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Was Made  Texas Western's BOBBY JOE HILL drives for a point in the 1966 NCAA championship game against Kentucky. |
I remember them well:
Two historic NCAA games
By STAN ISAACS
of TheColumnists.com
As we head into the final
weekend of the NCAA basketball tournament, we are so accustomed
to blacks dominating the sport, it seems like a long, long time
ago that basketball history was made.
Texas Western’s 72-65 victory over
Kentucky in the championship final on March 19, 1966 is regarded
as a watershed game in college sports history because it marked
the first time an all-black team played-and won-an NCAA final.
More has been made of it in the intervening years than at the
time.
In looking back at my coverage I note that I didn’t even
mention the all-black angle in my column. Probably because I
didn’t want to make too much of this, though I had shown
an awareness of the race angle in a column on the semi-final
victory of Texas Western (now Texas El Paso) over Utah.
Note this excerpt:
All of the first seven [on Texas Western] are Negroes. That
shouldn’t be significant one way or another except that
many people make it noteworthy with snickers about the racial
makeup of the team.
In the press row for example, a reporter from Virginia noted
at one point in the game that Texas Western had five Negroes
on the court and that Utah had three. “I’ll
say one thing,” this sharp observer noted, “whoever
wins this game will be the dark-horse team tomorrow night [in
the final].”
His neighbor, also a Virginian, said, “What do you mean?”
“It’s eight to two on the court,” the first noted.
“Eight to two?” the second repeated with puzzlement.
Then he grasped the meaning. “Eight to two, oh.”
The point here is that the second fellow was seeing the game
for what it was: a battle of two teams. His neighbor was blinded
by the color of skin. Perhaps there is a bigger point there.
Who would have thought, say 10 years ago, that two schools--not
City College or NYU or UCLA--but such outlanders as Texas Western
and Utah would be involved in a game with such representation.
Democracy, it’s wonderful.
Oddly, the insignificant consolation game for third place in
that tournament (consolation games have since been done away
with) stuck with me even more all these years. I was moved and
concerned about a development in the closing seconds of the game
between Utah and Duke. Utah had a chance to tie at the end when
one of its substitutes went to the foul line for a one-and-one
attempt. At that point Duke coach Vic Bubas, hoping to unnerve
the foul shooter, called a timeout. Then after the timeout elapsed
and the youth went back to the line, Bubas called another timeout.
Back then it was a new tactic to call successive timeouts. It
was the first time Bubas tried it, the first time I had seen
it. It was an effective psychological ploy because it gave the
foul shooter more time to think.
It bothered me, though. It was only a consolation game, I thought.
Was it necessary to try such a tactic in this game? I noted in
the Utah press book that the youth on the line was a senior.
He was a substitute, probably not accustomed to this kind of
pressure. I fretted about the impact it might have on him if
he missed the first shot as the final act of his college athletic
career. I wondered if third place in the tournament was worth
resorting to such psychological manipulation of a college kid.
The youth went to the foul line, obviously nervous. He bounced
the ball and shot. He missed. Duke won the game, 79-77. And in
the midst of the winners’ celebration I looked across the
floor at a dejected young man. Attention turned to the championship
game so there was no time to get to the Utah youth. Given space
limitations in my newspaper, Newsday, and the need to
focus on the Texas Western upset of Kentucky, my thoughts about
the victimizing of the Utah player did not get in the paper.
I understood that there were sob-sister implications to my concern.
You could argue that the Duke coach operated within the rules,
that we hold up athletics as an endeavor that can teach kids
to react to pressure. You could argue the experience might toughen
the kid to better cope with the vicissitudes he would face in
later life.
On the other hand my doubts lingered. Given the cruel instincts
that underscore so much of big-time athletics, I could see unthinking
people branding the kid a “loser” to the point of it
affecting his psyche beyond his athletic career. The incident
stayed with me. Through the years I wondered about the young
man and what happened to him. Some 20 years later I was moved
to make phone calls to find out about him and write a follow-up
column.
By then most of the people at Utah were not old enough to remember
the occurrence. I then got lucky in being put in contact with
the coach, Jack Gardner, who had retired to California. “The
boy’s name was Leonard Black,” Gardner told me.
“He was a nervous type. What Bubas did was relatively
new at the time. He was wise, I think, to do this because it
put pressure on the boy.”
Gardner thought my objections to Bubas’ strategy were “naïve.”
He said, “Competition is tough. One of the lessons a
person learns in competition is how to be cool under pressure.
That is one of the realities of life and the game of basketball.”
He gave me Black’s number in a town called Bountiful in
Utah. Black was cheerful.
“Oh, I remember it all right,” he said. “I
was excited at the time. It was only a consolation game, but
winning is winning. During the first timeout I recall the coach
told me to go through with my shot without interruption. During
the second timeout he told me, ‘Don’t worry, I know
you’ll make it.’ And then he turned to the other guys
and said, ‘If Black misses, I want you to do this…’”
He felt awful at the time, he said, but he was heartened by the
reaction from people. “I got letters from one of the
local editors and from people all over the state that I still
have in a scrapbook. They told me I had a good season and that
it shouldn’t bother me. My fraternity brothers were encouraging
and even made a joking thing of it. A few years later I saw Coach
Gardner try the same tactic. Even now I meet people who say,
‘Aren’t you the Leonard Black who missed that shot?’
It’s always said in a nice vein. I often wonder now if anybody
would recall anything about it if I had made the shot."
There was no lasting trauma. A business major, Black went on
to a successful career, first in the Air Force, then as an instructor
of economics at the Air Force Academy. He owned real estate and
gold mining operations in Utah. He was married with three boys
and coached and played recreational basketball. He even had a
videotape of the end of that game and showed it to his boys.
Black said he could understand the Duke coach’s tactic.
On the other hand, he said, if he were a coach in recreation
or high school ball, he didn’t think he would employ it.
As a college coach? “I don’t know.”
I also called Bubas, then commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference.
“It was the idea of the assistant coach,” he
said. “I didn’t think about it in terms of what
effect it might have on the boy. There is always some kind of
pressure to make a shot in basketball. That is what competition
is all about. You are the first person ever to raise this point
with me, but I am not offended by your asking it. Would I do
it if I were coaching a high school team? I don’t know.”
And there was this, too, from Leonard Black. He said, “My
sister was at the game and she was angry about it. She says she’s
always hated Dick Butkus [Vic Bubas] for what he did to me.”
©2010 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted March 29, 2010.
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