Shanker. "A lot of energy and a lot of excitement."
The win vindicated the decisions by fans to make whatever sacrifices were necessary to get to San Antonio.
Take Mike Carter, 53, of Iuka, Miss. Just a couple hours before tip-off Saturday, he mimicked a well known credit card commercial in saying his decision to bring his wife, Deborah Thompson, to the Final Four was well worth the cost.
"Five hundred dollars for gas, $660 for tickets, $500 for the hotel room," he said. "Seeing the Tigers win tonight and my wife smiling: Priceless."
But today, fans, players and coaches are more focused on the game Monday.
Calipari joked that his team is under the misapprehension that they haven't set a record for wins.
"And I told them, no, no, you've got to get to 39 to have the most wins. Hopefully, we'll have one more in us."
-- Tom Charlier: 529-2572
National Championship game comes down to Memphis vs. Kansas on Monday night
By Tom Charlier (Contact)
Sunday, April 6, 2008
SAN ANTONIO -- When Memphis forward Joey Dorsey furiously swatted away a UCLA fast-break attempt with less than four minutes to play on Saturday, Tiger faithful everywhere just knew.
They knew that UCLA, the perennial basketball power that had ruined deep tournament runs by the University of Memphis in 1973 and 2006, would not do it again this year. They knew that the legions of skeptics who had derided the Tigers as a weak-conference team that would crack against elite competition had been proven wrong again.
The fans who began chanting "JO-EY, JO-EY" knew, most importantly, that the UofM would win -- as it did by a score of 78-63 -- to advance to Monday night's national championship game of the NCAA men's basketball tournament against Kansas.
Well, everyone but Martha Moore that is. She was hiding in the restroom, too nervous to watch.
"With six minutes left I had to leave," the 1978 Memphis grad said just after the game ended. "I went to the restroom and called my son, and he said, 'Mom, you've got to go watch; it's history.'"
History it was, and not just for the 38-1 Tigers, who will seek their first-ever title on Monday against the 36-3 Jayhawks.
It was also history because with that 38th win, the Tigers set an NCAA record for victories in a season. They did it with a virtual repeat of their dominating performances in the South Regional last weekend -- by dismantling and overwhelming a quality team with an aggressive drive-and-kick offense, relentless defense and a breathtaking running game.
Little more than halfway into the first half, Bruin players -- even the normally steady guard Russell Westbrook -- looked exhausted and bewildered.
"We played kind of like we've played all year," Tigers coach John Calipari said. "We defended. You know, made it hard on a team that shoots a high percentage."
All-America guard Chris Douglas-Roberts, who led Memphis with 28 points, said the team is distinguished by its unselfishness and positive attitude.
"We believe in ourselves," he said after the win. "So that's all that really matters to us. When we hear (negativity), we laugh because we don't understand it."
It all happened before a national television audience and a revved-up army of UofM fans among the announced Alamodome crowd of 43,718.
For more than two hours Saturday, the liveliest part of the stadium was its northwest corner, where thousands of Tiger fans cheered early and often.
They roared when the team took the floor beneath a tunnel banner that read, "And then there were four." They roared when Douglas-Roberts scored the first Memphis basket 2:20 into the game. They roared when an Antonio Anderson three-pointer two minutes later gave the Tigers their first lead, 11-10.
And they roared loudest -- jumping up and raising their arms -- when the Bruins signaled their submission by refusing to foul with less than a minute left.
Through it all, the fans enjoyed not a game but a spectacle called the Final Four.
"It's a great experience and a lot of fun," said Tiger supporter Scott Shanker. "A lot of energy and a lot of excitement."
The win vindicated the decisions by fans to make whatever sacrifices were necessary to get to San Antonio.
Take Mike Carter, 53, of Iuka, Miss. Just a couple hours before tip-off Saturday, he mimicked a well known credit card commercial in saying his decision to bring his wife, Deborah Thompson, to the Final Four was well worth the cost.
"Five hundred dollars for gas, $660 for tickets, $500 for the hotel room," he said. "Seeing the Tigers win tonight and my wife smiling: Priceless."
But today, fans, players and coaches are more focused on the game Monday.
Calipari joked that his team is under the misapprehension that they haven't set a record for wins.
"And I told them, no, no, you've got to get to 39 to have the most wins. Hopefully, we'll have one more in us."
-- Tom Charlier: 529-2572
Dorsey delivers boards, tough-Love defense
Dorsey delivers boards, tough-Love defense
UCLA star held in check by 'beast'
By Ron Higgins
Sunday, April 6, 2008
SAN ANTONIO -- There's a lot that goes into the nurturing and care of University of Memphis senior forward Joey Dorsey's somewhat fragile psyche.
For instance, Tigers coach John Calipari likes Dorsey to write stories visualizing what will happen in a game, such as against UCLA in Saturday's NCAA Final Four semifinal.
"When I was writing my story, my dream (Friday) night, I'm laughing because I know I'm going to have a good game," Dorsey said. "I told one of my coaches that the title of my story was 'No Love for UCLA.' "
Stop the presses. Dorsey was dead-on, holding UCLA's fabulous freshman center Kevin Love to 12 points and nine rebounds as the Tigers beat the Bruins, 78-63, to advance to Monday night's national championship game against Kansas.
In a very Ben Wallace-like performance, Dorsey scored no points (0-of-3 field goals) in 27 minutes but collected 15 rebounds (six offensive), his third-highest rebound total of the season. And don't forget Dorsey's two blocks, including rejecting a drive by UCLA's Russell Westbrook with the Tigers ahead by just nine with 3:44 left.
Calipari and Dorsey's teammates were bursting with pride over Dorsey's selfless performance.
"His coach yelled at him the whole game," Calipari said with a laugh. "He's a beast and there were times today that he wasn't a beast. I just want him to go every possession and be that beast."
Replied Dorsey, "Coach was yelling at me and I tried telling him the whole game that I was rebounding."
Love can vouch for that. The 6-10, 271-pound rock came into the game averaging 21.8 points and 11 rebounds in the tourney. He got erased by Dorsey.
"(Dorsey) played a pretty good game for only playing 27 minutes," Love said. "He kept getting to balls and had a couple of big blocks. He played good defense and they had other players swarming me."
True, the Tigers did double Love at times. But it was up to the 6-9, 265-pound Dorsey to not be budged off his defensive position in the low post.
"Once Love gets the ball in the paint, he's tough to match," Tigers forward Robert Dozier said. "Joey fought with Kevin Love. Not too many guys all year have successfully fought for position with Kevin Love, but Joey did it."
Especially after halftime. When Dorsey picked up his third foul 52 seconds into the second half, and then his replacement Shawn Taggart immediately got his third foul, it looked shaky for the Tigers.
But Taggart managed to make it to the 14:55 mark without getting another foul, and that's when Dorsey checked in and went to work.
"Joey was a monster in the second half," Taggart said. "He made sure Kevin Love didn't touch the ball."
Dorsey even turned his best chance to score -- a botched alley-oop -- into that key block of Westbrook.
"I missed that alley-oop and I said to myself, 'Oh my God, Joey, just break through,' " Dorsey said. "After I missed, I ran down the court so fast because Coach said every possession counts. When I saw Westbrook lay that ball up, I had to go block it."
In the end, when Dorsey had played his role to the hilt, another one of his psychological coaches, former Memphis all-American Penny Hardaway, was as proud as can be.
Hardaway, a 14-year NBA veteran who started some for the Miami Heat early this season before being released, returned home to Memphis. When Hardaway was asked two months ago by Tigers' strength coach Richard Hogans to help Dorsey with his free throw shooting, he knew Dorsey's enormous physical talent sometimes didn't match his confidence level.
"I'm closer to Joey than anyone on the team, because I've been talking to him since his freshman year," Hardaway said. "I've had the same conversation with him for four years. He's a competitor and he wants to do well.
"We've talked about staying under control and not letting his confidence drop. When Joey's happy, he's getting 15 rebounds and blocking shots."
Like against the Bruins.
"I was mad at myself for not scoring," Dorsey said. "But all of my teammates were telling me, 'You don't have to worry about scoring, do what you do. If you get 15 rebounds a game, we're going to win.' So I'm happy ... just throw me a bone or two on offense."
-- Ron Higgins; 529-2525
UCLA star held in check by 'beast'
By Ron Higgins
Sunday, April 6, 2008
SAN ANTONIO -- There's a lot that goes into the nurturing and care of University of Memphis senior forward Joey Dorsey's somewhat fragile psyche.
For instance, Tigers coach John Calipari likes Dorsey to write stories visualizing what will happen in a game, such as against UCLA in Saturday's NCAA Final Four semifinal.
"When I was writing my story, my dream (Friday) night, I'm laughing because I know I'm going to have a good game," Dorsey said. "I told one of my coaches that the title of my story was 'No Love for UCLA.' "
Stop the presses. Dorsey was dead-on, holding UCLA's fabulous freshman center Kevin Love to 12 points and nine rebounds as the Tigers beat the Bruins, 78-63, to advance to Monday night's national championship game against Kansas.
In a very Ben Wallace-like performance, Dorsey scored no points (0-of-3 field goals) in 27 minutes but collected 15 rebounds (six offensive), his third-highest rebound total of the season. And don't forget Dorsey's two blocks, including rejecting a drive by UCLA's Russell Westbrook with the Tigers ahead by just nine with 3:44 left.
Calipari and Dorsey's teammates were bursting with pride over Dorsey's selfless performance.
"His coach yelled at him the whole game," Calipari said with a laugh. "He's a beast and there were times today that he wasn't a beast. I just want him to go every possession and be that beast."
Replied Dorsey, "Coach was yelling at me and I tried telling him the whole game that I was rebounding."
Love can vouch for that. The 6-10, 271-pound rock came into the game averaging 21.8 points and 11 rebounds in the tourney. He got erased by Dorsey.
"(Dorsey) played a pretty good game for only playing 27 minutes," Love said. "He kept getting to balls and had a couple of big blocks. He played good defense and they had other players swarming me."
True, the Tigers did double Love at times. But it was up to the 6-9, 265-pound Dorsey to not be budged off his defensive position in the low post.
"Once Love gets the ball in the paint, he's tough to match," Tigers forward Robert Dozier said. "Joey fought with Kevin Love. Not too many guys all year have successfully fought for position with Kevin Love, but Joey did it."
Especially after halftime. When Dorsey picked up his third foul 52 seconds into the second half, and then his replacement Shawn Taggart immediately got his third foul, it looked shaky for the Tigers.
But Taggart managed to make it to the 14:55 mark without getting another foul, and that's when Dorsey checked in and went to work.
"Joey was a monster in the second half," Taggart said. "He made sure Kevin Love didn't touch the ball."
Dorsey even turned his best chance to score -- a botched alley-oop -- into that key block of Westbrook.
"I missed that alley-oop and I said to myself, 'Oh my God, Joey, just break through,' " Dorsey said. "After I missed, I ran down the court so fast because Coach said every possession counts. When I saw Westbrook lay that ball up, I had to go block it."
In the end, when Dorsey had played his role to the hilt, another one of his psychological coaches, former Memphis all-American Penny Hardaway, was as proud as can be.
Hardaway, a 14-year NBA veteran who started some for the Miami Heat early this season before being released, returned home to Memphis. When Hardaway was asked two months ago by Tigers' strength coach Richard Hogans to help Dorsey with his free throw shooting, he knew Dorsey's enormous physical talent sometimes didn't match his confidence level.
"I'm closer to Joey than anyone on the team, because I've been talking to him since his freshman year," Hardaway said. "I've had the same conversation with him for four years. He's a competitor and he wants to do well.
"We've talked about staying under control and not letting his confidence drop. When Joey's happy, he's getting 15 rebounds and blocking shots."
Like against the Bruins.
"I was mad at myself for not scoring," Dorsey said. "But all of my teammates were telling me, 'You don't have to worry about scoring, do what you do. If you get 15 rebounds a game, we're going to win.' So I'm happy ... just throw me a bone or two on offense."
-- Ron Higgins; 529-2525
Douglas-Roberts slams doubters
Douglas-Roberts slams doubters
Criticize if you will, but 'we just go out and play'
By Scott Cacciola
Sunday, April 6, 2008
SAN ANTONIO -- Chris Douglas-Roberts looked mad. He thought he had gotten bumped grabbing a defensive rebound against UCLA on Saturday night, but no whistles were forthcoming. So he tucked that anger away for all of 10 seconds.
All season, the University of Memphis has been fueled by what the team's players and coaches describe as disrespect, by doubters, by people who have no idea what the Tigers do, or how they do it, or why. But during the Tigers' romp through the NCAA Tournament, this team is turning skeptics into believers by making roadkill of opponents. And sometimes they do it by posterizing all-Americans.
So after Douglas-Roberts snatched that rebound and glared at one of the officials -- "I was very upset," he said -- he sprinted down the court, took a backdoor bounce pass from Antonio Anderson and rose for a left-handed dunk over Kevin Love, UCLA's vaunted freshman center.
That one play was the crowning moment of Memphis' 78-63 victory over UCLA in the Final Four and in some ways typified the Tigers' entire season and Douglas-Roberts' unique role.
"We believe in ourselves," said Douglas-Roberts, a junior guard. "That's really all that matters to us. When we hear (negativity), we laugh because we don't understand it, we don't know where it came from. ... We just go out and play."
Though freshman guard Derrick Rose, who added to his growing mystique by scoring 25 points, has been the more celebrated player during the Tigers' tournament run, Douglas-Roberts has been more than content to occupy his familiar function as an understated leader. Seldom has an all-American so easily blended into the scenery, been so efficient with so little fanfare.
Most of the attention he had drawn this spring centered on what pundits have described as his "old-school game," an eclectic mix of spins and hooks and fade-aways and post-up moves, a repertoire more reminiscent of the ABA than the NCAA, more World B. Free than LeBron James.
But against UCLA, there was something more direct about his game on this stage, something more aggressive, something more determined. Gone were the fade-aways, replaced by lower-the-shoulder drives against a diet of different defenders.
Penny Hardaway, the former Memphis standout who made the trip to San Antonio and visited with players in the locker room after the game, said he told Douglas-Roberts before the team left Memphis to stay hungry.
"He's just a guy who understands what it takes to step up and keep a chip on your shoulder," Hardaway said. "Never be satisfied. I told him when he starts getting satisfied, he should stop playing basketball."
Douglas-Roberts' stat line was monstrous: 9-of-17 from the field, 9-of-11 from the free-throw line, 28 points, four rebounds, two steals, one block. He avoided jump shots and drove headlong toward the basket. He attempted just two 3-pointers, sinking one.
Those rare occasions when Douglas-Roberts was absent from the game -- he played 35 of the 40 minutes -- were noticeable. With about 14 minutes left in the second half, he headed to the bench for a breather, the Tigers ahead by nine points. Two UCLA layups later, coach John Calipari called for time and basically shoved Douglas-Roberts toward the scorer's table.
If Calipari has been accused of lacking game-day coaching acumen by various writers -- one particularly scathing column ran in the Los Angeles Times on Saturday -- then here was coaching at its finest: Get Douglas-Roberts back in the game.
Mere seconds after he took the court, he threw in a right-handed hook over Westbrook, the Pac-10's Defensive Player of the Year. Westbrook had pressed his chest to Douglas-Roberts' chest, with poor results: At 6-3, Westbrook was not long enough to contain Douglas-Roberts, who stands 6-7 and has elastic, Inspector Gadget-like limbs.
"They tried everybody on me," he said, referring to UCLA's defense. "They tried four different matchups on me."
On Memphis' next possession, Douglas-Roberts ducked his head once more, drawing contact from Westbrook, then sank both free throws. Memphis' lead had grown back to nine. UCLA got no closer than seven the rest of the way.
"He makes big shots, clutch shots, plays defense, rebounds," junior forward Robert Dozier said. "He's just a winner."
After the final buzzer, Douglas-Roberts paced from one end of the court to the other, briefly pulling his jersey over his head before pulling it back down again. He did not smile, did not celebrate, did not scream and shout. He just kept walking, continuing his march toward history.
-- Scott Cacciola: 529-2773
Criticize if you will, but 'we just go out and play'
By Scott Cacciola
Sunday, April 6, 2008
SAN ANTONIO -- Chris Douglas-Roberts looked mad. He thought he had gotten bumped grabbing a defensive rebound against UCLA on Saturday night, but no whistles were forthcoming. So he tucked that anger away for all of 10 seconds.
All season, the University of Memphis has been fueled by what the team's players and coaches describe as disrespect, by doubters, by people who have no idea what the Tigers do, or how they do it, or why. But during the Tigers' romp through the NCAA Tournament, this team is turning skeptics into believers by making roadkill of opponents. And sometimes they do it by posterizing all-Americans.
So after Douglas-Roberts snatched that rebound and glared at one of the officials -- "I was very upset," he said -- he sprinted down the court, took a backdoor bounce pass from Antonio Anderson and rose for a left-handed dunk over Kevin Love, UCLA's vaunted freshman center.
That one play was the crowning moment of Memphis' 78-63 victory over UCLA in the Final Four and in some ways typified the Tigers' entire season and Douglas-Roberts' unique role.
"We believe in ourselves," said Douglas-Roberts, a junior guard. "That's really all that matters to us. When we hear (negativity), we laugh because we don't understand it, we don't know where it came from. ... We just go out and play."
Though freshman guard Derrick Rose, who added to his growing mystique by scoring 25 points, has been the more celebrated player during the Tigers' tournament run, Douglas-Roberts has been more than content to occupy his familiar function as an understated leader. Seldom has an all-American so easily blended into the scenery, been so efficient with so little fanfare.
Most of the attention he had drawn this spring centered on what pundits have described as his "old-school game," an eclectic mix of spins and hooks and fade-aways and post-up moves, a repertoire more reminiscent of the ABA than the NCAA, more World B. Free than LeBron James.
But against UCLA, there was something more direct about his game on this stage, something more aggressive, something more determined. Gone were the fade-aways, replaced by lower-the-shoulder drives against a diet of different defenders.
Penny Hardaway, the former Memphis standout who made the trip to San Antonio and visited with players in the locker room after the game, said he told Douglas-Roberts before the team left Memphis to stay hungry.
"He's just a guy who understands what it takes to step up and keep a chip on your shoulder," Hardaway said. "Never be satisfied. I told him when he starts getting satisfied, he should stop playing basketball."
Douglas-Roberts' stat line was monstrous: 9-of-17 from the field, 9-of-11 from the free-throw line, 28 points, four rebounds, two steals, one block. He avoided jump shots and drove headlong toward the basket. He attempted just two 3-pointers, sinking one.
Those rare occasions when Douglas-Roberts was absent from the game -- he played 35 of the 40 minutes -- were noticeable. With about 14 minutes left in the second half, he headed to the bench for a breather, the Tigers ahead by nine points. Two UCLA layups later, coach John Calipari called for time and basically shoved Douglas-Roberts toward the scorer's table.
If Calipari has been accused of lacking game-day coaching acumen by various writers -- one particularly scathing column ran in the Los Angeles Times on Saturday -- then here was coaching at its finest: Get Douglas-Roberts back in the game.
Mere seconds after he took the court, he threw in a right-handed hook over Westbrook, the Pac-10's Defensive Player of the Year. Westbrook had pressed his chest to Douglas-Roberts' chest, with poor results: At 6-3, Westbrook was not long enough to contain Douglas-Roberts, who stands 6-7 and has elastic, Inspector Gadget-like limbs.
"They tried everybody on me," he said, referring to UCLA's defense. "They tried four different matchups on me."
On Memphis' next possession, Douglas-Roberts ducked his head once more, drawing contact from Westbrook, then sank both free throws. Memphis' lead had grown back to nine. UCLA got no closer than seven the rest of the way.
"He makes big shots, clutch shots, plays defense, rebounds," junior forward Robert Dozier said. "He's just a winner."
After the final buzzer, Douglas-Roberts paced from one end of the court to the other, briefly pulling his jersey over his head before pulling it back down again. He did not smile, did not celebrate, did not scream and shout. He just kept walking, continuing his march toward history.
-- Scott Cacciola: 529-2773
Overdue hug can't heal hurt for Dorsey
Overdue hug can't heal hurt for Dorsey
Tigers star wary of reunion with his long-missing father
By Jim Masilak
Thursday, April 3, 2008
The last time Reginald Griffin held his son in his arms, the boy was 2 years old.
He hadn't yet become what his mother called the "tall, skinny, geeky-looking kid with big ears sticking out from his head" who was picked on at school, or the class clown who all too often ended up in the principal's office.
He hadn't yet endured the death of his stepfather, been sent to alternative school, taken up basketball against his mother's wishes, made it rain or led the University of Memphis to the Final Four. He hadn't yet ... well, yeah, he probably did have the million-watt grin that melted a city's heart but somehow left a father unmoved.
For more than 20 years, his every approach rejected by a man determined to "leave things the way they are," University of Memphis forward Joey Dorsey was left to wonder:
Had there been any warmth in that last embrace? Why would a father deny his own flesh and blood? Is this what it means to be a man?
"I tried to reach out to him for a long time, but he never gave me a response," said Dorsey, 24. "That was something that caused a lot of anger in my life for a long time."
Charlene Dorsey did her best to fill the void. When she wasn't working one of two jobs, she was mother and father to Joey and his younger half-sister, Candice.
"I was very overprotective," she said. "They weren't allowed to fall down and get hurt or get those clothes dirty."
Or play basketball. Nothing upset Charlene more than finding out that the neighbor she'd asked to watch Joey had taken him to the basketball court.
"She didn't want me playing basketball because it was on blacktop," he said, "and I always came home with a busted lip or black eye."
And when the street lights in his West Baltimore neighborhood came on, Joey had to be in the house. Or else.
"I wanted to go and hang out on the corner with my cousins," he said. "All of them dropped out of school. But I couldn't do that because my mom was gonna whoop me with that belt. She put it on me a couple times, and it made me the man I am today."
Still, because Charlene spent so much time at work, Joey was left to his own devices more than either of them would have liked.
"I didn't have that attention a child needs," he said.
Charlene had left Joey's father while still carrying his child. While they still saw one another occasionally over the next two years, Griffin eventually moved away and had not had direct contact with them since.
Attempts to reach Griffin for comment were unsuccessful.
Charlene remarried, but Joey was just 10 when his stepfather died because of kidney failure. Left once more without a male role model, he started asking more questions about his real father.
Finding his roots
When Joey was 13, Charlene took him to meet one of Griffin's brothers. She inquired about the boy's father, as she had done several times before without reply. This time, she was told that Griffin "would rather just leave things the way they are."
"You can imagine what that did to my son. It crushed him," Charlene said. "It crushed him."
Around that time, Joey was sent to New Foundations, an alternative school in Baltimore for children with behavioral issues.
"I feel as though the school system was treating him rough when they put him in that alternative school," Charlene said. "He might be a jokester, but he's not a bad kid."
Unattached to any high school, Dorsey became the subject of a recruiting battle once word got out about the 6-9 kid who was dominating the playgrounds. That's where Douglass High coach Rodney Coffield came in. He convinced the school board to let Dorsey play for his Baltimore neighborhood school while still receiving counseling at New Foundations.
"We didn't know what we were gonna get from Joey," said Tyler Smith, who played with Dorsey at Douglass and recently finished his career at Colorado State. "The first thing was trying to get him situated mentally. Once we got that going, Joey dominated the whole thing."
During his senior year at Douglass, Joey's hallway antics -- sunflower seed-throwing was a favorite -- resulted in a parent-teacher conference. He was defiant until Charlene arrived on the scene.
"As soon as she looked at him, he started crying like a baby," Coffield said. "I said, 'OK, I know how to get to him now.'"
Charlene said she never had another problem with Joey after that while he was at Douglass. He led the Ducks to a 28-0 record and a Maryland Class 3A state title in 2002.
After two years at Laurinburg (N.C.) Prep, Dorsey enrolled at Memphis, where he is among the career leaders in blocked shots and rebounding and is a huge crowd favorite.
The one person whose approval Dorsey most craved, however, remained aloof.
No Garden party
A little more than two years ago, Charlene received a phone call. The newspaper clippings she'd been sending had apparently worked: Reginald Griffin wanted to be reunited with his son. What's more, he wanted Joey to meet a boy named Joshua Griffin, the half-brother he didn't know he had.
"He was so excited," Charlene said. "He was gonna meet his father and brother for the first time."
The Griffins were living on Long Island in November 2005 when the Tigers came to New York's Madison Square Garden for the NIT Season Tip-off. Memphis officials, having been apprised of the planned reunion, made ticketing arrangements. Dorsey, having waited so long for this moment, was about to burst.
And then ... nothing.
"No show," Charlene said. "He was devastated. I think (Tigers coach John Calipari) was devastated with him. Joey said at that point, 'I don't even want to meet him.' And he meant it."
In November, Memphis returned to New York City for the 2K Sports College Hoops Classic at Madison Square Garden. After offering excuses for the previous no-show, Griffin again asked to meet his son.
"Joey wouldn't speak to him, but I wanted him to see him," Charlene said. "I said, 'Just do me a favor and meet him one time. After you meet him, you don't ever have to see him again if you don't want to.'"
While warming up, Dorsey spied a man sitting next to Charlene and felt as if he were looking into a mirror. It was his father, this time.
"I knew it was him before I met him," Joey said.
After the game was over, Dorsey found himself in his father's arms for the first time in 22 years. If the hurt didn't melt away all at once, it was at least placed to the side for a few moments.
"We just embraced each other," Joey said. "He ran up to me and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek and said, 'I miss you.'"
Charlene said that Joey "hardly had anything to say. He says he's been hurt too many times."
A star player for a Final Four team, Dorsey is a bit suspicious of his father's timing. He says he wants "to build a relationship with him, but not right now."
Still, meeting Reginald was a cathartic experience. And Dorsey speaks with pride about his little brother, Joshua, who's already well over 6 feet tall.
"That was the missing link in my life," he said, "and now it's not missing anymore."
-- Jim Masilak: 529-2311
Tigers star wary of reunion with his long-missing father
By Jim Masilak
Thursday, April 3, 2008
The last time Reginald Griffin held his son in his arms, the boy was 2 years old.
He hadn't yet become what his mother called the "tall, skinny, geeky-looking kid with big ears sticking out from his head" who was picked on at school, or the class clown who all too often ended up in the principal's office.
He hadn't yet endured the death of his stepfather, been sent to alternative school, taken up basketball against his mother's wishes, made it rain or led the University of Memphis to the Final Four. He hadn't yet ... well, yeah, he probably did have the million-watt grin that melted a city's heart but somehow left a father unmoved.
For more than 20 years, his every approach rejected by a man determined to "leave things the way they are," University of Memphis forward Joey Dorsey was left to wonder:
Had there been any warmth in that last embrace? Why would a father deny his own flesh and blood? Is this what it means to be a man?
"I tried to reach out to him for a long time, but he never gave me a response," said Dorsey, 24. "That was something that caused a lot of anger in my life for a long time."
Charlene Dorsey did her best to fill the void. When she wasn't working one of two jobs, she was mother and father to Joey and his younger half-sister, Candice.
"I was very overprotective," she said. "They weren't allowed to fall down and get hurt or get those clothes dirty."
Or play basketball. Nothing upset Charlene more than finding out that the neighbor she'd asked to watch Joey had taken him to the basketball court.
"She didn't want me playing basketball because it was on blacktop," he said, "and I always came home with a busted lip or black eye."
And when the street lights in his West Baltimore neighborhood came on, Joey had to be in the house. Or else.
"I wanted to go and hang out on the corner with my cousins," he said. "All of them dropped out of school. But I couldn't do that because my mom was gonna whoop me with that belt. She put it on me a couple times, and it made me the man I am today."
Still, because Charlene spent so much time at work, Joey was left to his own devices more than either of them would have liked.
"I didn't have that attention a child needs," he said.
Charlene had left Joey's father while still carrying his child. While they still saw one another occasionally over the next two years, Griffin eventually moved away and had not had direct contact with them since.
Attempts to reach Griffin for comment were unsuccessful.
Charlene remarried, but Joey was just 10 when his stepfather died because of kidney failure. Left once more without a male role model, he started asking more questions about his real father.
Finding his roots
When Joey was 13, Charlene took him to meet one of Griffin's brothers. She inquired about the boy's father, as she had done several times before without reply. This time, she was told that Griffin "would rather just leave things the way they are."
"You can imagine what that did to my son. It crushed him," Charlene said. "It crushed him."
Around that time, Joey was sent to New Foundations, an alternative school in Baltimore for children with behavioral issues.
"I feel as though the school system was treating him rough when they put him in that alternative school," Charlene said. "He might be a jokester, but he's not a bad kid."
Unattached to any high school, Dorsey became the subject of a recruiting battle once word got out about the 6-9 kid who was dominating the playgrounds. That's where Douglass High coach Rodney Coffield came in. He convinced the school board to let Dorsey play for his Baltimore neighborhood school while still receiving counseling at New Foundations.
"We didn't know what we were gonna get from Joey," said Tyler Smith, who played with Dorsey at Douglass and recently finished his career at Colorado State. "The first thing was trying to get him situated mentally. Once we got that going, Joey dominated the whole thing."
During his senior year at Douglass, Joey's hallway antics -- sunflower seed-throwing was a favorite -- resulted in a parent-teacher conference. He was defiant until Charlene arrived on the scene.
"As soon as she looked at him, he started crying like a baby," Coffield said. "I said, 'OK, I know how to get to him now.'"
Charlene said she never had another problem with Joey after that while he was at Douglass. He led the Ducks to a 28-0 record and a Maryland Class 3A state title in 2002.
After two years at Laurinburg (N.C.) Prep, Dorsey enrolled at Memphis, where he is among the career leaders in blocked shots and rebounding and is a huge crowd favorite.
The one person whose approval Dorsey most craved, however, remained aloof.
No Garden party
A little more than two years ago, Charlene received a phone call. The newspaper clippings she'd been sending had apparently worked: Reginald Griffin wanted to be reunited with his son. What's more, he wanted Joey to meet a boy named Joshua Griffin, the half-brother he didn't know he had.
"He was so excited," Charlene said. "He was gonna meet his father and brother for the first time."
The Griffins were living on Long Island in November 2005 when the Tigers came to New York's Madison Square Garden for the NIT Season Tip-off. Memphis officials, having been apprised of the planned reunion, made ticketing arrangements. Dorsey, having waited so long for this moment, was about to burst.
And then ... nothing.
"No show," Charlene said. "He was devastated. I think (Tigers coach John Calipari) was devastated with him. Joey said at that point, 'I don't even want to meet him.' And he meant it."
In November, Memphis returned to New York City for the 2K Sports College Hoops Classic at Madison Square Garden. After offering excuses for the previous no-show, Griffin again asked to meet his son.
"Joey wouldn't speak to him, but I wanted him to see him," Charlene said. "I said, 'Just do me a favor and meet him one time. After you meet him, you don't ever have to see him again if you don't want to.'"
While warming up, Dorsey spied a man sitting next to Charlene and felt as if he were looking into a mirror. It was his father, this time.
"I knew it was him before I met him," Joey said.
After the game was over, Dorsey found himself in his father's arms for the first time in 22 years. If the hurt didn't melt away all at once, it was at least placed to the side for a few moments.
"We just embraced each other," Joey said. "He ran up to me and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek and said, 'I miss you.'"
Charlene said that Joey "hardly had anything to say. He says he's been hurt too many times."
A star player for a Final Four team, Dorsey is a bit suspicious of his father's timing. He says he wants "to build a relationship with him, but not right now."
Still, meeting Reginald was a cathartic experience. And Dorsey speaks with pride about his little brother, Joshua, who's already well over 6 feet tall.
"That was the missing link in my life," he said, "and now it's not missing anymore."
-- Jim Masilak: 529-2311
Geoff Caulkins - Team tragedy: '85 Tigers had talent, but troubles haunt them
Team tragedy: '85 Tigers had talent, but troubles haunt them
By Geoff Calkins
Thursday, April 3, 2008
The grave lies far from Memphis, to the south, in Mississippi, a good hour-and-a-half drive.
Down I-55, away from the old Coliseum, which is forlorn and empty now.
At Batesville, Highway 278 curves to the East. At Marks, Rte. 3 picks up south again, past chained dogs and slanting porches and finally, on the right, Quitman County Elementary School.
The cemetery is behind the school and its big, commercial Dumpsters. The chain link fence is rusted and falling down.
The grave is just in there, to the left and then right again; beyond the weeds and the bottles and the three decrepit basketball hoops.
It is an unremarkable headstone, with an unremarkable granite flowerpot.
Except the flowerpot bears a name. It says, in large, block letters:
BATMAN
* * *
Can you remember when that nickname meant something? Can you remember the spring of 1985, when it meant the world?
Batman. People smiled just to say it. They smile, even now.
"Batman," says former Memphis coach Dana Kirk, sinking his fork into a stack of pancakes. "Baskerville Holmes. That's a sad story, right there."
Kirk does not have much use for sad stories these days.
"I only do positive," he says.
So Kirk should not read this column about his old team, which is only as positive -- and as tragic and as messy and as complicated -- as real life will allow.
Is cocaine positive? Is prison? Is murder-suicide?
Is an unsolved murder positive? Is a debilitating stroke?
"Why don't we talk about what it used to be like?" says Kirk who, just in case, has brought some notes.
He wants to remember what it felt like when his Tigers owned the town, when the people bought his bumper stickers, when they shouted his name.
"I used to take the players out to the Hickory Ridge Mall," Kirk said. "There would be 10,000 people or more out there, just to meet the team."
The Tigers won three tournament games by a total of five points that year, including a 63-61 win over Oklahoma to go to the Final Four.
"This was when you could meet us at the gate at the airport," says John Wilfong, a backup guard on the team. "When we walked off the plane in Memphis, there were thousands and thousands of people there."
And why not? This was the year, at long last. The Tigers had the team that could win it all.
Keith Lee, William Bedford and Holmes in the front court. Vincent Askew and Andre Turner at guard.
"I played 10 and a half years in the NBA," Askew says, "and I never had as much fun playing basketball as I did back then."
Then, the fun stopped. Memphis lost to Villanova, Rollie Massimino's Villanova, which went on to beat Georgetown in the championship game.
Back in Memphis, the Tigers quietly cleaned out their lockers. They would keep in touch, of course. They would all go on to do great things.
Twenty-three years later, two of the players are dead. One has been in and out of prison. A couple of others have scuffled through life.
According to the NCAA record books, the Tigers never even appeared in the Final Four. Their appearance was vacated for NCAA violations. Kirk was forced out after the 1985-86 season, spent four months in a minimum-security prison and never coached Division 1 basketball again.
Now he sits at a table at a Perkins Restaurant, explaining why he won't tell a reporter his age.
"I have a presence to maintain," he says. "Good, bad or ugly, I have a presence in this town."
He grins at this. He will maintain his presence, two decades later, whatever it may be.
"No hard feelings," he says. "I only do positive."
* * *
On March 18, 1997, Baskerville Holmes opened the door to his house in Frayser and, frantic, thrust the telephone at his girlfriend's brother, Gerald Franklin.
"Talk to the lady," he said.
Franklin put the phone to his ear.
"Hello," a woman said, "911, can I help you please?"
Franklin then saw his sister, Tanya Crossford, lying against the wall, blood pouring down her face.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do this," said Holmes, pacing now.
Franklin desperately tried to clear the blood from his sister's throat. While he was doing this, he heard a bang.
Holmes, 32, had shot himself in the head. Police ruled it a murder-suicide.
"Was I surprised?" said Wilfong, "I was surprised and not surprised."
He says this matter-of-factly, as a man who understands the realities of the city in which he lives.
"I guess, if you grow up in Memphis, you realize there are situations where people die at early ages. I guess you're never surprised."
Wilfong thinks for a long moment. He would like to be able to neatly explain it all away. Why did Holmes end up like that? Why did Aaron Price? Or William Bedford?
Price was shot and killed in West Memphis in November, 1998. The killer took his green Dodge Intrepid. West Memphis police call it an "unsolved homicide."
Bedford was drafted sixth overall in the 1986 draft. He floated around the league for six years, as various teams would fall in love with his gifts (7-feet and athletic) and fall out of love with his habit (cocaine).
"I had a very close relationship with William," Wilfong says. "I played on his AAU team and roomed with him freshman year. He was a sweet, sweet kid. What happened to him was that he got involved with drugs and it wrecked his life."
This happened in the NBA?
"Before," says Wilfong says.
How do you know?
"I know," he says. "It happened at Memphis, I'm sure."
The federal prison system confirms there's a William Bedford in prison in Fort Worth, Texas, scheduled for release in 2013. This William Bedford is 7-feet tall and was born in Tennessee.
"He was a follower," says Andre Turner, on the phone from Spain. "I don't know how you can explain it beyond that. Life happened to William, I guess."
And there is something to this, of course. Life happens to us all.
Larry Finch, one of two assistant coaches on the '85 team, had a debilitating stroke in 2002. Life happened, and it can be hard.
Keith Lee, the unquestioned star of the team, lasted just three years in the NBA because of bum knees. The same body that gave him such glory, ultimately took it away.
"I do think being in the limelight, having attention like that, is hard to let go of for some people," Wilfong says. "I think it was difficult for my uncle, (Tiger great Win Wilfong), who played in the NBA. He looked back at his 20s as the best period of his life. If you do that, you cheat yourself out of the next 40 or 50 years. The key is to look out in the future and say, 'Now I'm going to make the next 40 or 50 years great.'"
Wilfong did that; he's a senior vice president at an investment firm.
Turner did that; he's still playing professional basketball in Spain.
Dwight Boyd did that; he's spent the last 18 years with Pepsi.
"I'm not a millionaire, but I'm happy," he says.
Isn't that the ultimate victory?
To find happiness in the unexceptional life. To enjoy life on life's own terms.
That sort of contentment apparently eluded Bedford and Holmes.
As for Lee, few really know. He keeps to himself. He declines interviews.
"I'm sad for him that his NBA career didn't work out," Wilfong says. "What I'm even sadder about is that I don't think he understands how much the community loved watching him play basketball and how much they still love him."
* * *
Back at Perkins, Kirk is talking about grandchildren. He will talk all day about his grandchildren. It is good to hear him so happy. Grandchildren are positive.
One grandson, Grey, is crazy about the Memphis Tigers.
"He's a Joey Dorsey freak," Kirk says. "He's 6. And he's got more Dorsey jerseys than Joey has."
Grey has his entire class doing a Joey cheer. There is something wonderfully sweet about this.
The grandson of the deposed coach is caught up in the moment. But it is just a moment, as fleeting as it is glorious.
This time, the name is Joey. May it ring forever. Last time, the name was ... well, here is a small test.
Dorsey has just finished practice. He is bathed in sweat. He is brimming with confidence for the task at hand. He will even talk about free throws. Ask him anything.
"Joey, ever hear of someone named Baskerville Holmes?"
Joey thinks about this.
"The name sounds familiar," he says. "Who is he?"
By Geoff Calkins
Thursday, April 3, 2008
The grave lies far from Memphis, to the south, in Mississippi, a good hour-and-a-half drive.
Down I-55, away from the old Coliseum, which is forlorn and empty now.
At Batesville, Highway 278 curves to the East. At Marks, Rte. 3 picks up south again, past chained dogs and slanting porches and finally, on the right, Quitman County Elementary School.
The cemetery is behind the school and its big, commercial Dumpsters. The chain link fence is rusted and falling down.
The grave is just in there, to the left and then right again; beyond the weeds and the bottles and the three decrepit basketball hoops.
It is an unremarkable headstone, with an unremarkable granite flowerpot.
Except the flowerpot bears a name. It says, in large, block letters:
BATMAN
* * *
Can you remember when that nickname meant something? Can you remember the spring of 1985, when it meant the world?
Batman. People smiled just to say it. They smile, even now.
"Batman," says former Memphis coach Dana Kirk, sinking his fork into a stack of pancakes. "Baskerville Holmes. That's a sad story, right there."
Kirk does not have much use for sad stories these days.
"I only do positive," he says.
So Kirk should not read this column about his old team, which is only as positive -- and as tragic and as messy and as complicated -- as real life will allow.
Is cocaine positive? Is prison? Is murder-suicide?
Is an unsolved murder positive? Is a debilitating stroke?
"Why don't we talk about what it used to be like?" says Kirk who, just in case, has brought some notes.
He wants to remember what it felt like when his Tigers owned the town, when the people bought his bumper stickers, when they shouted his name.
"I used to take the players out to the Hickory Ridge Mall," Kirk said. "There would be 10,000 people or more out there, just to meet the team."
The Tigers won three tournament games by a total of five points that year, including a 63-61 win over Oklahoma to go to the Final Four.
"This was when you could meet us at the gate at the airport," says John Wilfong, a backup guard on the team. "When we walked off the plane in Memphis, there were thousands and thousands of people there."
And why not? This was the year, at long last. The Tigers had the team that could win it all.
Keith Lee, William Bedford and Holmes in the front court. Vincent Askew and Andre Turner at guard.
"I played 10 and a half years in the NBA," Askew says, "and I never had as much fun playing basketball as I did back then."
Then, the fun stopped. Memphis lost to Villanova, Rollie Massimino's Villanova, which went on to beat Georgetown in the championship game.
Back in Memphis, the Tigers quietly cleaned out their lockers. They would keep in touch, of course. They would all go on to do great things.
Twenty-three years later, two of the players are dead. One has been in and out of prison. A couple of others have scuffled through life.
According to the NCAA record books, the Tigers never even appeared in the Final Four. Their appearance was vacated for NCAA violations. Kirk was forced out after the 1985-86 season, spent four months in a minimum-security prison and never coached Division 1 basketball again.
Now he sits at a table at a Perkins Restaurant, explaining why he won't tell a reporter his age.
"I have a presence to maintain," he says. "Good, bad or ugly, I have a presence in this town."
He grins at this. He will maintain his presence, two decades later, whatever it may be.
"No hard feelings," he says. "I only do positive."
* * *
On March 18, 1997, Baskerville Holmes opened the door to his house in Frayser and, frantic, thrust the telephone at his girlfriend's brother, Gerald Franklin.
"Talk to the lady," he said.
Franklin put the phone to his ear.
"Hello," a woman said, "911, can I help you please?"
Franklin then saw his sister, Tanya Crossford, lying against the wall, blood pouring down her face.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do this," said Holmes, pacing now.
Franklin desperately tried to clear the blood from his sister's throat. While he was doing this, he heard a bang.
Holmes, 32, had shot himself in the head. Police ruled it a murder-suicide.
"Was I surprised?" said Wilfong, "I was surprised and not surprised."
He says this matter-of-factly, as a man who understands the realities of the city in which he lives.
"I guess, if you grow up in Memphis, you realize there are situations where people die at early ages. I guess you're never surprised."
Wilfong thinks for a long moment. He would like to be able to neatly explain it all away. Why did Holmes end up like that? Why did Aaron Price? Or William Bedford?
Price was shot and killed in West Memphis in November, 1998. The killer took his green Dodge Intrepid. West Memphis police call it an "unsolved homicide."
Bedford was drafted sixth overall in the 1986 draft. He floated around the league for six years, as various teams would fall in love with his gifts (7-feet and athletic) and fall out of love with his habit (cocaine).
"I had a very close relationship with William," Wilfong says. "I played on his AAU team and roomed with him freshman year. He was a sweet, sweet kid. What happened to him was that he got involved with drugs and it wrecked his life."
This happened in the NBA?
"Before," says Wilfong says.
How do you know?
"I know," he says. "It happened at Memphis, I'm sure."
The federal prison system confirms there's a William Bedford in prison in Fort Worth, Texas, scheduled for release in 2013. This William Bedford is 7-feet tall and was born in Tennessee.
"He was a follower," says Andre Turner, on the phone from Spain. "I don't know how you can explain it beyond that. Life happened to William, I guess."
And there is something to this, of course. Life happens to us all.
Larry Finch, one of two assistant coaches on the '85 team, had a debilitating stroke in 2002. Life happened, and it can be hard.
Keith Lee, the unquestioned star of the team, lasted just three years in the NBA because of bum knees. The same body that gave him such glory, ultimately took it away.
"I do think being in the limelight, having attention like that, is hard to let go of for some people," Wilfong says. "I think it was difficult for my uncle, (Tiger great Win Wilfong), who played in the NBA. He looked back at his 20s as the best period of his life. If you do that, you cheat yourself out of the next 40 or 50 years. The key is to look out in the future and say, 'Now I'm going to make the next 40 or 50 years great.'"
Wilfong did that; he's a senior vice president at an investment firm.
Turner did that; he's still playing professional basketball in Spain.
Dwight Boyd did that; he's spent the last 18 years with Pepsi.
"I'm not a millionaire, but I'm happy," he says.
Isn't that the ultimate victory?
To find happiness in the unexceptional life. To enjoy life on life's own terms.
That sort of contentment apparently eluded Bedford and Holmes.
As for Lee, few really know. He keeps to himself. He declines interviews.
"I'm sad for him that his NBA career didn't work out," Wilfong says. "What I'm even sadder about is that I don't think he understands how much the community loved watching him play basketball and how much they still love him."
* * *
Back at Perkins, Kirk is talking about grandchildren. He will talk all day about his grandchildren. It is good to hear him so happy. Grandchildren are positive.
One grandson, Grey, is crazy about the Memphis Tigers.
"He's a Joey Dorsey freak," Kirk says. "He's 6. And he's got more Dorsey jerseys than Joey has."
Grey has his entire class doing a Joey cheer. There is something wonderfully sweet about this.
The grandson of the deposed coach is caught up in the moment. But it is just a moment, as fleeting as it is glorious.
This time, the name is Joey. May it ring forever. Last time, the name was ... well, here is a small test.
Dorsey has just finished practice. He is bathed in sweat. He is brimming with confidence for the task at hand. He will even talk about free throws. Ask him anything.
"Joey, ever hear of someone named Baskerville Holmes?"
Joey thinks about this.
"The name sounds familiar," he says. "Who is he?"
SI.com's Seth Davis - Final Four Reactions
Final Four reactions
Memphis, Dorsey do their thing; KU's MVP and more
Posted: Sunday April 6, 2008 12:36AM; Updated: Sunday April 6, 2008 12:36AM
SI.com caught up with Seth Davis, who's serving as a CBS studio analyst during the tournament, to get his impressions of Saturday's Final Four action.
SI.com: So what happened to the Bruins?
Seth Davis: Memphis happened. It's been a common scene. This has been three straight games where Memphis' size on the perimeters creates major problems for guards. Everytime there's a turnover or missed shot, the Tigers are down at the other side of the court and putting in a basket. That's a really good team they obliterated in UCLA and they just didn't look back. One thing I didn't anticipate Saturday was two blowouts. I thought these teams were too good for that. Let's hope Monday's title game isn't another blowout.
SI.com: But everyone had UCLA winning.
SD: UCLA had a smaller margin for error. The comment I made on air was that in a best of seven series, I would pick Memphis. But in a one-game crucible, I would pick UCLA because it was its third-straight Final Four. The Bruins' problem was they didn't make shots; they were 1-for-8 from the three-point line and the one they made was a meaningless trey at the end of the game. What that means is Memphis' defense just sagged all over Kevin Love -- the only way to make those guys leave him is for guard to make an outside shot. Bigger problem is when you miss, they just rip and run. Also, Love got tired. It is exhausting to fight Shawn Taggart and Joey Dorsey. They were overwhelming.
SI.com: Should Memphis be concerned that Dorsey had a big zero in the points column?
SD: Not at all. Dorsey's playing as well as he's ever played in these past few game. John Calipari lit into him in the second half and that got him going. Chris Douglas-Roberts and Derrick Rose combined for 52 points, so scoring's not a problem for this team. All [Dorsey] needs to do is do what he does well.
SI.com: Is Love still going pro after tonight's loss or will he be back to avenge the loss?
SD: Well, I would have said before tonight he was 95 percent going pro, after tonight, 93 percent to go pro.
SI.com: So what happened to the Tar Heels?
SD: Very early in the game, [Florida coach] Billy Donovan said when your team is playing really well and really beating people, you lose sight of your weaknesses and you almost forget how to play to be at your best, and you sensed that early on. Kansas had come off a game not playing well, UNC wasn't used to playing a team that was fast but not faster. A lot of people were saying the Heels looked tired, but I don't think they were heavy legged. Kansas is just that much faster. Obviously, the Jayhawks' first 15 minutes were incredible -- sometimes as important as that is, it's kinda fluky. So the fact they were able to do that twice, proved it wasn't flukey, they're just that good.
Now Memphis is also used to playing against teams where it has a huge speed advantage, but they won't have that Monday night. UNC came out tight, tense and sloppy with the ball, and had bad turnovers and Kansas had some early runs.
SI.com: So who's your MVP for Kansas?
SD: It's hard to go against a guy who scored 25 points with Brandon Rush, but I voted for Sherron Collins. He had 11 points and seven turnovers, but there was a point in the game where someone needed to show leadership and Collins did that. He didn't start the game but he finished it. Also, Bill Self coached a heck of game, when the lead was down to four, he had to go inside, basically stopped shooting quick shots and they were able to get it down to the post and were able to stop the bleeding.
SI.com: So is Tyler Hansbrough going to stay around for another year to avenge the loss?
SD: I don't know. I've been conditioned to believe that when a kid has a chance to be a first-round draft pick, they leave. But Hansbrough had the chance last year and he came back. Now I don't know how much more individually he can do by coming back. He can help his team win two more games. Obviously he can get better, but I would say 70-30 he's gone. But then again, he surprised me last year.
Memphis, Dorsey do their thing; KU's MVP and more
Posted: Sunday April 6, 2008 12:36AM; Updated: Sunday April 6, 2008 12:36AM
SI.com caught up with Seth Davis, who's serving as a CBS studio analyst during the tournament, to get his impressions of Saturday's Final Four action.
SI.com: So what happened to the Bruins?
Seth Davis: Memphis happened. It's been a common scene. This has been three straight games where Memphis' size on the perimeters creates major problems for guards. Everytime there's a turnover or missed shot, the Tigers are down at the other side of the court and putting in a basket. That's a really good team they obliterated in UCLA and they just didn't look back. One thing I didn't anticipate Saturday was two blowouts. I thought these teams were too good for that. Let's hope Monday's title game isn't another blowout.
SI.com: But everyone had UCLA winning.
SD: UCLA had a smaller margin for error. The comment I made on air was that in a best of seven series, I would pick Memphis. But in a one-game crucible, I would pick UCLA because it was its third-straight Final Four. The Bruins' problem was they didn't make shots; they were 1-for-8 from the three-point line and the one they made was a meaningless trey at the end of the game. What that means is Memphis' defense just sagged all over Kevin Love -- the only way to make those guys leave him is for guard to make an outside shot. Bigger problem is when you miss, they just rip and run. Also, Love got tired. It is exhausting to fight Shawn Taggart and Joey Dorsey. They were overwhelming.
SI.com: Should Memphis be concerned that Dorsey had a big zero in the points column?
SD: Not at all. Dorsey's playing as well as he's ever played in these past few game. John Calipari lit into him in the second half and that got him going. Chris Douglas-Roberts and Derrick Rose combined for 52 points, so scoring's not a problem for this team. All [Dorsey] needs to do is do what he does well.
SI.com: Is Love still going pro after tonight's loss or will he be back to avenge the loss?
SD: Well, I would have said before tonight he was 95 percent going pro, after tonight, 93 percent to go pro.
SI.com: So what happened to the Tar Heels?
SD: Very early in the game, [Florida coach] Billy Donovan said when your team is playing really well and really beating people, you lose sight of your weaknesses and you almost forget how to play to be at your best, and you sensed that early on. Kansas had come off a game not playing well, UNC wasn't used to playing a team that was fast but not faster. A lot of people were saying the Heels looked tired, but I don't think they were heavy legged. Kansas is just that much faster. Obviously, the Jayhawks' first 15 minutes were incredible -- sometimes as important as that is, it's kinda fluky. So the fact they were able to do that twice, proved it wasn't flukey, they're just that good.
Now Memphis is also used to playing against teams where it has a huge speed advantage, but they won't have that Monday night. UNC came out tight, tense and sloppy with the ball, and had bad turnovers and Kansas had some early runs.
SI.com: So who's your MVP for Kansas?
SD: It's hard to go against a guy who scored 25 points with Brandon Rush, but I voted for Sherron Collins. He had 11 points and seven turnovers, but there was a point in the game where someone needed to show leadership and Collins did that. He didn't start the game but he finished it. Also, Bill Self coached a heck of game, when the lead was down to four, he had to go inside, basically stopped shooting quick shots and they were able to get it down to the post and were able to stop the bleeding.
SI.com: So is Tyler Hansbrough going to stay around for another year to avenge the loss?
SD: I don't know. I've been conditioned to believe that when a kid has a chance to be a first-round draft pick, they leave. But Hansbrough had the chance last year and he came back. Now I don't know how much more individually he can do by coming back. He can help his team win two more games. Obviously he can get better, but I would say 70-30 he's gone. But then again, he surprised me last year.
AP - Memphis 78, UCLA 63
SAN ANTONIO (AP) -As hard as it is to imagine, Memphis keeps getting better just when it matters the most.
The Tigers claimed their piece of history Saturday, beating UCLA 78-63 in the NCAA men's semifinals to become at 38-1 the winningest team ever in a single season. Now they have a chance to do what the other 37-win teams - Duke, Illinois and UNLV - couldn't do: cap it off with a national championship.
With Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts taking turns at basketball acrobatics, it's certainly imaginable. And the Bruins certainly wouldn't doubt it.
''Going into the game, we knew that we was going to win. Ain't too much to say,'' Rose said. ''We're just a great team. With the team that we have, it's hard beating us.''
Coach John Calipari claimed his Tigers weren't aware they had set a record for most wins in major college basketball.
''My team's like, 'Is it? That's the most wins?''' Calipari said. ''And then I told them, 'No, no. You've got to get to 39 to have the most wins.' Hopefully we'll have one more in us.''
The Tigers will get their chance Monday night against Kansas, which beat North Carolina 84-66.
All season, this Memphis team from lightly regarded Conference USA played along with Calipari's us-against-the-world theme. Now, the Tigers need only one more victory for their first championship.
UCLA star Kevin Love put on his own show at practice Friday, hitting a full-court shot. He managed just 12 points - and missed both open 3-pointers - as the Bruins (35-4) again fell short in their third straight Final Four appearance.
''As disappointing as this loss is, it's hard to be here three years in a row and not come away with a championship,'' coach Ben Howland said.
''You have to give credit to Memphis State,'' he said. ''There's a reason why they've only lost one game and they've won 38. They're a very, very good team.''
Rose and Douglas-Roberts, especially.
A star freshman, Rose wasn't content to merely make shots, he wanted to stamp this Final Four as his own with a series of show-stoppers that became an NBA audition.
Rose put up lefty floaters and righty scoops, often changing hands in mid-air, and threw one try over his shoulder. He was in perpetual motion - once, he caught a pass in traffic, stutter-stepped just long enough to look his defender in the eye, and then sped past him for an easy but showy layup.
''Every once in a while, I go, 'Oh my' and I kind of sit down,'' Calipari said. ''And they usually come at inopportune times for the other team.''
Rose finished with 25 points and nine rebounds and a bunch of eye-opening moves that won't show up in the final box.
Rose also hit 11 of 12 free throws. For a team supposedly vulnerable from the foul line, the Tigers did great in making 20 of 23.
He fittingly wound up with the ball in the final seconds and heaved it high. Only then did he crack the slightest of smiles.
Douglas-Roberts played like an All-American, scoring 28 points and Joey Dorsey had the most peculiar line of all - zero points, but 15 big rebounds in keeping Love out of the middle.
''It's great, it's great,'' Douglas-Roberts said. ''We all believe in each other and we expect great things to happen, so this isn't new to us.''
Four other teams had won 37 times in a season - Illinois in 2005, UNLV in 1987 and Duke in 1999 and 1986 - but all lost in the end.
Memphis has won its five games in this NCAA tournament by an average of nearly 16 points. The Tigers got off to a slower start this time, falling behind 5-0, before their suddenly chic ''dribble drive motion'' offense took over.
Memphis led 50-45 with 13 1/2 minutes left before pulling away. Rose made a couple of nifty passes, Dorsey came up with a monster block and later playfully popped Douglas-Roberts on the shoulder after a slam.
This was certainly no repeat of 1973, when the Tigers - then known as Memphis State - got routed 87-66 by UCLA in the title game. Bill Walton hit 21 of 22 shots and scored a record 44 points that night. But the big man has hip and back problems and wasn't able to make it to the Alamodome. Fact is, the taller Bruins were in trouble the entire way.
Russell Westbrook led UCLA with 22 points.
The Tigers spent the whole season aiming at getting back to San Antonio. They lost to Ohio State on this same court last March in the regional final and adopted ''Remember the Alamodome'' as their motto this season.
In the first Final Four to feature four No. 1 seeds, Rose and Memphis cruised while Love could do little to stop them.
''At this stage, I feel like Memphis is definitely the best team we've played,'' Love said.
The star freshmen needed no introduction. Rose and Love have played with and against each other since seventh grade, and the UCLA center reintroduced himself late in the first half, giving his old pal a hard shoulder on a solid screen.
The first half featured a series of bursts and ended with Memphis leading 38-35.
Josh Shipp ended his shooting slump with a pair of early 3s that put UCLA ahead. Memphis, which never trailed in trouncing Texas to reach the Final Four, struck back as Douglas-Roberts hit his first four shots.
Then it was time for Rose to take over.
Howland stood the whole game, occasionally bumping into an official as he called out defenses. He kept shouting ''Up! Up!'' at his team, trying to cut down on open looks to no avail.
The UCLA band and cheerleaders broke out their Beach Boys medley midway through the first half. Love's uncle, Mike, is an original member of the surfin' group and a big fan - he played a show Friday night in London and couldn't make it to this game.
Dorsey was the only senior Memphis had on the floor. Backup guard Andre Allen was suspended this week for violating team rules, and several players wrote his No. 15 on their shoes.
The Tigers claimed their piece of history Saturday, beating UCLA 78-63 in the NCAA men's semifinals to become at 38-1 the winningest team ever in a single season. Now they have a chance to do what the other 37-win teams - Duke, Illinois and UNLV - couldn't do: cap it off with a national championship.
With Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts taking turns at basketball acrobatics, it's certainly imaginable. And the Bruins certainly wouldn't doubt it.
''Going into the game, we knew that we was going to win. Ain't too much to say,'' Rose said. ''We're just a great team. With the team that we have, it's hard beating us.''
Coach John Calipari claimed his Tigers weren't aware they had set a record for most wins in major college basketball.
''My team's like, 'Is it? That's the most wins?''' Calipari said. ''And then I told them, 'No, no. You've got to get to 39 to have the most wins.' Hopefully we'll have one more in us.''
The Tigers will get their chance Monday night against Kansas, which beat North Carolina 84-66.
All season, this Memphis team from lightly regarded Conference USA played along with Calipari's us-against-the-world theme. Now, the Tigers need only one more victory for their first championship.
UCLA star Kevin Love put on his own show at practice Friday, hitting a full-court shot. He managed just 12 points - and missed both open 3-pointers - as the Bruins (35-4) again fell short in their third straight Final Four appearance.
''As disappointing as this loss is, it's hard to be here three years in a row and not come away with a championship,'' coach Ben Howland said.
''You have to give credit to Memphis State,'' he said. ''There's a reason why they've only lost one game and they've won 38. They're a very, very good team.''
Rose and Douglas-Roberts, especially.
A star freshman, Rose wasn't content to merely make shots, he wanted to stamp this Final Four as his own with a series of show-stoppers that became an NBA audition.
Rose put up lefty floaters and righty scoops, often changing hands in mid-air, and threw one try over his shoulder. He was in perpetual motion - once, he caught a pass in traffic, stutter-stepped just long enough to look his defender in the eye, and then sped past him for an easy but showy layup.
''Every once in a while, I go, 'Oh my' and I kind of sit down,'' Calipari said. ''And they usually come at inopportune times for the other team.''
Rose finished with 25 points and nine rebounds and a bunch of eye-opening moves that won't show up in the final box.
Rose also hit 11 of 12 free throws. For a team supposedly vulnerable from the foul line, the Tigers did great in making 20 of 23.
He fittingly wound up with the ball in the final seconds and heaved it high. Only then did he crack the slightest of smiles.
Douglas-Roberts played like an All-American, scoring 28 points and Joey Dorsey had the most peculiar line of all - zero points, but 15 big rebounds in keeping Love out of the middle.
''It's great, it's great,'' Douglas-Roberts said. ''We all believe in each other and we expect great things to happen, so this isn't new to us.''
Four other teams had won 37 times in a season - Illinois in 2005, UNLV in 1987 and Duke in 1999 and 1986 - but all lost in the end.
Memphis has won its five games in this NCAA tournament by an average of nearly 16 points. The Tigers got off to a slower start this time, falling behind 5-0, before their suddenly chic ''dribble drive motion'' offense took over.
Memphis led 50-45 with 13 1/2 minutes left before pulling away. Rose made a couple of nifty passes, Dorsey came up with a monster block and later playfully popped Douglas-Roberts on the shoulder after a slam.
This was certainly no repeat of 1973, when the Tigers - then known as Memphis State - got routed 87-66 by UCLA in the title game. Bill Walton hit 21 of 22 shots and scored a record 44 points that night. But the big man has hip and back problems and wasn't able to make it to the Alamodome. Fact is, the taller Bruins were in trouble the entire way.
Russell Westbrook led UCLA with 22 points.
The Tigers spent the whole season aiming at getting back to San Antonio. They lost to Ohio State on this same court last March in the regional final and adopted ''Remember the Alamodome'' as their motto this season.
In the first Final Four to feature four No. 1 seeds, Rose and Memphis cruised while Love could do little to stop them.
''At this stage, I feel like Memphis is definitely the best team we've played,'' Love said.
The star freshmen needed no introduction. Rose and Love have played with and against each other since seventh grade, and the UCLA center reintroduced himself late in the first half, giving his old pal a hard shoulder on a solid screen.
The first half featured a series of bursts and ended with Memphis leading 38-35.
Josh Shipp ended his shooting slump with a pair of early 3s that put UCLA ahead. Memphis, which never trailed in trouncing Texas to reach the Final Four, struck back as Douglas-Roberts hit his first four shots.
Then it was time for Rose to take over.
Howland stood the whole game, occasionally bumping into an official as he called out defenses. He kept shouting ''Up! Up!'' at his team, trying to cut down on open looks to no avail.
The UCLA band and cheerleaders broke out their Beach Boys medley midway through the first half. Love's uncle, Mike, is an original member of the surfin' group and a big fan - he played a show Friday night in London and couldn't make it to this game.
Dorsey was the only senior Memphis had on the floor. Backup guard Andre Allen was suspended this week for violating team rules, and several players wrote his No. 15 on their shoes.
SI.com's Luke Winn - Once Again, Behold The Memphis Machine
4/05/2008 11:31:00 PM
Once Again, Behold The Memphis Machine
SAN ANTONIO -- Kevin Love was knocked backward, 271 pounds of UCLA All-American tumbling to the ground, as Chris Douglas-Roberts soared over him, 200 pounds of Memphis All-American throwing down a back-door, baseline slam in a Final Four duel that was getting out of hand. Awe-inspiring athleticism, for the umpteenth time on Saturday, was winning out over grit, and Douglas-Roberts screamed as Love picked himself up off the floor. The score was 61-52, with 4:52 left on the clock, and Tigers forward Robert Dozier said he thought to himself, "The game's over."
This one, which finished 78-63, was over long before Douglas-Roberts finished with 28 points and Love just 12. It was over long before Memphis' Derrick Rose and Love, two likely one-and-done freshman, met near the end of the handshake line, one of them moving on to a title-game date with Kansas, the other moving on toward his fate in the NBA Draft. No matter who has been in the way over the past three games, they have seemed helpless in the face of the Memphis machine. Rose, who had 25 points of his own, said after the game that the victory had not yet sunk in, but it didn't need to: "Going into the game, we knew that we was gonna win," he explained, "So [there] ain't too much to say."
There are a few important things to know about this Tigers team: They weren't this good in February, when they lost their only one of 39 games this season, at home to Tennessee, and sat sulking in their locker room afterwards. They weren't even this good at the beginning of March, when they let a bad Southern Miss team play them to within nine in Hattiesburg. And they weren't even this good in the second round of this NCAA tournament, when they let eighth-seeded Mississippi State take them to the wire in North Little Rock, Ark.
Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl has a saying, which he used after losing to Louisville in the Sweet 16, that "the cream rises to the top at tournament time." And whereas Memphis' cream -- its peerless point guard (Rose), its slippery wing scorer (Douglas-Roberts) and its enigmatic board-cleaner (Joey Dorsey) -- was still mixed up in the middle when it suffered its one blemish against the Vols, it rose upon reaching the Sweet 16 last week. In Houston the Tigers made Michigan State look like a 16 seed rather than a five; they made Texas look not like the Big 12 regular season co-champ, but like a bubble team from Conference USA. And in San Antonio on Saturday, they made a fellow No. 1 seed, UCLA, look not like an equal but rather just another team that did not know what hit them.
"At this stage," said Love, "I feel like Memphis is definitely the best team we've played."
Dropping 28 points on UCLA had to be especially sweet for Douglas-Roberts, who had one of his worst games as a freshman in Memphis' Elite Eight loss to the Bruins. Coach John Calipari had said of the then-180-pound CDR, "Physically, he couldn't play [in that game]." In this Final Four he not only stayed on the court for the second-most minutes of any Tiger (35), he had four more points than Bruins guards Darren Collison and Russell Westbrook combined.
Rose, who has been the most unstoppable player of the entire dance, actually made Collison look slow on Saturday -- and considering that UCLA's point guard is the son of two Guyanese track stars, this was no small feat. It was almost as if Rose was toying with the entire Bruins team; he said he could see they were "fatigued" because "I just keep pushing the ball."
Collison fouled out with 2:53 left in the game and just two points to his name, which would be a sad end to his college career if he chooses to turn pro later this month. Rose was not the nation's best point guard as of even three weeks ago, but in his past two games, he has 46 points and 13 assists. Against him, the two point guards on most All-America teams, Texas' D.J. Augustin and Collison, finished with 18 points and seven assists combined.
Glue guy Antonio Anderson has been peaking along with Rose, but in far quieter fashion. Anderson was the one responsible for cutting off UCLA's head on the defensive end. "We put 'Tone on [Collison]; he's been locking all the great point guards in this tournament," said Douglas-Roberts. "We wanted to make it hard on Collison, because he's the key to their team. He gets Kevin going, he gets Shipp going, he gets all of them going."
Extreme pressure on Collison meant that Love -- who carried UCLA here in much the same fashion that Rose did with Memphis -- didn't even get his hands on the ball enough to make a game-changing impact. Dorsey, who finished with 15 rebounds to Love's nine, was a physical force inside, but he played only 27 minutes; while he was on the bench, Shawn Taggart and Robert Dozier employed a swarming, double-teaming tactic that gave Love fits.
"I guess [Love] had never played against a team as athletic and long as us," said Taggart. "He was frustrated. ... I've seen him play [in games] when he got the ball 20 times, and I think he only got it about six today."
Dozier admitted that Memphis' game plan had been not even to guard auxiliary big men such as Alfred Aboya, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute or Lorenzo Mata-Real. The Tigers' post defenders were strictly assigned to the task of keeping Love uncomfortable.
Calipari has required that Dorsey, his sometimes-headcase-of-a-big-man, write stories before every game since Senior Night on March 8, in order to envision a positive outcome before he takes the floor. The one Joey wrote -- or at least said he did -- before Saturday's game was titled No Love For UCLA. In it, Dorsey said he addressed Memphis' loss to UCLA in the 1973 title game -- and more importantly, the fact that he wanted to hold Love below a double-double. "He got it, though," Dorsey half-lamented as he strode down the hallway away from the Tigers' locker room.
Love actually didn't get it -- he was one rebound short -- but those were just details. The real story was that Memphis would be playing in the title game on Monday night, and that the favorite coming into the dance, UCLA, was bounced from the Final Four for a third straight season.
It was still shocking, in the aftermath, to consider just how little the Bruins' defense had done to slow down the Tigers in a 15-point loss, by far UCLA's worst of the season. It took until well after the game for the Bruins to do any real damage, and only when the golf cart that Dorsey, Rose and Douglas-Roberts were riding in away from their press-conference came upon one carrying Love and Collison, going the other direction.
The NCAA official driving the Memphis cart veered off the carpeted path to make room, and in the process slammed Dorsey's right knee into a pole. He cried out in pain, half-jokingly, but the Bruins players were not amused. They, as the real victims of a Saturday-night rout, rode off silently down the hall.
Once Again, Behold The Memphis Machine
SAN ANTONIO -- Kevin Love was knocked backward, 271 pounds of UCLA All-American tumbling to the ground, as Chris Douglas-Roberts soared over him, 200 pounds of Memphis All-American throwing down a back-door, baseline slam in a Final Four duel that was getting out of hand. Awe-inspiring athleticism, for the umpteenth time on Saturday, was winning out over grit, and Douglas-Roberts screamed as Love picked himself up off the floor. The score was 61-52, with 4:52 left on the clock, and Tigers forward Robert Dozier said he thought to himself, "The game's over."
This one, which finished 78-63, was over long before Douglas-Roberts finished with 28 points and Love just 12. It was over long before Memphis' Derrick Rose and Love, two likely one-and-done freshman, met near the end of the handshake line, one of them moving on to a title-game date with Kansas, the other moving on toward his fate in the NBA Draft. No matter who has been in the way over the past three games, they have seemed helpless in the face of the Memphis machine. Rose, who had 25 points of his own, said after the game that the victory had not yet sunk in, but it didn't need to: "Going into the game, we knew that we was gonna win," he explained, "So [there] ain't too much to say."
There are a few important things to know about this Tigers team: They weren't this good in February, when they lost their only one of 39 games this season, at home to Tennessee, and sat sulking in their locker room afterwards. They weren't even this good at the beginning of March, when they let a bad Southern Miss team play them to within nine in Hattiesburg. And they weren't even this good in the second round of this NCAA tournament, when they let eighth-seeded Mississippi State take them to the wire in North Little Rock, Ark.
Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl has a saying, which he used after losing to Louisville in the Sweet 16, that "the cream rises to the top at tournament time." And whereas Memphis' cream -- its peerless point guard (Rose), its slippery wing scorer (Douglas-Roberts) and its enigmatic board-cleaner (Joey Dorsey) -- was still mixed up in the middle when it suffered its one blemish against the Vols, it rose upon reaching the Sweet 16 last week. In Houston the Tigers made Michigan State look like a 16 seed rather than a five; they made Texas look not like the Big 12 regular season co-champ, but like a bubble team from Conference USA. And in San Antonio on Saturday, they made a fellow No. 1 seed, UCLA, look not like an equal but rather just another team that did not know what hit them.
"At this stage," said Love, "I feel like Memphis is definitely the best team we've played."
Dropping 28 points on UCLA had to be especially sweet for Douglas-Roberts, who had one of his worst games as a freshman in Memphis' Elite Eight loss to the Bruins. Coach John Calipari had said of the then-180-pound CDR, "Physically, he couldn't play [in that game]." In this Final Four he not only stayed on the court for the second-most minutes of any Tiger (35), he had four more points than Bruins guards Darren Collison and Russell Westbrook combined.
Rose, who has been the most unstoppable player of the entire dance, actually made Collison look slow on Saturday -- and considering that UCLA's point guard is the son of two Guyanese track stars, this was no small feat. It was almost as if Rose was toying with the entire Bruins team; he said he could see they were "fatigued" because "I just keep pushing the ball."
Collison fouled out with 2:53 left in the game and just two points to his name, which would be a sad end to his college career if he chooses to turn pro later this month. Rose was not the nation's best point guard as of even three weeks ago, but in his past two games, he has 46 points and 13 assists. Against him, the two point guards on most All-America teams, Texas' D.J. Augustin and Collison, finished with 18 points and seven assists combined.
Glue guy Antonio Anderson has been peaking along with Rose, but in far quieter fashion. Anderson was the one responsible for cutting off UCLA's head on the defensive end. "We put 'Tone on [Collison]; he's been locking all the great point guards in this tournament," said Douglas-Roberts. "We wanted to make it hard on Collison, because he's the key to their team. He gets Kevin going, he gets Shipp going, he gets all of them going."
Extreme pressure on Collison meant that Love -- who carried UCLA here in much the same fashion that Rose did with Memphis -- didn't even get his hands on the ball enough to make a game-changing impact. Dorsey, who finished with 15 rebounds to Love's nine, was a physical force inside, but he played only 27 minutes; while he was on the bench, Shawn Taggart and Robert Dozier employed a swarming, double-teaming tactic that gave Love fits.
"I guess [Love] had never played against a team as athletic and long as us," said Taggart. "He was frustrated. ... I've seen him play [in games] when he got the ball 20 times, and I think he only got it about six today."
Dozier admitted that Memphis' game plan had been not even to guard auxiliary big men such as Alfred Aboya, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute or Lorenzo Mata-Real. The Tigers' post defenders were strictly assigned to the task of keeping Love uncomfortable.
Calipari has required that Dorsey, his sometimes-headcase-of-a-big-man, write stories before every game since Senior Night on March 8, in order to envision a positive outcome before he takes the floor. The one Joey wrote -- or at least said he did -- before Saturday's game was titled No Love For UCLA. In it, Dorsey said he addressed Memphis' loss to UCLA in the 1973 title game -- and more importantly, the fact that he wanted to hold Love below a double-double. "He got it, though," Dorsey half-lamented as he strode down the hallway away from the Tigers' locker room.
Love actually didn't get it -- he was one rebound short -- but those were just details. The real story was that Memphis would be playing in the title game on Monday night, and that the favorite coming into the dance, UCLA, was bounced from the Final Four for a third straight season.
It was still shocking, in the aftermath, to consider just how little the Bruins' defense had done to slow down the Tigers in a 15-point loss, by far UCLA's worst of the season. It took until well after the game for the Bruins to do any real damage, and only when the golf cart that Dorsey, Rose and Douglas-Roberts were riding in away from their press-conference came upon one carrying Love and Collison, going the other direction.
The NCAA official driving the Memphis cart veered off the carpeted path to make room, and in the process slammed Dorsey's right knee into a pole. He cried out in pain, half-jokingly, but the Bruins players were not amused. They, as the real victims of a Saturday-night rout, rode off silently down the hall.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Andre Allen's Suspension Appears to Have Little Impact
Funny I was expecting a bit more national fallout over Andre Allen's suspension from the team for violating team rules. In the local media of Memphis, the suspension is being reported as a failed random drug test; however, no national media outlet has reported that and outside of university officials, no one really knows anyway.
I don't think the loss of Andre is a big deal for the team. I'm sure they are disappointed in him, but it won't affect their game plan. Memphis has had great success in the past week using their big guards to their advantage. This is not the time to change a strategy that is working.
Anderson at 6'6" and Rose at 6'4" are a big advantage over Allen's size at 5'9", even if Allen is considered a spark plug.
Look for Willie Kemp and Doneal Mack to take advantage of the situation. Additionally, both Kemp and Mack are much better offensive players and not the liability at the free throw line that Allen is traditionally.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Rivals.com Jerry Meyer on Memphis, Devin Ebanks and Tyreke Evans
Two more Tigers?
Question: What are the chances for Memphis to land both Devin Ebanks and Tyreke Evans? What does it depend on, their playing time, who leaves, how well they do in the tourney? Thanks
-- Nathan from Memphis
Answer: Unfortunately for the teams in Conference USA attempting to compete with Memphis, there is a good chance that Memphis lands both Ebanks and Evans, to go along with five-star Angel Garcia and Matt Simpkins.
Memphis is the perceived leader for Evans, who is listing Connecticut, Texas and Villanova along with the Tigers. Derrick Rose looks like a certainty to enter the NBA draft as a projected top-five pick. If Evans were to choose Memphis, he would step right into Rose's vacated role. Evans is expected to announce his decision on April 16, the first day of the spring signing period.
Ebanks, who was recently released from his Letter of Intent with Indiana, is now considering Memphis along with Indiana, Rutgers, Texas and West Virginia. It's tough to handicap this school list other than to place Indiana as a long shot. Rutgers has the advantage of being close to Ebanks' home, and the Scarlet Knights were one of the finalists in Ebanks' first recruiting go around. West Virginia is new to the recruiting picture. Memphis and Texas were names swirling in the air as future destinations for Ebanks as soon as coach Kelvin Sampson's troubles hit the news.
If Memphis were indeed to land both Ebanks and Evans, its 2008 recruiting class would be a strong candidate for the No. 1 spot in the Rivals.com team recruiting rankings.
Question: What are the chances for Memphis to land both Devin Ebanks and Tyreke Evans? What does it depend on, their playing time, who leaves, how well they do in the tourney? Thanks
-- Nathan from Memphis
Answer: Unfortunately for the teams in Conference USA attempting to compete with Memphis, there is a good chance that Memphis lands both Ebanks and Evans, to go along with five-star Angel Garcia and Matt Simpkins.
Memphis is the perceived leader for Evans, who is listing Connecticut, Texas and Villanova along with the Tigers. Derrick Rose looks like a certainty to enter the NBA draft as a projected top-five pick. If Evans were to choose Memphis, he would step right into Rose's vacated role. Evans is expected to announce his decision on April 16, the first day of the spring signing period.
Ebanks, who was recently released from his Letter of Intent with Indiana, is now considering Memphis along with Indiana, Rutgers, Texas and West Virginia. It's tough to handicap this school list other than to place Indiana as a long shot. Rutgers has the advantage of being close to Ebanks' home, and the Scarlet Knights were one of the finalists in Ebanks' first recruiting go around. West Virginia is new to the recruiting picture. Memphis and Texas were names swirling in the air as future destinations for Ebanks as soon as coach Kelvin Sampson's troubles hit the news.
If Memphis were indeed to land both Ebanks and Evans, its 2008 recruiting class would be a strong candidate for the No. 1 spot in the Rivals.com team recruiting rankings.
John Gasaway's View On a Change in Parity
April 1, 2008
A Changing Landscape
The Soft Parity of Rotating Hegemons
by John Gasaway
College basketball doesn't have a "commissioner," of course, but if it did that person would have had to issue a statement yesterday on what four one-seeds making the Final Four says about the sport's competitive balance. Said balance, in theory made up of parity and domination in optimal opposing measures, is the most fundamental aspect of any sport. Parity is a good thing, of which a sport can indeed have too much. Domination is all right as long as it's brief and it rotates. There are different ways to measure this equilibrium.
For instance, consider the ACC and the Big Ten where competitive balance is concerned. It has now become a veritable rite of late November for the Big Ten to get whomped head-to-head by the ACC in the ill-named "Challenge" between the two conferences. Many of us take comfort in--indeed, derive our seasonal orientation--from such verities. They're like the circadian rhythms of a collective sports nation's body, stretched out on an expansive annual canvas: the Maui Classic, an Army-Navy football game, then a preposterously humiliating display by the Big Ten.
Why is it, then, that in two of the past three years the Big Ten has actually done far better, in terms of expected wins by seed, than the ACC in the NCAA tournament? Maybe it's because the bottom half of the ACC is perpetually and markedly superior to the bottom half of the Big Ten. Come tournament time, however, those respective bottom halves are absent and moot. (Well, except for Miami, which this year somehow got a bid-zing!)
In other words, the season is--or at least can be--different than the tournament. Then again, the tournament is kind of important, you know? It is now being dominated. The last two Final Fours have comprised two of the three most aristocratic such gatherings in the 24-season modern (64/65-team) era.
Snootiest Final Fours
1985 to Present
Avg. Seed
2008 1.00 (North Carolina, Memphis, UCLA, Kansas)
1993 1.25 (North Carolina, Michigan, Kentucky, Kansas)
2007 1.50 (Florida, Ohio State, Georgetown, UCLA)
2001 1.75 (Duke, Michigan State, Arizona, Maryland)
1999 1.75 (Connecticut, Duke, Michigan State, Ohio State)
1997 1.75 (Kentucky, North Carolina, Minnesota, Arizona)
1991 1.75 (Duke, UNLV, North Carolina, Kansas)
This dominance is not only measurable by the composition of the Final Four. Consider also that 11 of the last 12 one-seeds have made the Elite Eight. The collective tournament record of those 12 one-seeds against non-one-seed opponents is a notably robust 44-6.
Lastly, it's worth remarking that there was a time not so long ago when it was at least within the realm of possibility for a one-seed to lose a second-round game. Sure, it was a rare occurrence, but it did happen 12 times in the first 20 tournaments of the 64-team era. Such a thing was conceivable. No longer. Starting with the 2005 tournament, the cumulative first-weekend record of the one-seeds is 32-0.
Why is this era of domination happening now? It's early to speculate, of course, but it might just turn out to have something to do with those freshmen we keep hearing about. The NBA collective bargaining agreement that took effect before the 2006 draft defined eligibility upwards. Now a player has to be 19 during the calendar year of the draft (or, if they matriculated at a U.S. high school, at least one year has to have passed since their graduation). Meaning Greg Oden was the first player forced, in effect, to play college basketball for a year. The best, or at least most promising, players in the country outside the NBA are no longer high school seniors. They're college freshmen.
The NBA's rule change has left us with a situation in which the insistent visual prominence of spectacular freshmen is partly justified--they really are great--but it's also partly an optical illusion caused by the outmigration of NBA-worthy sophomores, juniors and seniors. Keep in mind that if we still played by the old John Wooden-era rules, where "college" meant a four-year collegiate career, we would have seen all of the following still plying their trade in the college ranks this past season:
Dwight Howard, Shaun Livingston, Robert Swift, Sebastian Telfair, Al Jefferson, Josh Smith, J.R. Smith, Dorrell Wright, Marvin Williams, Martell Webster, Andrew Bynum, C.J. Miles, Monta Ellis, Louis Williams, Andray Blatche, Amir Johnson, LaMarcus Aldridge, Tyrus Thomas, Rudy Gay, Patrick O'Bryant, Cedric Simmons, Shawne Williams, Rajon Rondo, Kyle Lowry, Jordan Farmar, Daniel Gibson, Leon Powe, Greg Oden, Kevin Durant, Al Horford, Mike Conley, Jeff Green, Corey Brewer, Brandan Wright, Joakim Noah, Spencer Hawes, Thaddeus Young, Julian Wright, Rodney Stuckey, Nick Young, Sean Williams, Javaris Crittenton, Jason Smith, Daequan Cook, Wilson Chandler, Arron Afflalo, Gabe Pruitt, Marcus Williams, Glen Davis, Josh McRoberts, Dominic McGuire, JamesOn Curry, Taurean Green, and Ramon Sessions.
More to the point, under the rules that applied up until 2006, Michael Beasley and Derrick Rose would today be very good NBA rookies instead of outlandishly superb college freshmen. Today's most prominent freshmen are indeed spectacular. However, their presence in college has been compelled, and they do benefit from players who aren't there. Most notably, today's outstanding freshmen have opportunities for playing time at blue-chip programs that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.
The effect of these freshmen on their teams has been dramatic. North Carolina is the only Final Four team without (gasp!) a representative from the 2007 McDonald's All-American Team. Then again, Kansas would very likely be where they are even without Cole Aldrich. The catalytic Final Four freshmen this year are, of course, Kevin Love and Derrick Rose.
True, their teams would be excellent without them. Their teams may even have made the Final Four without them. The point is not that you need a spectacular freshman to win the national title. (After all, we haven't seen such a team since Carmelo Anthony's time.) No, the point is that college basketball appears to have become bifurcated. On the one side are teams good enough to both attract (that includes Kansas State) and capitalize on (that does not include K-State) a catalytic freshman. On the other side are 330 or so other teams. If the catalytic freshmen were smart, they'd start committing in groups, a la Greg Oden and Mike Conley.
Yes, it would be foolish to sound the parity alarm here without at least acknowledging that the two one-seeds that played for the national championship last year, Florida and Ohio State, couldn't even get into the tournament this year. Tournament-brand domination does rotate, thank goodness. The extent of that domination, however, is greater than it's been in quite some time.
John Gasaway is an author of Basketball Prospectus. You can contact John by clicking here or click here to see John's other articles.
A Changing Landscape
The Soft Parity of Rotating Hegemons
by John Gasaway
College basketball doesn't have a "commissioner," of course, but if it did that person would have had to issue a statement yesterday on what four one-seeds making the Final Four says about the sport's competitive balance. Said balance, in theory made up of parity and domination in optimal opposing measures, is the most fundamental aspect of any sport. Parity is a good thing, of which a sport can indeed have too much. Domination is all right as long as it's brief and it rotates. There are different ways to measure this equilibrium.
For instance, consider the ACC and the Big Ten where competitive balance is concerned. It has now become a veritable rite of late November for the Big Ten to get whomped head-to-head by the ACC in the ill-named "Challenge" between the two conferences. Many of us take comfort in--indeed, derive our seasonal orientation--from such verities. They're like the circadian rhythms of a collective sports nation's body, stretched out on an expansive annual canvas: the Maui Classic, an Army-Navy football game, then a preposterously humiliating display by the Big Ten.
Why is it, then, that in two of the past three years the Big Ten has actually done far better, in terms of expected wins by seed, than the ACC in the NCAA tournament? Maybe it's because the bottom half of the ACC is perpetually and markedly superior to the bottom half of the Big Ten. Come tournament time, however, those respective bottom halves are absent and moot. (Well, except for Miami, which this year somehow got a bid-zing!)
In other words, the season is--or at least can be--different than the tournament. Then again, the tournament is kind of important, you know? It is now being dominated. The last two Final Fours have comprised two of the three most aristocratic such gatherings in the 24-season modern (64/65-team) era.
Snootiest Final Fours
1985 to Present
Avg. Seed
2008 1.00 (North Carolina, Memphis, UCLA, Kansas)
1993 1.25 (North Carolina, Michigan, Kentucky, Kansas)
2007 1.50 (Florida, Ohio State, Georgetown, UCLA)
2001 1.75 (Duke, Michigan State, Arizona, Maryland)
1999 1.75 (Connecticut, Duke, Michigan State, Ohio State)
1997 1.75 (Kentucky, North Carolina, Minnesota, Arizona)
1991 1.75 (Duke, UNLV, North Carolina, Kansas)
This dominance is not only measurable by the composition of the Final Four. Consider also that 11 of the last 12 one-seeds have made the Elite Eight. The collective tournament record of those 12 one-seeds against non-one-seed opponents is a notably robust 44-6.
Lastly, it's worth remarking that there was a time not so long ago when it was at least within the realm of possibility for a one-seed to lose a second-round game. Sure, it was a rare occurrence, but it did happen 12 times in the first 20 tournaments of the 64-team era. Such a thing was conceivable. No longer. Starting with the 2005 tournament, the cumulative first-weekend record of the one-seeds is 32-0.
Why is this era of domination happening now? It's early to speculate, of course, but it might just turn out to have something to do with those freshmen we keep hearing about. The NBA collective bargaining agreement that took effect before the 2006 draft defined eligibility upwards. Now a player has to be 19 during the calendar year of the draft (or, if they matriculated at a U.S. high school, at least one year has to have passed since their graduation). Meaning Greg Oden was the first player forced, in effect, to play college basketball for a year. The best, or at least most promising, players in the country outside the NBA are no longer high school seniors. They're college freshmen.
The NBA's rule change has left us with a situation in which the insistent visual prominence of spectacular freshmen is partly justified--they really are great--but it's also partly an optical illusion caused by the outmigration of NBA-worthy sophomores, juniors and seniors. Keep in mind that if we still played by the old John Wooden-era rules, where "college" meant a four-year collegiate career, we would have seen all of the following still plying their trade in the college ranks this past season:
Dwight Howard, Shaun Livingston, Robert Swift, Sebastian Telfair, Al Jefferson, Josh Smith, J.R. Smith, Dorrell Wright, Marvin Williams, Martell Webster, Andrew Bynum, C.J. Miles, Monta Ellis, Louis Williams, Andray Blatche, Amir Johnson, LaMarcus Aldridge, Tyrus Thomas, Rudy Gay, Patrick O'Bryant, Cedric Simmons, Shawne Williams, Rajon Rondo, Kyle Lowry, Jordan Farmar, Daniel Gibson, Leon Powe, Greg Oden, Kevin Durant, Al Horford, Mike Conley, Jeff Green, Corey Brewer, Brandan Wright, Joakim Noah, Spencer Hawes, Thaddeus Young, Julian Wright, Rodney Stuckey, Nick Young, Sean Williams, Javaris Crittenton, Jason Smith, Daequan Cook, Wilson Chandler, Arron Afflalo, Gabe Pruitt, Marcus Williams, Glen Davis, Josh McRoberts, Dominic McGuire, JamesOn Curry, Taurean Green, and Ramon Sessions.
More to the point, under the rules that applied up until 2006, Michael Beasley and Derrick Rose would today be very good NBA rookies instead of outlandishly superb college freshmen. Today's most prominent freshmen are indeed spectacular. However, their presence in college has been compelled, and they do benefit from players who aren't there. Most notably, today's outstanding freshmen have opportunities for playing time at blue-chip programs that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.
The effect of these freshmen on their teams has been dramatic. North Carolina is the only Final Four team without (gasp!) a representative from the 2007 McDonald's All-American Team. Then again, Kansas would very likely be where they are even without Cole Aldrich. The catalytic Final Four freshmen this year are, of course, Kevin Love and Derrick Rose.
True, their teams would be excellent without them. Their teams may even have made the Final Four without them. The point is not that you need a spectacular freshman to win the national title. (After all, we haven't seen such a team since Carmelo Anthony's time.) No, the point is that college basketball appears to have become bifurcated. On the one side are teams good enough to both attract (that includes Kansas State) and capitalize on (that does not include K-State) a catalytic freshman. On the other side are 330 or so other teams. If the catalytic freshmen were smart, they'd start committing in groups, a la Greg Oden and Mike Conley.
Yes, it would be foolish to sound the parity alarm here without at least acknowledging that the two one-seeds that played for the national championship last year, Florida and Ohio State, couldn't even get into the tournament this year. Tournament-brand domination does rotate, thank goodness. The extent of that domination, however, is greater than it's been in quite some time.
John Gasaway is an author of Basketball Prospectus. You can contact John by clicking here or click here to see John's other articles.
Great Article From SI.com's Stewart Mandel
Hoops heaven
Tournament, historic Final Four, anything but blah
Posted: Tuesday April 1, 2008
Sportswriters tend to be a pretty jaded bunch, but the guy standing a few feet from me in the Ford Field media room prior to Sunday's Kansas-Davidson game may have taken the cake.
"This tournament's been pretty boring," I overheard him tell a colleague. "I mean, other than Western Kentucky-Drake, Duke-Belmont, maybe one other game ... it's been pretty dull."
Mind you, this writer got to watch Stephen Curry in person for at least two games, but that's another story. His opinion doesn't differ that much from others I've heard before and during the tournament, most notably from Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon, who wrote on March 17: "[This] season was just, well, blah. ... There aren't many great teams, if any."
As you well know by now, this weekend's Final Four will, for the first time in history, feature all four No. 1 seeds. Most seem to regard this as largely a statistical factoid, the type of oddity that will one day become the answer to a trivia question.
How about focusing instead on just how rare a season it is to have not just one or two, but four truly dominant teams?
Memphis, North Carolina, Kansas and UCLA sport a combined record of 143-9. That's a .941 winning percentage. Comb through the record books if you want -- you're not going to find one higher than that. Even in 1999, the last time three No. 1s made it, the field of Duke, Connecticut, Michigan State and Ohio State had a combined mark of .895.
If there's a reason this season, or this tourney, has seemed "boring," it's because these four teams keep blowing everybody out. Of the 16 tourney games they've played so far, only three -- Memphis' 77-74 second-round win over Mississippi State, UCLA's 51-49 second-round win over Texas A&M and Kansas' 59-57 Elite Eight win over Davidson -- have been decided by fewer than 10 points.
The four are so loaded that you could see their superiority coming a long time ago. Last November, the AP and coaches pollsters tabbed a preseason top four of ... North Carolina, UCLA, Memphis and Kansas.
Personally, I have a slightly different standard when it comes to "dull." The 2000 Michigan State-Wisconsin Final Four game (won by the Spartans 53-41) comes to mind. So, too, does the 2002 national-title game between a Maryland squad no one outside the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., metro area remembers and an Indiana team its own fans barely acknowledge existed.
Granted, I'm a little bit on the younger side among those who cover the tourney annually. Many cling to the old days of Bird and Magic, Ewing and Jordan, Laettner and Hurley. Admittedly, when compared to powerhouses from those earlier eras, most modern-day teams do not belong in the same conversation, nor will they ever again. The game has changed too much.
On the eve of this historic Final Four, however, there's never been a better time to stop and appreciate just how far the sport has come in the past five years.
Decades from now, college hoops historians will look back at the late '90s/early '00s as the sport's indisputable low point. High-school players, particularly big men, jumped straight to the NBA at unprecedented levels (the 2001 class included Kwame Brown, Eddy Curry, Tyson Chandler and DeSagana Diop) and few truly great college players stayed in school longer than two years (the top four picks in the 2000 draft -- Elton Brand, Steve Francis, Baron Davis and Lamar Odom -- all fit that category.)
The result: Mostly mediocre teams and unmemorable players.
Three events helped stir college basketball's renaissance: Syracuse's Carmelo Anthony-fueled 2003 title run, the NBA's minimum-age restriction beginning in 2006 and the ever-improving quality of mid-majors.
Think about that ugly, early 2000s period again for a second. Now think about some of the things we've witnessed over the past five years:
• The first back-to-back national champion (Florida in 2006 and '07) in 15 years.
• One of the greatest Cinderella stories (George Mason's '06 Final Four run) in sports history.
• One of the most memorable national-championship games (North Carolina against Illinois in '05) in recent history.
• Three of the greatest freshman seasons in history (Anthony in '03, Kevin Durant in '07 and Michael Beasley in '08), not to mention players such as Greg Oden, Kevin Love and Derrick Rose, who, in a previous era, may never have stepped on a college campus.
• One of the greatest individual performances (Davidson's Curry, this season) in tourney history.
• A slew of bona fide college stars -- UConn's Emeka Okafor, St. Joe's Jameer Nelson, Duke's J.J. Redick, North Carolina's Tyler Hansbrough -- who actually played full (or nearly full) careers.
• And now, the most loaded Final Four since those days of Laettner, Hurley, the Fab Five and UNLV.
It's no coincidence that all four dominant teams each comprise many of the elements discussed above.
You've got UCLA, the once-rare "seasoned team" that's managed to keep together a core of key players (Darren Collison, Luc Richad Mbah a Moute, Josh Shipp) for three years while adding the increasingly important one-and-done stud (Love).
You've got North Carolina, led by an old-school, upperclass All-America (Hansbrough) and a couple younger stars (Wayne Ellington and Ty Lawson) who have thus far resisted the urge to rush off to the NBA.
You've got Kansas, a team full of former McDonald's All-Americans (Brandon Rush, Mario Chalmers, Darrell Arthur, Sherron Collins) who could have gone elsewhere and averaged 20 points a game but instead have accepted their roles in Bill Self's balanced, defensive-oriented system.
And you've got Memphis, whose coach, John Calipari, has managed to defy the modern trend of short-handed rosters and seven-man rotations, assembling a team so deep that 10 players have scored in double-digits. Adding one of those one-and-dones (Rose) hasn't hurt, either.
For all the hype that surrounds the Final Four, it's traditionally been the championship game that everyone remembers. We remember Keith Smart's jumper, Rumeal Robinson's free throws, Grant Hill's one-handed alley-oop, Chris Webber's timeout, Trajan Langdon's travel, Hakim Warrick's block and Raymond Felton's steal.
In terms of semifinal games, only three immediately jump to mind: Duke-UNLV ('91), Kentucky-UMass ('96) and UConn-Duke ('04). They typically come and go by the time Monday night rolls around.
This year, however, holds the potential for two truly epic semifinal games. North Carolina-Kansas figures to be an up-tempo thriller. Memphis-UCLA has all the makings of a classic slugfest. And who can remember the last time you could legitimately say that any of the four teams might win the whole thing?
Meanwhile, we're guaranteed just the sixth No. 1 vs. No. 1 title game since 1979. The first five -- '82 North Carolina-Georgetown, '93 UNC-Michigan, '99 Connecticut-Duke, '05 UNC-Illinois and '07 Florida-Ohio State -- were decided by an average margin of 4.8 points. That's a pretty good sign.
After the Fantastic Four spent nearly the entire season dominating everybody else, it's unrealistic to think they will do the same to each other. If all goes to plan, here's guessing nobody will soon look back at 2007-08 as "blah."
Tournament, historic Final Four, anything but blah
Posted: Tuesday April 1, 2008
Sportswriters tend to be a pretty jaded bunch, but the guy standing a few feet from me in the Ford Field media room prior to Sunday's Kansas-Davidson game may have taken the cake.
"This tournament's been pretty boring," I overheard him tell a colleague. "I mean, other than Western Kentucky-Drake, Duke-Belmont, maybe one other game ... it's been pretty dull."
Mind you, this writer got to watch Stephen Curry in person for at least two games, but that's another story. His opinion doesn't differ that much from others I've heard before and during the tournament, most notably from Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon, who wrote on March 17: "[This] season was just, well, blah. ... There aren't many great teams, if any."
As you well know by now, this weekend's Final Four will, for the first time in history, feature all four No. 1 seeds. Most seem to regard this as largely a statistical factoid, the type of oddity that will one day become the answer to a trivia question.
How about focusing instead on just how rare a season it is to have not just one or two, but four truly dominant teams?
Memphis, North Carolina, Kansas and UCLA sport a combined record of 143-9. That's a .941 winning percentage. Comb through the record books if you want -- you're not going to find one higher than that. Even in 1999, the last time three No. 1s made it, the field of Duke, Connecticut, Michigan State and Ohio State had a combined mark of .895.
If there's a reason this season, or this tourney, has seemed "boring," it's because these four teams keep blowing everybody out. Of the 16 tourney games they've played so far, only three -- Memphis' 77-74 second-round win over Mississippi State, UCLA's 51-49 second-round win over Texas A&M and Kansas' 59-57 Elite Eight win over Davidson -- have been decided by fewer than 10 points.
The four are so loaded that you could see their superiority coming a long time ago. Last November, the AP and coaches pollsters tabbed a preseason top four of ... North Carolina, UCLA, Memphis and Kansas.
Personally, I have a slightly different standard when it comes to "dull." The 2000 Michigan State-Wisconsin Final Four game (won by the Spartans 53-41) comes to mind. So, too, does the 2002 national-title game between a Maryland squad no one outside the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., metro area remembers and an Indiana team its own fans barely acknowledge existed.
Granted, I'm a little bit on the younger side among those who cover the tourney annually. Many cling to the old days of Bird and Magic, Ewing and Jordan, Laettner and Hurley. Admittedly, when compared to powerhouses from those earlier eras, most modern-day teams do not belong in the same conversation, nor will they ever again. The game has changed too much.
On the eve of this historic Final Four, however, there's never been a better time to stop and appreciate just how far the sport has come in the past five years.
Decades from now, college hoops historians will look back at the late '90s/early '00s as the sport's indisputable low point. High-school players, particularly big men, jumped straight to the NBA at unprecedented levels (the 2001 class included Kwame Brown, Eddy Curry, Tyson Chandler and DeSagana Diop) and few truly great college players stayed in school longer than two years (the top four picks in the 2000 draft -- Elton Brand, Steve Francis, Baron Davis and Lamar Odom -- all fit that category.)
The result: Mostly mediocre teams and unmemorable players.
Three events helped stir college basketball's renaissance: Syracuse's Carmelo Anthony-fueled 2003 title run, the NBA's minimum-age restriction beginning in 2006 and the ever-improving quality of mid-majors.
Think about that ugly, early 2000s period again for a second. Now think about some of the things we've witnessed over the past five years:
• The first back-to-back national champion (Florida in 2006 and '07) in 15 years.
• One of the greatest Cinderella stories (George Mason's '06 Final Four run) in sports history.
• One of the most memorable national-championship games (North Carolina against Illinois in '05) in recent history.
• Three of the greatest freshman seasons in history (Anthony in '03, Kevin Durant in '07 and Michael Beasley in '08), not to mention players such as Greg Oden, Kevin Love and Derrick Rose, who, in a previous era, may never have stepped on a college campus.
• One of the greatest individual performances (Davidson's Curry, this season) in tourney history.
• A slew of bona fide college stars -- UConn's Emeka Okafor, St. Joe's Jameer Nelson, Duke's J.J. Redick, North Carolina's Tyler Hansbrough -- who actually played full (or nearly full) careers.
• And now, the most loaded Final Four since those days of Laettner, Hurley, the Fab Five and UNLV.
It's no coincidence that all four dominant teams each comprise many of the elements discussed above.
You've got UCLA, the once-rare "seasoned team" that's managed to keep together a core of key players (Darren Collison, Luc Richad Mbah a Moute, Josh Shipp) for three years while adding the increasingly important one-and-done stud (Love).
You've got North Carolina, led by an old-school, upperclass All-America (Hansbrough) and a couple younger stars (Wayne Ellington and Ty Lawson) who have thus far resisted the urge to rush off to the NBA.
You've got Kansas, a team full of former McDonald's All-Americans (Brandon Rush, Mario Chalmers, Darrell Arthur, Sherron Collins) who could have gone elsewhere and averaged 20 points a game but instead have accepted their roles in Bill Self's balanced, defensive-oriented system.
And you've got Memphis, whose coach, John Calipari, has managed to defy the modern trend of short-handed rosters and seven-man rotations, assembling a team so deep that 10 players have scored in double-digits. Adding one of those one-and-dones (Rose) hasn't hurt, either.
For all the hype that surrounds the Final Four, it's traditionally been the championship game that everyone remembers. We remember Keith Smart's jumper, Rumeal Robinson's free throws, Grant Hill's one-handed alley-oop, Chris Webber's timeout, Trajan Langdon's travel, Hakim Warrick's block and Raymond Felton's steal.
In terms of semifinal games, only three immediately jump to mind: Duke-UNLV ('91), Kentucky-UMass ('96) and UConn-Duke ('04). They typically come and go by the time Monday night rolls around.
This year, however, holds the potential for two truly epic semifinal games. North Carolina-Kansas figures to be an up-tempo thriller. Memphis-UCLA has all the makings of a classic slugfest. And who can remember the last time you could legitimately say that any of the four teams might win the whole thing?
Meanwhile, we're guaranteed just the sixth No. 1 vs. No. 1 title game since 1979. The first five -- '82 North Carolina-Georgetown, '93 UNC-Michigan, '99 Connecticut-Duke, '05 UNC-Illinois and '07 Florida-Ohio State -- were decided by an average margin of 4.8 points. That's a pretty good sign.
After the Fantastic Four spent nearly the entire season dominating everybody else, it's unrealistic to think they will do the same to each other. If all goes to plan, here's guessing nobody will soon look back at 2007-08 as "blah."
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