eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
The storied history that is KU basketball is revealed in this compilation of the most critical moments and important facts about past and present players, coaches, and teams. Most Kansas basketball fans have attended games at Allen Fieldhouse, seen highlights of a young Paul Pierce, and remember watching the Jayhawks cut down the net in 2008. But only real fans know the origins of the Rock Chalk Jayhawk Chant, where the Jayhawks played prior to calling Allen Fieldhouse home, and can name the former Jayhawk who went on to earn the Republican nomination for president. Scattered throughout the pages are pep talks, records, and Jayhawks lore, including lyrics to “I'm a Jayhawk”; stories from Wilt Chamberlain's years at Kansas; Phog Allen's 39 seasons on the Kansas bench; Roy Williams' memorable 15-year run, including three trips to the Final Four. Whether a die-hard fan from the days of Larry Brown or a new supporter of Bill Self and Mario Chalmers, readers will find that this book contains everything Jayhawks fans should know, see, and do in their lifetime.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781623682958 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Triumph Books |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2013 |
| Series: | 100 Things...Fans Should Know Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
100 Things Kansas Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die
By Ken Davis
Triumph Books
Copyright © 2013 Ken DavisAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62368-295-8
CHAPTER 1
James Naismith
University of Kansas chancellor Francis Snow needed a physical education director and someone to lead daily chapel services when he contacted University of Chicago chancellor William Harper in 1898 and asked for a recommendation. Harper immediately sought the advice of his football coach, the renowned Amos Alonzo Stagg.
Stagg fired off a telegram to Snow that read, "Recommend James Naismith, inventor of basketball, medical doctor, Presbyterian minister, tee-totaler, all-around athlete, non-smoker, and owner of vocabulary without cuss words. Address Y.M.C.A., Denver, Colorado."
Stagg had met Naismith at YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1890, a little more than one year before Naismith invented the game of basketball. They became good friends and admired one another but had gone their separate ways. Snow took Stagg's recommendation under consideration and wasted little time offering Naismith the job.
Naismith accepted. He was bound for Lawrence, and that brings us to the most important thing fans should know about Kansas basketball before they die. James Naismith did not invent the game of basketball while at KU, but his arrival at the university marks the beginning of the school's basketball timeline.
Naismith wasn't even thinking about Kansas basketball when he took the job in Lawrence. Coaching basketball wasn't part of the job description because Kansas didn't have an intercollegiate basketball team. His initial salary was $1,300 a year — or about $25 a week. He often said the only reason he was offered the job was that he knew how to pray.
But Naismith did become the first basketball coach at Kansas, taking that position in 1899. Without even trying, he laid a foundation for the sport that has given the university its athletic identity for more than a hundred years. In the process he became a treasured member of the faculty and the community, remaining in Lawrence until his death in November 1939.
Naismith, born November 6, 1861 in Almonte, Ontario, was orphaned and experienced a difficult childhood before moving to the U.S. in 1890. In December 1891 he was placed in charge of 18 "incorrigible" young men at the YMCA Training School (which later became Springfield College). Dr. Luther Gulick, dean of the physical education department, told Naismith to keep the men from being bored and was given 14 days to discover a cure for their "cabin fever."
In addition to inventing a new game, Naismith felt he had the toughest teaching assignment in the school. In a biography of Naismith written with Naismith's granddaughter, Helen Carpenter, author Rob Rains points out that Naismith considered it an "imposition." "If I ever tried to back out of anything, I did then," Naismith is quoted as saying in that book, James Naismith, The Man Who Invented Basketball. "I did not want to do it." But later, Naismith had to admit it worked out for the "ultimate good."
He borrowed a little from lacrosse, soccer, rugby — and a game popular with Canadian children known as duck-on-a-rock — and basketball was born. The school janitor had no boxes, so Naismith nailed a pair of peach baskets to the balcony, which just happened to be 10 feet above the floor. It took almost all the 14 days he had been allotted but Naismith still had an hour to write down the game's 13 original rules. Naismith chose a player from each team, and the first center jump was held.
The game was starting to gain popularity across the nation when Naismith arrived at KU. Women had played basketball in Lawrence, but the sport had not caught on. Naismith's presence did create more interest in the formation of a school team. The record shows that KU lost its first game 16–5 against the Kansas City YMCA on February 3, 1899 in Kansas City, Missouri. Naismith's first team then won six in a row and finished 7–4 in that initial season.
It is often pointed out that Naismith remains the only losing coach in Kansas history. That is true, but Naismith gave no thought to statistics. He won 55 games and lost 60 before handing the coaching duties to one of his students, Forrest C. "Phog" Allen, after a 7–8 season in 1907. In Naismith's mind, basketball was nothing more than a way to pass time between football and outdoor spring sports. Naismith didn't think the game needed to be coached and due to his other campus duties he often didn't travel to away games. He also was known to serve as referee at many games, including that first one in Kansas City.
An article written in 1937 by The Arkansas Gazette said, "Games in which [Naismith] officiated generally went off smoothly for he knew the game and players took his word as final." Apparently the men from the Kansas City YMCA didn't see it that way in the first game. Naismith was frustrated that the Kansas City players went after the ball "without respect to the rule that a player was entitled to his place on the court." "On calling fouls I was informed that no foul had been committed, and it was impossible to convey the idea of it being a foul," Naismith later wrote. "My idea of sportsmanship was to play the rules as written, and I kept trying to overcome this handicap with skill, but we were defeated."
Naismith didn't walk away from basketball completely in 1907, but he was more than content staying in Lawrence as a Presbyterian minister and a member of the KU physical education department. He played a key role in the construction of Robinson Gymnasium, but his main interest was teaching sports physiology and clean living.
There aren't many people still alive who can offer first hand accounts of connecting with Naismith. One is Fred Bosilevac, who played for Allen from 1936–37. At age 96 Bosilevac returned to Allen Fieldhouse in 2013 for the 115th anniversary of KU basketball. He remembers taking two physical education courses from Naismith, who led a quiet, ordinary life in Lawrence — not a life of celebrity. "He had an office in Robinson Gymnasium," Bosilevac said during a 2008 interview. "Once in a while, he'd come over and watch the boys practice but very few times. People had a lot of respect for him — maybe because he was a preacher, but not because he was the inventor of basketball. He was not an outstanding personality. He was a preacher, a good man, and an honest man. That's what he tried to impart in those two classes I was in."
Upon Naismith's death, Phog Allen made sure his mentor's contribution wouldn't be forgotten. Allen wrote: "This game, the only international game that is the product of one man's brain, stamps Dr. Naismith as a great educator, a kindly humanitarian, and a model Christian."
CHAPTER 2Phog Allen
Imagine the college coaching profession today with Dr. Forrest C. "Phog" Allen as its star personality. Allen became known as "the father of basketball coaching" during his 39 remarkable seasons at Kansas, but he was much more than a coach. He was the game's best friend.
Sports Illustrated noted that if Dr. James Naismith invented the game of basketball, Phog Allen "invented the spectacle of it, literally taking the sport from the cramped gymnasiums of its birth to the far corners of the world." That certainly is true, but as Allen became the global caretaker of the sport, he was evolving as the most dominant figure in Kansas basketball history. "The tradition of Kansas basketball started with Phog Allen," says Jerry Waugh, who played for Allen from 1948–51 and later was an assistant coach and administrator at KU.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of examples to support Waugh's statement. Anyone who has ever walked to Allen Fieldhouse on a snowy winter night must have a sense of what the man meant to Jayhawks basketball. When the building named for him is full of rowdy fans, joining together in the Rock Chalk Chant or waving the wheat, his spirit is in the air. When opponents look up to that foreboding banner that reads, Pay Heed, All Who Enter: BEWARE OF "THE PHOG" his power and his presence is felt beyond all doubt.
Allen often told the story of a conversation with Dr. Naismith that took place in 1905, when Baker University was interested in hiring Allen as a basketball coach. "I've got a good joke on you, you bloody beggar," Naismith said to Allen. "They wanted you to coach basketball down at Baker."
Allen replied: "What's so funny about that?"
"Why, you can't coach basketball. You just play it," the game's inventor said. "Well, you certainly can coach free throw shooting," Allen said. "And you can teach the boys to pass at angles and run in curves. You can show them how to arch their shots. And pivot toward the sideline instead of into the court where a guard can get the ball." That may not have immediately changed Naismith's mind, but KU's first coach later presented his prize pupil with a portrait bearing the inscription: "From the Father of Basketball to the Father of Basketball Coaching."
Allen, who did coach at Baker for three years, was a decent high school player in Independence, Missouri, and later at KU. In 1906, the Kansas University Weekly referred to Allen as "the best goal-thrower in the world." But by December 1907, he had embarked on the first of two stints as Kansas coach — an assignment that would ultimately total 39 historic seasons.
Allen was an innovator and an inventor, a promoter, and a publicist. His favorite hobby was promoting causes or rule changes that he believed would help the game. When the NCAA tournament got off to a shaky start, he promised to make the event popular and a financial success. Allen worked hard to get basketball approved as an Olympic sport, allowing Naismith to see competition in his sport at the 1936 Games. Allen also formed the National Association of Basketball Coaches.
Allen loved to write letters, many of them still on file in the archives of KU's library and museum system. In August of 1950, he wrote to his "Jayhawk Basketeers" about their physical condition and warned them to lose any "excess poundage" before arriving back in Lawrence. "We have got to learn to do the things we did last year, snappier," Allen wrote. "We must execute those fundamentals with a surer, more deft reaction. And all of these must be favorable."
Legend has it that he drank between four and eight quarts of water on the bench during games. He had his own sneaker made by the brand Servus, and that "Phog" Allen Basketball Shoe was designed for fast, sure footwork. He was an actual doctor, studying osteopathy in medical school, so he often served as trainer to his own players. He was a supporter of the Lang Foot and Arch Normalizer device and kept one in the KU locker room, encouraging his players to use it. "It was just a rolling pin," All-American center Clyde Lovellette said. "He made us get up there and roll your foot with the arch. And it was painful. I don't know what that did for you. All I can remember was a lot of pain with that. But we all did it because Phog said it would be good for us."
Allen used to describe Lovellette as "a big turkey gobbling up all the grain." Outrageous statements were another part of his persona. He didn't care for New Yorkers in general and especially disliked Eastern sportswriters. Once he referred to a New Yorker as "so provincial that when he gets as far as Philadelphia he thinks he's on the Lewis and Clark expedition."
New York Post columnist Milton Gross shot back with a reference to Allen's nickname, a shortened version of a foghorn. Gross noted it is "an instrument, which operates on hot air and indicates the one blowing the whistle has more or less lost his way."
Allen didn't lose his way too often. He won 590 games at Kansas and lost 219. In his entire coaching career, Allen won 746 games, and that stood as the record until one of his pupils, Adolph Rupp at Kentucky, broke it. Allen won 24 conference championships and the 1952 NCAA championship. Forced to retire at age 70 by Kansas law, Allen never got to coach Wilt Chamberlain on a varsity squad. But he did witness the opening of Allen Fieldhouse, still the home of the Jayhawks after 58 years. On the east side at the entrance to the Booth Family Hall of Athletics, there is a bronze statue of Allen.
The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, named for his mentor and the inventor of the game, is home to many of his protégés. Allen died on September 16, 1974, at age 88, and many of those protégés attended his funeral at Plymouth Congregational Church in Lawrence. "He'll go down in history," Adolph Rupp said, "as the greatest basketball coach of all time."
CHAPTER 3Allen Fieldhouse
Fifty-eight years after Allen Fieldhouse was dedicated with a 77–67 victory against Kansas State, it's hard to imagine this magnificent basketball facility was a product of envy, and Phog Allen's desire to keep up with Kansas State and Missouri. But that is the truth. Call it the "Monarch of the Midland," but it is not "The House That Wilt Built." The home of the Jayhawks was — and always has been — a tribute to the illustrious career of Dr. Forrest C. "Phog" Allen.
The distinctive limestone structure has needed extensive sprucing up from time to time. Construction required 2,700 tons of structural steel, 700,000 bricks, 1,625 tons of stone, 52,000 haydite blocks, 4,500 gallons of paint, and 245,000 board feet of lumber for the roof. The price tag was $2,613,167. Just imagine what it would cost today.
None of that was as impressive as the giant smile on Allen's face the day the building was completed. And none of that is as important as the basketball memories created inside those walls, moments that link generations and eras through the stories of great coaches and great players who called Allen Fieldhouse home.
Allen battled long and hard for a building worthy of the tradition he had built at Kansas. While the Jayhawks played in front of a stage in the cramped confines of Hoch Auditorium, the state of Kansas had approved construction of Ahearn Fieldhouse in Manhattan. Missouri had Brewer Fieldhouse. From the first site studies to the completion of construction, the process took nine long years. It wasn't until December of 1954 that the decision to name the building after Allen was approved.
Allen told Bill Mayer of the Lawrence Journal-World that, "No man could get such an honor and not be mighty jolted but in a mighty pleasant way. You know, it's hard to realize that anything that big and grand will bear my name ... I've received a lot of honors at various times, but this means more than all because it comes to me at my home state."
The official dedication came on March 1, 1955. The game program cost 25 cents. Every former Kansas player that could be found was invited back. Allen turned over that night's coaching duties to assistant coach Dick Harp, who told the players they had to win one for Phog. The ceremony took place at halftime, which was extended from 15 minutes to 35. Allen declared the building's capacity to be 17,000 before anyone could count the seats. That number has been revised from time to time and is now set at 16,300.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from 100 Things Kansas Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die by Ken Davis. Copyright © 2013 Ken Davis. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword by Bill Self,Introduction,
1. James Naismith,
2. Phog Allen,
3. Allen Fieldhouse,
4. Bill Self,
5. Wilt the Stilt,
6. Danny Manning,
7. Mario's Miracle,
8. What's a Jayhawk?,
9. Roy Williams,
10. Danny and the Miracles,
11. Larry Brown,
12. Rock Chalk Jayhawk,
13. Clyde Lovellette,
14. Phog's 1952 Title,
15. Late Night in the Phog,
16. Adolph Rupp,
17. Border War,
18. Carolina Connection,
19. Dean Smith,
20. Ol' Roy Doesn't Give a ...,
21. Wilt and the 1957 National Championship Game,
22. Dick Harp,
23. Bill vs. Roy,
24. Ted Owens,
25. Jo Jo White,
26. Self vs. Calipari,
27. Bud Stallworth,
28. Take a Photo with Big Jay and Baby Jay,
29. Waving the Wheat,
30. Paul Pierce,
31. Jacque Vaughn,
32. Darnell Valentine,
33. Beware of the Phog,
34. Make a Pilgrimage to the Naismith Hall of Fame,
35. Paul Endacott,
36. The Fight Song,
37. Crimson and Blue,
38. The 2002 Final Four Team,
39. Fred Pralle,
40. Harvesting the Iowa Crop: Collison, Hinrich, and LaFrentz,
41. Merry Christmas, Jacque,
42. A Fine Line,
43. Dickie V Gives Collison A Standing O,
44. Visit Booth Hall,
45. Watch "There's No Place Like Home",
46. Camp Out for Tickets,
47. The Comeback Hawks of 2012,
48. T-Rob,
49. Hoch Auditorium,
50. Kansas City: KU's Second Home,
51. Jeff Withey,
52. Ben McLemore,
53. A Trio of Unforgettable Point Guards,
54. Tyshawn Taylor,
55. Attend Senior Day,
56. The Sunflower Showdown,
57. All Good Things Must Come to an End,
58. Brandon Rush,
59. Coach Hudy,
60. Bond Like the 2008 Team at Henry T's,
61. Drink and Dine at 23rd Street Brewery,
62. Howard "Rope" Engleman,
63. Max Falkenstien,
64. Bob Davis,
65. How Phog Saved the Final Four,
66. Phog's WWII Letters,
67. Bob Dole,
68. Ralph Miller,
69. Coach Brown vs. Coach Manning,
70. Turgeon and Boyle: A Tale of Two Point Guards,
71. Ted Owens Relives the 1971 Final Four,
72. John McLendon,
73. LaVannes Squires,
74. Pay Your Respects to Dr. Naismith and Phog,
75. Wilt's Speech,
76. The 1922 and 1923 National Champions,
77. The Loss That Left a Scar,
78. Indiana Roadblock,
79. KU and the Olympics,
80. B.H. Born,
81. Nine Straight Big 12 Titles,
82. Jerry Waugh,
83. Gale Gordon and Al Peterson,
84. Two Bs, UNI, and VCU,
85. Wayne Simien,
86. NCAA Probation,
87. Bob Frederick,
88. Archie Marshall,
89. Wonderful Walter Wesley,
90. David Robisch,
91. Drew Gooden,
92. The Forgotten Coach,
93. The Wild 2008 NBA Draft,
94. Sherron and Cole,
95. Allen Kelley,
96. Ray Evans,
97. An Unexpected Collapse,
98. A Matter of Life and Death,
99. Legends of the Phog,
100. Andrew Wiggins,
Acknowledgments,
Sources,