Rather than going backward like I normally do in this column and try to do something that‘s going on now or will be going on, instead what I would really like to do is go back in time. I wish I could. One of the things that I would truly like to do is take those things that were fresh in my mind when they happened, but then ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years – and it may be fifty years on this one – but you want to bring something back and you can’t remember it. They might have a show on TV about upsets and I’ll go “Hey, I remember that!” I used to play a game and we used to play it on trips a lot, like “what’s the greatest upset in boxing you ever saw or heard about?” How about the biggest golf tournament or football or basketball or any of those.
So, I sometimes play the game and I’ll get ten, twenty, thirty or forty games that I just thought were spectacular – unbelievable. The one that I think will always go down in history, is the UCLA and Notre Dame basketball game. It wasn’t in a tournament. It wasn’t in part of anything. It was just a stand-alone basketball game. It did have a few things going for it. Number 1, I think UCLA had an eighty-eight game winning streak and Notre Dame, who was coached by Digger Phelps at that time, I really don’t know that they had an outstanding record or anything else. They had a pretty good ball club, but not like UCLA.
So, they met and unlike today where teams may have players one year or two years – usually that’s about the max but if they‘re a good payer about two years. Back then you didn’t have all this Mickey Mouse stuff that’s going on now. Most of the players played through their senior year. They probably had a better brand of basketball and a better looking game if you will.
So, they go into this game and I remember I was on a Howard Payne trip and back at that time the Lone Star Conference played almost exclusively on Saturday night and again on Monday night. There were not very many afternoon games, very, very few. I saw, maybe this same year, I don’t really remember that, but it was the same decade anyway. I saw Howard Payne play a game that I believe it was about the same time UCLA played Notre Dame. Well, I’m sitting there watching this game on TV and I think we were in Austin, Texas.
It goes along on TV and it was a fairly good game but it was also predictable with UCLA playing what I think was their eight-ninth in a row. They’re playing at Notre Dame and at half time it’s about 49-35 or something like that. It went that way, well really all the way though almost the second half. The score, and this is where I may not be accurate, but the score at the time the game came to a close, about five minutes to go in the ballgame, UCLA is ahead by sixteen or seventeen points, something like that. Nothing spectacular happened except UCLA stopped scoring and they had scored a lot all season long, but they just stopped scoring!
That’s it! It was an absolute walk away and there was no way Notre Dame could win that ballgame. I was convinced of that. I’m sitting there going, “Are you kidding me?” The last five minutes of that ballgame – I wish I had the stats in front of me because they are mind boggling! Look it up sometime! Notre Dame wins by one I think, and ended UCLA’s eighty-eight game winning streak. The biggest news may have been UCLA not making a shot the last five minutes or so. So, UCLA’s streak ended. I was just mesmerized by that ballgame.
Then, it wasn’t long until we had one similar to it. Stephen F. Austin and Howard Payne that I think ended up 100 to 96. Stephen F. won in Brownwood. We just had too many players go out of the ballgame. We had a decent lead all the way through the first half and midway in the second half then all of a sudden it started slipping away and slip away it did. It was one of the great ballgames you’ll ever see in what would be the now small college basketball.
So, I had bad but great memories about those two – a ballgame at Notre Dame’s place and that one in the coliseum, both are one of the greats also.
Until next time, so long everybody.
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‘Out of the Box’ with Dallas Huston is published each Monday morning at BrownwoodNews.com. Dallas was the radio voice of the Brownwood Lions and Howard Payne Yellow Jackets for more than 55 years. He currently is Pastor of Center City Baptist Church and hosts a Men’s Bible Study in Brownwood on Monday evenings. Your comments are welcome at lindalh2@verizon.net.