Memphis 1973

Finch, a 6'2" guard, was a brilliant shooter and deft passer. Before the —73 season Bartow landed a prize recruit. Larry Kenon, a 6'9" All-American at Amarillo Junior College in Texas, had averaged twenty-seven points and twenty-five rebounds a game. Despite scholarship offers from big-time college programs and contract offers from the American Basketball Association, he chose Memphis State because it was a quality program near his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama.

He impressed his new teammates before the first practice, when he palmed two basketballs, soared above the rim, and dunked them both. He also nursed a pulled groin muscle throughout the early season, so it took time for Memphis fans to appreciate his greatness.

Bartow lured two other junior college transfers, Wes Westfall and Billy Buford. Like Kenon and Robinson, both were talented, athletic forwards who wore fashionable Afros. The new supply of talent meant that Memphis State basketball featured four black starters, with Buford the first player off the bench. The only white starter was Bill Laurie, a tough little point guard who focused on passing and defending. Moreover, the three junior college arrivals felt some resentment.

Louis, Wooden, beat your Bruins there! Meet me in St. When the season started, that confidence seemed absurdly misplaced.

Even in a win over South Florida, the Tigers looked sloppy on offense and sluggish on defense. In Milwaukee, they lost a close game to fifth-ranked Marquette, and in a home game against a mediocre Texas squad, the Tigers turned the ball over, failed to feed their big men, allowed too many layups, blew a ten-point second-half lead, and lost by one point.

Their record stood at 2—3. Bartow was tinkering with the lineup. The players were despondent. Fans were grumbling. Finch was in a shooting slump and looked overweight. Robinson was in-and-out of the lineup with injuries, as were others.

But the biggest problem was learning to sacrifice for the sake of the team. After the Texas debacle, the players held a closed-door meeting. Slowly, the Tigers rounded into form. In consecutive home dates, they routed Navy and overcame an eleven-point deficit against UC—Santa Barbara. In Little Rock, they edged a scrappy Arkansas team—reserve guard Jim Liss played only the last twenty-seven seconds, but he sank the free throw that gave Memphis State a one-point victory.

Finch then netted thirty-five points in a post-Christmas annihilation of Cornell. The last game of was on the road against undefeated, 10th ranked Vanderbilt. The Commodores were favored by seven and a half points.

The Tigers led early, but Vanderbilt staged a comeback. Bartow grew furious. His players kept getting battered, while the referees choked on their whistles. After receiving a technical foul, Bartow waved his arms, motioning for his club to leave the floor and head to the locker room—a bluff, to be sure, but it made a point. The Tigers held on for a three-point upset victory. Afterwards, the players exuded a quiet pride, a good sign for a once-troubled team.

Yet MSU lacked the intellectual or social community of many big universities. By more than three-fourths of the eighteen thousand students were commuters, and approximately 60 percent worked at least part-time.

Students complained about overcrowded classes, underqualified instructors, and an apathetic campus culture. Sports thus served as a critical binding agent, uniting students while connecting the campus to the city.

Despite hiring a promising new coach, Fred Pancoast, the football team lost its first four games and finished 5—5—1. Home crowds were disappointing all season. Civic leaders envisioned big-time sports in Memphis, but that vision kept fading. In the fall of , the city council reviewed proposals to expand Memphis Memorial Stadium and possibly add an exclusive stadium club or even a domed plexiglass roof.

Supporters touted that it would lure visitors and entice an NFL team, but critics balked at the price tag. That same fall, Memphis State announced plans for a new basketball arena just north of campus. It would have seated five thousand more people than the Mid-South Coliseum, which was located at the fairgrounds almost three miles away. But students and residents complained about the costs and disruption, and that arena was never built, either.

Professional sports had a tenuous foothold in Memphis. After two months of terrible crowds, the owner deeded the franchise to the league office. Memphians managed to keep the team through a February stock offering, but in the Pros finished in last place and bled money.

Flamboyant sports magnate Charles O. The team endured player holdouts and dizzying roster changes. Finley looked to sell the franchise. Its latest coach resigned. The Tams finished in last place, with an even worse record.

By contrast, Memphis State basketball had about seven thousand season ticket holders. Students loyally attended games. Most away games were televised, while fans often listened to home games on the radio and then watched the replay on late-night public television. After all, Memphis State basketball is the biggest show in town. During the November elections, Memphis State basketball directly figured into one local campaign.

His Republican opponent was Brad Martin, the student government association president at Memphis State who would turn twenty-one two days before the election.

A cloud of disillusion hung over the national political scene, with the Vietnam War finally ending and the Watergate scandal just beginning. Even with African American progress in electoral politics—Barbara Jordan and Andrew Young became the first two black representatives from the South—there remained a widespread black pessimism.

Kuykendall won, in part, by offering coded warnings about the burgeoning threat of black political power. Local black leaders remained loyal to the Democratic Party, but the young Martin cast himself in the mold of moderate Tennessee Republicans, such as Gov.

Winfield Dunn or Sen. Howard Baker, who sought alliances with black power brokers. Martin was friends with Finch and Robinson—he loved basketball and even traveled to various road games. When he ran for office, the Memphis State stars endorsed him and attended campaign rallies. Finch and Robinson helped render Martin a legitimate option in Orange Mound, despite his Republican affiliation. Five children were distributing pro-Jim Williams campaign leaflets in a white neighborhood.

In this context, the Williams campaign was suggesting that Martin was an unsavory race-mixer. Martin and his campaign manager drove there and talked to the kids, who admitted that they had been hired by Jim Williams.

The adults drove them home. The judge ultimately dismissed the charges. Martin narrowly edged Williams, becoming the youngest state representative in Tennessee history. He won about 30 percent of the black vote, an unusually high percentage for a Republican in Memphis State began its Missouri Valley Conference schedule after the New Year, starting with a harrowing two-game road trip in the Midwest.

Traveling through a blizzard, the team had to deplane in Kansas City and ride a bus all night to reach Iowa City, where it took two overtimes to beat a resilient, pressing Drake squad. The Tigers then started a seven-game home stand. After outlasting a deliberate St. Louis team, Finch set a single-game scoring record with forty-eight points against St. Memphis State next faced its nemesis, Louisville.

Fueled by a raucous crowd, the Tigers staged a 20—5 run in the second half and held on for the win. The Tigers were now 13—3 and back in the national conversation, ranked No. During these January games, Bartow unveiled a new weapon: a full-court zone press, which forced turnovers and fueled surges of momentum. When New Mexico State tried to stall after opening an early lead, Bartow used the zone press to discombobulate the opposing guards.

The Tigers then beat Drake and faced Bradley, which tried to slow the game to a crawl, drawing hisses and boos from the crowd.

Again pressing their stalling opponent, Memphis State prevailed and swept its homestand. Two nights later, Tulsa had an eight-point edge late in the second half.

Finch found his shooting touch, Kenon blossomed into a superstar, Robinson was healthy, and Billy Buford sparked the team off the bench. Memphis State needed two more difficult road wins. The team then played under tight security at New Mexico State, where a recent ban on female visitation in male dormitories had ignited violence and arson.

With five seconds left and Memphis State up 54—53, superstar guard John Williamson uncharacteristically missed a seventeen-foot jump shot. Kenon soared over the opposing center to grab a spectacular rebound, and Memphis State claimed the conference championship. On campus, everyone wanted to talk about basketball. The raucous crowds at Mid-South Coliseum gave the team an advantage, but their zeal had a dark edge. During one game, three officers tackled and beat a recent Memphis State graduate, simply because he had questioned the arrest of his friend.

The attack left his face bruised and his nose fractured. The BSA had demonstrated during the Sanitation Strike, and in it held sit-ins to demand more African American faculty and administrators.

At one December game, they waved three flags supporting the Viet Cong. The brouhaha illustrated one way that black students were shifting the culture of Memphis State. The school enrolled more than one thousand African Americans; it had among the highest percentages of black students at any large, predominantly white university.

The theater department staged a play with a black director and all-black cast. Thanks to white students splitting their votes, a black homecoming queen was elected in , , and Yet the campus was no racial utopia. There was only a handful of black faculty, and black students complained about some bigoted white faculty members.

In the larger city, racial antagonism was often more obvious. The prevailing myth was that until , Memphis had a record of good race relations, in contrast to the violent white supremacy in Alabama or Mississippi.

But this tale obscured how black Memphians had suffered under and fought against poverty, second-class working conditions, and racial paternalism. The April 4, , assassination of Martin Luther King sharpened the racial divisions. When national reporters revisited Memphis after , they pointed to racial progress in politics and business, but they also found a black population frustrated with the prevailing conservative mentality.

Downtown was decaying, blight was rampant, and crime rates soared. Mass protests against racial discrimination had ceased, while the confrontational rhetoric of Black Power had run its course.

Black leaders decried the lack of economic development in their neighborhoods. They called for not only more education and discipline among African Americans, but also for a fair criminal justice system. In the winter of , five young black men were on trial for the firebombing of the Red Lantern Lounge, even though eyewitnesses pinned the crime on a white man. As blacks fumed about second-class citizenship, whites cried about court-mandated busing to integrate public schools.

With 88 percent of black children in Memphis still attending virtually all-black schools, United States District Court judge Robert McRae ordered a busing program to remedy this continued segregation. The nine white members of the city council tried to withhold funds from the board of education, stirring objections from its three black members. Thousands of white students boycotted, and enrollments nosedived.

The city council deliberated whether to fund CAB schools, fueling outrage among black activists, while Mayor Wyeth Chandler endorsed a national drive for an anti-busing constitutional amendment. In general, Memphis whites protested the busing plan without explicitly mentioning race, instead decrying the plan as impractical, dangerous, or an infringement of rights. Black leaders grew disgusted. Busing seemed the only recourse left to improve the conditions of underfunded black schools.

The Tigers dropped their final regular season contest at St. Louis, but it failed to scuff the shine on their terrific season. The final AP poll ranked the team No. Pro scouts salivated over him. Yet Kenon was wary, reserved, and uncomfortable in the limelight. He never garnered the same affection as Finch and Robinson, the gregarious heroes from Orange Mound. The players did share a genuine mutual affection. The key, thought Reed, was Larry Finch.

They knew that what they did was a healing process. He talked to you, made you feel good. He was cute. That had never happened in Memphis before. Not the white people, anyway. Blacks in Memphis embraced the Tigers, too. They admired how the stars won with class and panache. He arrived at the Mid-South Coliseum by striding out of his velvet-upholstered and golden-hubcapped Cadillac, a gorgeous woman on each arm.

Friends with Finch and Robinson, Hayes even helped Bartow with recruiting. They arrived in organized bus excursions, in caravans of cars, and on solo and quixotic quests.

The Memphis drawl was audible in hotel lobbies around the city. A couple from Southaven, Mississippi, drove nine hours to Houston with their ten-year-old son on Thursday even though they had no tickets. After somehow convincing the ticket-takers at Hofheinz Pavilion to admit them, they drove back through the night and opened their hamburger joint on Friday morning.

Memphis State had a first-round bye. Its initial game was the regional semifinal against South Carolina, which ran a freewheeling, high-scoring offense. The reporters on press row marveled at his athleticism and shotmaking. Memphis State next faced Kansas State, which had won the Big Eight conference and ranked in the top ten. In one poll, nine sportswriters picked Memphis State, and eight picked Kansas State.

A trip to the Final Four was on the line. Finch and Robinson were so excited that they awoke at three thirty that morning and flipped on the television, whiling away the hours until daylight with late-night movies. Despite the lack of sleep, Finch was magnificent, scoring thirty-two points. The Tigers cruised to another surprisingly easy win, 92— This time, Wes Westfall had his star turn. Before the tournament, Westfall had missed practice his second offense that season , and Bartow replaced him in the starting lineup with Billy Buford.

He played just one minute against South Carolina. But against Kansas State, Kenon got in foul trouble, and Westfall picked up the slack, hitting five of six shots. I love these guys. The Tigers won over neutral fans with their style, determination, and infectious joy. Louis, Wooden. Back in Memphis, everyone was glued to a television. For a couple of hours, a big town stood still. That night, however, Memphis burst with joy. By ten thirty, the parking lots were jammed. The late arrivals left their cars on the side of the road and hiked into the terminal.

At least five thousand people crammed into the airport, covering every inch of the floor, sitting on airline counters, and packing five deep on the mezzanine. It showcased the astounding civic enthusiasm for the Tigers. A local sandwich chain collected twenty thousand signatures for a telegram wishing the team good luck. Before leaving for St.

Louis that Thursday, he received about messages from friends, relatives, and acquaintances asking for tickets. People throughout Memphis arranged Final Four parties. An estimated two hundred fifty thousand households watched on television, with another hundred thousand listening on radio. Even at specialty shops catering to upper-class women, a clerk announced score updates. An unofficial caravan of cars barreled north, their blue MSU flags whipping in the wind.

Once in St. Louis, they waited for tables at packed restaurants and moved to more convenient hotels as rooms opened up. Jim Watson, president of the Rebounders, estimated that for all the fans in St.

Bennie and Janet Crossnoe honeymooned in St. Louis, but the newlyweds could not find tickets. While greeting the team at the airport on Thursday night, they met Bill Grogan, who publicized their plight.

On Saturday morning, they were eating breakfast before going to watch the game at a motel, since it was blacked out within a mile radius of St. At the last minute, Commercial Appeal sports editor Roy Edwards found them two tickets. After the game they sped back to Memphis, since each had children from previous marriages, but not before giddily watching the Tigers at the Final Four.

Oddsmakers favored Providence College by four points over Memphis State. The Friars were 27—2, ranked No. Yet the Tigers were loose, enjoying their dream season, confident of victory. After their Friday practice, they grooved to a tape deck playing the Temptations and the theme from Shaft. Heisman Trophy Winners: D. Henry , B. Sanders , R.

Williams , T. Dorsett , T. All-Americans: A. Cooper , J. Clowney , L. Kuechly , L. Fitzgerald , C. School Streak Finder , Rivalry Finder. Harbaugh , W. Hayes , B. Kelly , T. Osborne , P. Heisman , Bednarik , Maxwell , Outland , Groza Forfeits and Vacated Games , Random Page , We're Social Sep 8, Sep 15, North Texas.

Sep 22, Sep 29, Oct 6, Kansas State. Oct 13,