Looking Back

The basketball wars heatup with the chill of January. The Corbin Redhounds played the Colonels of Whitley County Friday night before a large crowd at Whitley County High School.
The Redhounds jumped out to a 14-point lead only to see it melt away in the third quarter. Jordan Noble took the cause of the Redhounds on his back and answered the fierce Colonels comeback with basket after basket.
Noble showed great senior leadership as has Andrew Parks and Brad Lawson throughout the early part of the season.
The ‘Hounds have pulled their record even with six wins and six losses and have won four of the last five outings. Ryan Swim made a significant contribution in the final minutes of the game by using his size and strength inside.
The Sunday Herald-Leader had a picture from their 12-16-1950 files of Adolph Rupp, Coach Phog Allen of Kansas and the their two giant stars of that day. Bill Spivey of Kentucky and Clyde Lovellette of Kansas. Spivey was a seven footer, while Lovellette stood six feet nine inches. There was much hype over the meeting of the two teams as well as the premiere big men in the country. Kansas was rated number one in the nation while the ‘Cats of Kentucky were ranked second. The final score: Kentucky 68, Kansas 39. Guess who was number one the next week?
Now a recent memory of Kansas-Kentucky, one not so pleasant, of this past Sunday, when one of the ugliest games I have ever witnessed was played between the Jayhawks and the Wildcats.
What made the painful experience of watching the game on TV even worse, was having to listen to Billy Packer announce it. Somewhere along the line, Packer must have learned a new word as he used the word “frantic” at every given opportunity.
The ‘Cats are young and although they play with a good bit of intensity, they are all very up-tight and do not seemed to have developed any continuity to their game.
Coach Tubby Smith cannot seem to settle on a lineup with the proper chemistry. Playing the very weak schedule makes it difficult to properly assess the performance of your players. I am sure Coach Smith will work it all out over the next few weeks.
I just finished reading the book “Golden Boy” by Paul Hornung, the former Heisman Trophy winner at Notre Dame and who later stared for Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers.
The book was interesting and somewhat entertaining, but my opinion for Hornung was depleted with the reading of his self-serving and egotistical account of his life as an athletic hero.
Don Estep brought me a copy of a 1953 Sport magazine which was produced monthly for many years. This particular copy had an article by Furmans Bisher, a famous sports journalist for many years.
The title of the article was “Field Goal by Selvy”. This was only Frank Selvy’s sophomore year at Furman University, but one part of the article refers to Selvy’s dominance of Duke All-American Dick Groat by outscoring him in their head to head meeting that year 36-15 and alluded to Selvy scoring 63 points against Mercer College.
The college basketball world was abuzz about this brilliant sophomore, if they only knew what was to come.