Bud's bunch the best?
Legendary Jayhawk Bud Stallworth says his 1970-71 squad was KU's best ever
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Bud Stallworth, now
an official at the University of Kansas, was a prolific scorer for KU
when the Jayhawks played in the 1971 Final Four. Stallworth holds KU's
single-game scoring record, pouring in 52 points against Missouri in
1972. 
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The Capital-Journal
LAWRENCE -- Thirty-one years later, the comment still eats
at Bud Stallworth.
It came from John Wooden -- yeah, that John Wooden -- UCLA coaching legend, Wizard of Westwood, leader of the team that had just knocked Stallworth and his Kansas teammates out of the running for the 1971 national title.
"I got hurt toward the middle of the first quarter of that game, and the next day I was getting some treatment," Stallworth recalled. "And this is why I have a sore spot about it. He came by and said, 'It's a nice day, Bud, but it could have been nicer.'
"And I don't like him for that at all. When he said that, I thought if I hadn't been brought up to respect my elders I'd push him right into the whirlpool."
See, Stallworth still thinks the Jayhawks could have beaten the Bruins, despite the fact Wooden's teams had won four consecutive NCAA titles coming in.
KU, he said, was that good.
And the record backs him up. The 1970-71 Jayhawks entered the Final Four at 27-1, their only loss coming at Louisville two days after back-to-back wins in a regular-season tournament.
Stallworth was the shooting guard on a team that was one of the biggest and most physical in the nation. He played in the backcourt at 6-foot-5, a fearless shooter who would almost certainly be higher than 12th on KU's all-time career scoring list if the 3-point shot had been in existence and if he hadn't played in an era when freshmen were excluded from competition.
KU's frontcourt that year consisted of 6-10 power forward Dave Robisch at forward and 6-10 Roger Brown at center. Pierre Russell, at 6-4, played the small forward, while 6-1 junior Aubrey Nash ran the point.
"Four of those kids went on to play pro," said Sam Miranda, an assistant on Ted Owens' staff at the time. "Stallworth and Robisch were in the NBA, Pierre and Brown in the ABA.
"It's hard to say how you'd rank all-time Kansas teams, but I think they'd be ranked in the top five. They were an outstanding team, strong defensively and strong rebounding."
Stallworth also rates the team among KU's best. But, he wonders, does anybody else?
It's a legitimate question. KU's Final Four teams of the 1950s are perhaps better known, because the school won its first NCAA tournament title in 1952, and the '57 team boasted the program's most accomplished player, Wilt Chamberlain.
By the 1980s, television had begun wire-to-wire coverage of the NCAA Tournament, giving the 1986 and '88 teams more recognition. That recognition carried over to the 1991 and '93 Final Four teams.
But Stallworth and his teammates never played on national TV and didn't take the title, leading Stallworth to think that they got "lost in the shuffle."
"I have to defend our honor," Stallworth said. "It's no fault of any of the younger generation of fans of KU basketball, it's just that way. So they talk about the '86 team, and they might have been good. They talk about Roy's teams.
"I saw most of them, and I still go back and say that the '71 team was undefeated in the conference, went through the Big Eight twice and lost once in the regular season."
All the while, the '70-71 Jayhawks were dealing with the fallout of a very interesting era, one crackling with racial and political tensions that accompanied the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War.
As he was warming up for KU's season opener on Dec. 1, eight months after the Kansas Union was gutted in a firebombing, Stallworth noticed the stands were empty. Years later, he learned that there'd been a bomb threat and the crowd had been kept out until the building could be searched.
But the turmoil of the times didn't affect the Jayhawks, whose unity was evident in a 21-game winning streak between Dec. 26 and March 20.
From the record book, KU wound up looking like just another victim in UCLA's string of national titles. But Stallworth and Miranda said the final score, 68-60, didn't tell the whole story.
"They got a couple of questionable calls," Stallworth said. "Down the stretch they called a traveling on Robisch and a goaltending on Roger Brown that were three- or four-point swings in the score."
The calls stood, of course, and today the game is just a line in Wooden's legend.
But Stallworth, who now serves as business manager of KU's office of Design and Construction Management, said the loss didn't erase the '71 team's place in KU history.
"I don't back our team down from any team this school's ever had," he said.