Ralph Beard and Kentucky Basketball

Billy Reed has written a terrific piece today on SI.com about the imminent Kentucky/Louisville Final Four game that has raised the level of fan intensity throughout the entire state of basketball-mad Kentucky. There’s nothing really new, though, about the fans’ passion for the sport, which has been raging for over 100 years.

Back In 1995, Street & Smith's College Basketball annual ranked Kentucky No. 2 in its preseason poll. The outcry from Lexington was heard in the magazine's New York office: “How could you underestimate the ’Cats and rate us so low?” lamented one disgruntled caller.

This season, the Wildcats, the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament, are led by the precocious freshman Anthony Davis and his classmates Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Marquis Teague. They are simply the latest in a long line of talented players in the Commonwealth.

Among the hundreds of players and dozens of All-America honorees who have worn the University of Kentucky colors, none is more revered than native son Ralph Beard. The 5-10 guard from Male High School in Louisville was a first-team consensus All-America three times and a two-time Player of the Year. He was a member of two NCAA championship teams and one NIT finalist.

To commemorate a century of Wildcat basketball, the Lexington Herald-Leader conducted two polls in December 2002 to determine the top players in school history. Beard received the most first-place votes from a panel of writers, broadcasters, and former university coaches and personnel, and finished No. 2 overall (to Dan Issel). In a fan survey that reflected an emphasis on the previous 25 years, Beard (born Dec. 2, 1927) placed No. 8.

The legendary Adolph Rupp, who won 876 games in 41 years at Kentucky, called Beard “the best player I’ve ever coached.” Former Wildcat star and long-time college basketball analyst Larry Conley said that Beard remained the standard for Kentucky guards.

The lightning-fast Beard made a quick impression on the Wildcat faithful. As a freshman he sank the winning free throw in the last 18 seconds to give UK a 46-45 victory over Rhode Island in the 1946 NIT final. A year later, Kentucky finished second to Utah in the same tournament.

About the ’47 final, former Utah All-America Arnie Ferrin said, “We had never seen the scouting report until we went to the NIT. Our coach [Vadal Peterson], after seeing tapes and then watching him in person, said Beard never had his feet out of place. Coach said he had never seen anybody better.”

As a junior, Beard was a member of the “Fabulous Five,” the 1948 Wildcat team that went 36-3 and won the first of Kentucky’s seven NCAA championships (over Baylor in New York). Beard shared team-high scoring honors that season with center Alex Groza. Kentucky’s starters—Beard, Groza, Wah Wah Jones, Cliff Barker, and Kenny Rollins—were part of the U.S. gold-medal team in the 1948 Olympics in London that defeated France 62-21 later that year. Bud Browning, coach of the U.S. team, called Beard “the best I ever saw.”

The following season the Wildcats went 32-2 and successfully defended their NCAA title by beating Oklahoma A&M in Seattle.

Beard played with Indianapolis in the NBA—and in the league’s first all-star game in 1951. But before the start of the next season he was among a group of Kentucky players who were implicated in a point-shaving scandal and was banned from the game. He talked passionately about the decision that sidelined him for life from the game he loved.

“My career was over at 23,” Beard told me in 2003. “I took the $700 because I came from a dirt-poor family. My dad left when I was [young]. I never really did know him. My mom had a sixth-grade education. She gave her life to her two boys. I never saw $700. But never, never did I ever do anything to influence the score of a basketball game. I wouldn’t even know how to do that.”

Beard’s No. 12 Wildcat jersey was retired by the university. In 1989, to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the NCAA basketball tournament, a panel of distinguished college coaches named Beard to the all-1940s team. Beard died on November 29, 2007, three days before his 80th birthday, in Louisville. 

Dick Harter and Basketball Heaven

R.I.P. Dick Harter, a good coach and a good man, who died at age 81 on Monday of cancer. The first head coach of the expansion NBA Charlotte Hornets, Harter was also an assistant with the Detroit Pistons, Indiana Pacers, New York Knicks, Portland Trail Blazers, Boston Celtics, and Philadelphia 76ers.

But it was in college where Harter first made his mark. His teams at Rider, Penn (his alma mater), Oregon, and Penn State were known for their tenacious man-to-man defense. His final two teams at Penn, in 1969-70 and 1970-71, went undefeated in the Ivy League and the Big Five and lost just once in 52 regular-season games. The latter team advanced to the NCAA tournament regional final, losing to a Villanova team that later had its victories forfeited by the NCAA. In 1977, his Oregon team ended UCLA’s 98-game home winning streak.

Harter once told me, “My idea of heaven would be coaching in a league where every team must play zone against you and you’re allowed to play man-to-man.”

I asked him what hell was.

“Hell would be where they play that man-to-man, get in your face, play you like crazed rats, and jump all over you, and you’ve got to work like crazy just to get the ball from one place to another.”

Don Casey, Harter’s Philadelphia counterpart whose Temple teams were known for his impenetrable zone defenses, told me in the same conversation that his own idea of heaven were “the discussions Dick and I had when we were both coaching in the Philadelphia area. The minds were stimulated. And I would still play Mr. Harter’s team up in heaven.”

Unwilted by Time: Chamberlain Scores 100

Fifty years ago today in Hershey, Penn., Wilt Chamberlain poured in 36 field goals (on 63 shots!) and 28 free throws (against four misses) for a total of 100 points in 48 minutes in the Philadelphia Warriors’ 169-147 victory over the New York Knicks. The game was not televised and no tape is extant. In fact, the performance was seen by just the 4,124 fans in attendance at the Hershey Sports Arena (although many more later claimed to have been eyewitnesses).

Former New York Giants GM Ernie Accorsi grew up in Hershey. During a conversation several years ago, I asked him if he happened to be in the crowd for Wilt’s big game.

“No, I was a junior at Wake Forest [at the time],” Accorsi said. “I had been to the ACC tournament semifinal that night at Raleigh and was driving back to Winston-Salem with my fraternity brothers. We were listening to rock music on the car radio, and they broke in with the news. When I heard Hershey, I figured there was a fire or explosion at the chocolate factory. Why else would Hershey command such national news?”

What did he think when he learned the reason for the news bulletin?

“My first thought then was, well... I missed it. My second thought was of my father, who went to all those games. And he was the all-time leave-early-to-beat-the-traffic guy, which was ridiculous. In Hershey, Pennsylvania!

“When I got back to the dorm, I called my parents. My mother answered the phone and immediately asked, ‘What happened?’

“I said, ‘I just want to know: Did he stay?’ And for once, he did. I had this vision that he walked out when Wilt scored his 90th point to beat the crowd.”

What about all the people who later professed to have been in the stands?

“A lot more people than were present for the game claim to have been there,” he said. “Oh, 25,000 did [claim that]. They played a couple of games [in the Hershey Sports Arena] every year, and they would draw 4,000. Very rarely did they draw 4,000 in Philadelphia. They did for the Celtics, maybe, but otherwise drew 3,800 or 4,000. The [Warriors] trained in Hershey, so they would play games there. I even saw NBA double-headers there. The NBA wasn’t what it is today.” 

Indeed the NBA today celebrates a player for recording a double-double. That is, at least 10 points and 10 rebounds in a single game. In the 1961-62 season, Chamberlain averaged over 50 points and 25 rebounds per game. Even better, that same year, Oscar Robertson of the Cincinnati Royals became the only player in NBA history to average a triple-double (30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds, and 11.4 assists) for a season.