KJ’s BB Newsletter           April 7, 2001

FINAL AP POLL

The final AP basketball poll lists Kansas as 7th, Iowa State at 15th, and Iowa at 29th.  Drake would have received one vote if I’d been allowed to vote.

THE PROS

Now that the collegiate season is over, it’s time to turn to the pros.  Just how are the alumni of our favorite teams doing so far this season?

There are three Iowa State Cyclones in the NBA, Marcus Fizer and Fred Hoiberg of the Chicago Bulls, and Kelvin Cato of the Houston Rockets.  Fizer and Hoiberg are both doing well playing for their former coach Tim Floyd.  Fizer stated out slow, but has come on strong lately, filling in for injured Elton Brand.  Hoiberg leads the Bulls in assists and is 4th in minutes played.  After signing a huge contract, Cato has been generally considered a bust.  Although, with Akeem Olajuwon out with an injury, the Rockets will have to rely on him more.

There are also three Iowa Hawkeyes: Ricky Davis with the Miami Heat, Ryan Bowen of the Denver Nuggets, and Matt Bullard, a teammate of Cato’s in Houston.  Davis has been on injured reserve almost all year, Bullard has continued as a steady reserve for the Rockets, and Bowen has a regular seat on the bench with the Nuggets.

Kansas has six former players in the biggies, including Paul Pierce, who is having an all-star season with the Boston Celtics, Raef LaFrentz, Bowen’s teammate in Denver, Scot Pollard of the Sacramento Kings, and three members of the Utah Jazz, Danny Manning, Greg Ostertag and Jacque Vaughn.  Pierce was recently named NBA Player of the Week, after going wild with several back-to-back 40 point games.  After a much-publicized tiff with Denver coach Dan Issel, LaFrentz has settled down to become more consistent.  Manning has become the sixth man for the Jazz, Vaughn the primary backup for John Stockton, and Ostertag has finally developed into a consistent backup to Olden Polynice (altho Ostertag’s stats are usually better).

Here is their stat line through April 3, in order of scoring average:

Player

G

Min

FG

FGA

FG%

FT

FTA

FT%

3FG

REB

AST

STL

TO

BLK

PTS

PPG

Pierce

73

2769

611

1348

.453

496

650

.763

132

462

223

124

231

56

1850

25.3

LaFrentz

70

2188

336

707

.475

168

234

.718

38

533

99

33

82

181

878

12.5

Fizer

63

1352

234

556

.421

99

137

.723

6

269

64

25

105

18

573

9.1

Hoiberg

64

1855

176

405

.453

104

118

.881

84

255

225

80

63

11

540

8.4

Manning

73

1126

208

428

.486

81

110

.736

6

187

79

40

84

28

503

6.9

Pollard

67

1432

158

339

.466

112

144

.778

0

395

43

44

61

89

428

6.4

Vaughn

73

1435

159

348

.457

116

151

.768

28

139

290

41

116

3

462

6.3

Bullard

54

830

110

258

.426

10

13

.769

74

108

35

9

11

9

304

5.6

Cato

27

465

48

81

.593

28

42

.667

0

92

5

11

15

28

124

4.6

Ostertag

72

1332

118

244

.484

76

134

.567

1

358

20

19

58

137

313

4.3

Davis

3

24

4

8

.500

5

6

,833

0

4

3

0

0

0

13

4.3

Bowen

49

562

64

111

.577

23

38

.605

4

91

28

27

21

10

155

3.2

 

MEMBER OF KU’s “IRON FIVE” DIES AT 80

John “The Thin Man” Buescher, captain of the 1942-43 Kansas University men's basketball team that won the Big Six Conference title with a 10-0 record, died March 28 in Midland, Mich.

The 1943 KU Basketball  Media Guide had this to say about Buescher:  John is one of three out-of-state men on the squad and the only two-letterman available.  He graduated from Beardstown High (IL) where his coach was Clyde McQueen.  He was the outstanding member of the 1940 K.U. freshman quintet.  As a sophomore he played forward and started several games, averaging 3.5 points.  Last year he was the regular center or “quarterback.” He is a wonderful ball-handler and surprisingly adept at rebound work despite his unusually thin build.  Is the key-man in the attack as he sets up plays, calls signals, and settles the team down.  During Big Six play he averaged 9.8 points a game and for the entire season made 8.4 points.  He gained a few nominations for first all-Big Six last year and on all others was unanimous second team choice.  Has a great variety of shots and is exceptionally smooth on the court.  John is majoring in Physical Education, has been turned down and classified 4-F by the Army for having “spots” on his lungs, and has got a ‘steady’ girl friend who keeps him out of mischief.”

During Buescher’s tenure in Lawrence, 1941-43, KU won the Big Six conference title all three years, compiling a 51-17 record (75%).  In 1942, KU won 2 of 3 games in the NCAA tournament.  In 1943, the Jayhawkers compiled a 22-6 record, and held the No. 2 spot in the AP poll at the end of the regular season.  They were scheduled to play in the NCAA, but the other four starters were inducted in the Army, so coach Phog Allen declined the tourney invitation. 

The 1943 starters were dubbed the “Iron Five”, as they played almost all of the minutes.  Included were All-American Charlie Black, Ray Evans (who was an All-American quarterback), Otto Schnellbacher (who caught Evan’s passes on the gridiron), and Armand Dixon.  At 6’2, Buescher was the center, which on Allen’s team meant that he was the point man, feeding the ball to the scorers.  Buescher was the second leading scorer on the team with 9.9ppg, and landed a spot on the All-Big Six first team.

THE DARK SIDE OF KENTUCKY BASKETBALL

PROLOGUE       This is the first of a series of articles I am writing about the longtime ugly aspect of Kentucky basketball, so often ignored by the media, and usually avoided by the NCAA.   In historical realty though, the University of Kentucky basketball program has continuously been one of the most criminal of all NCAA Division 1 schools.  In each decade since the 1940’s, UK has been involved in at least one scandal of major proportions, and until the 1970’s were a major force against the integration of blacks in basketball.

Recently, in the course of researching for this story about the longtime ugly aspect of Kentucky basketball, I started to reread James Michener’s Sports in America, which was published back in 1976.  I remembered that he had addressed the issue of race in sports so looked through the index and found his comments about the 1966 NCAA championship battle between all-white Kentucky and all-black Texas Western, a memorable watershed of racial relations in college basketball. 

I expected to find that Michener would excoriate Adolph Rupp, the Wildcats longtime head coach.  I was stunned to read, however, that he felt that the victory by Texas Western wasn’t the real story, but rather that the Miner players had been treated quite poorly in school, and few remained in college the next year.  “The blacks had been imported from New York and had been treated as poorly paid gladiators, and of the seven black champions, none had graduated.  They had no social privileges, were threatened with loss of their scholarships if they dated white or Mexican girls –  there were no black girls – and were discriminated against in every particular.”  He went on to say that the El Paso story is one of the most wretched in the history of sports. 

Not once did Michener mention anything about Rupp’s highly publicized racism, a bias that not only pervaded the Kentucky program, but which had influence thoughout the Southeastern Conference and beyond.   Rather, he said “In reflecting upon the El Paso incident, I have often thought how much luckier the white players were under Coach Adolph Rupp.  He looked after his players; they had a shot at a real education; and they were secure within the traditions of the university, their community, and their state.  They may have lost the playoff, but they were winners in every other respect, and their black opponents from El Paso were losers.” 1 

While this was an astute observation of the white-black disparity caused by racism, isn’t it very strange that Michener completely missed the other half of this most wretched story?  That very Rupp, who looked after his white players, gave them a shot at a real education, and made them feel secure, was the very same man who flaunted his utter disregard for the rules of fair play in matters of recruiting, regularly paid his players, and refused to recruit blacks, kept them from getting a shot at education, and proudly made sure that all blacks (and whites, for that matter) knew about the segregationist traditions of his university.  

In subsequent issues of KJ’s BB Newsletter, I’ll tell the other side of the story -- the one that addresses those Wildcat dark traditions. The first chapter will address the initiation of Kentucky basketball’s criminal traditions, followed by the second chapter which looks in depth at the virulence and influence of the earlier years of it’s racist tradition.  Subsequent chapters reflect that those sinister practices have continued through the many changes in coaches and administrators at the University.

___________________

1 Sports In America, A Fawcett Crest Book, by James A, Michener, p. 189.