Monday, March 13, 2017

The Freakin' Weekend (1971)




RED! WHITE! RED! WHITE! RED! WHITE!








DORIS DAY!









Plus, the KHSAA basketball tournament starts Wednesday ...


In the First Region tournament at Murray State, it was Carlisle County over Cuba, Murray over Paducah Saint Mary's, Paducah Tilghman over Fulton County and Symsonia over Benton in the first round; Carlisle over Murray (73-72) and Tilghman over Symsonia in the semis, and Carlisle over Tilghman (68-62) in the championship. The Comets of Bardwell are 34-3!

28 comments:

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    1. I want to see a play-by-play for this game. McDaniels was amazing down the stretch. When Coach Oldham sent him back into the game with four fouls, WKU is trailing, 62-59. The Tops are trying to pack a zone around Artis Gilmore and Jacksonville's other 7-footer, Pembrook Burrows, and the Dolphins seem content to simply dribble away a lot of time and then throw in long, barely contested jumpshots over the zone. This is where you can hear the Western fans madly chanting, "Get! That! Ball!" On offense, WKU doesn't seem to know what to do--there's a weird sequence where half of the Tops seem to be uncertainly trying to stall, and then they just toss the ball away under their own basket. And then, on the next play, Jacksonville dares Clarence Glover into attempting a jumpshot from near what would now be the three-point line, and he misses badly with basically no one under the goal to rebound.

      But then Oldham sends McDaniels back in and he quickly puts in a free-throw miss to put WKU back ahead, 67-66. Then he draws a foul rebounding a Jacksonville miss on the ensuing possession, and he comes down and gets a free throw to push Western out, 68-66. NBC gets a great shot of WKU's cheerleaders kneeling on the sideline with their crossed-fingers tightly clenched as McDaniels makes his foul shot.

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  2. Replies
    1. McDaniels also scored this bucket to put WKU back up. Jacksonville hit a jumper to tie at 70, and then McDaniels beat Gilmore back down the court on the inbounds play. He went in for a layup, and Gilmore was called for goaltending. McDaniels had 23 points, 11 rebounds and two blocks at this point in the game.

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  3. Western trailed this game by 17 points!

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  4. Gowdy: "It's been a nightmare second half for Jacksonville."

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  5. With about 20 seconds, Jacksonville ties at 72! With McDaniels and Gilmore tied up under the basket, the Dolphins try a 15-foot jumpshot that misses. There's a scramble for the rebound, and a WKU player controls it as he's falling out of bounds. He fires a pass back into traffic in the key, and Jacksonville guard Chip Dublin intercepts. He sinks a jumper from about the free-throw line.

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    1. Or, as Gowdy says, "Dublin hits the clutcher!"

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  6. One of the coaches take timeout, and Gowdy recaps that Marquette won the earlier game here at Notre Dame today, 62-47, over Miami of Ohio. Marquette (coached by future NBC color commentator Al Maguire) next plays Ohio State, the Big 10 champ, in Athens on Thursday, where and when UK plays this winner.

    Gowdy: "Incidentally, if Adolph Rupp is looking in, we hope he's feeling much better. He's been ill--the all-time winner in college basketball and the president of the National Basketball Coaches Association. We hope he's vastly improved."

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  7. But on the inbounds play from the Jacksonville end, WKU blankets the potential recipient Dolphins. A frontcourt player rushes back unguarded to receive the Jacksonville pass. WKU continues to heavily defend the guards and leaves the Jacksonville big player alone. Obviously flummoxed, he picks up his dribble to pass, rethinks that plan and then begins to dribble again. Traveling! It'll be WKU ball with six seconds to play!

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  8. And then ensues probably the most famous play in WKU basketball history. There's the awful jump-ball toss against Michigan in the 1966 Mideast Regional. There's the 2008 Ty Rogers three-pointer to beat Drake. I'm certainly not in the class of the "Hilltopper Haven" historians, but those are the other two I think of right off the bat. But this play at the end of the Jacksonville game would be No. 1.

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  9. Ex-Paducah Community College guard Gary Sundmacker is the inbounds passer, and he's in front of the WKU bench. Jacksonville has a defender on him. Western has guard Rex Bailey and forward Jerry Dunn behind the free-throw circle, and two Dolphins are chasing those guys. McDaniels is set up on the lane on the near side, and Gilmore is hanging all over him. There's another Jacksonville big guy--Burrows, presumably--in the middle of the lane.

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  10. Glover's the unnoticed blob on the opposite side of the court.

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    1. Honestly, maybe this is where they got the idea for Big Red. Glover has himself balled up in a heap, trying to be as inconspicuous as he could be. He's roughly the shape of Big Red, and WKU is wearing the red uniforms this day at Notre Dame.

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    2. This is an excellent theory, and I'm going to believe it to be so--that regardless of whether they consciously realized it, WKU got the whole idea of Big Red from Clarence Glover's miraculous deception here.

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  11. It's like something on a playground. The official gives the ball to Sundmacker. Glover springs up behind the defense, waving his arms like crazy. Sundmacker's pass arrives before Gilmore or the other Jacksonville defender can get there, and Glover banks in the game winner with four seconds to play.

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  12. The clock never stops. Dozens of people start to pour onto the court. Some of the Jacksonville players walk around dazed; a couple of them try to get going a half-court heave. It misses, and it appears to have gone off after the buzzer, anyway.

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  13. The AP story said that Rupp didn’t watch the game—that his doctors wouldn’t let him—but that he hoped to be in Athens for the next round. Joe B. Hall did attend, the AP said, as did Gov. Louie B. Nunn.

    Following the great come-from-behind victory (Western trailed by 17 points with 16 1/2 minutes left to play), Western's 7-foot Jim McDaniels shouted: "We been waitin' 32 years to play them (Kentucky) and we're gonna get ‘em."

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