A night in Frederickson Field House-Feb 8, 1966; Oklahoma City University basketball

A  graduate of Oklahoma City University, the little school at Northwest 23rd and Blackwielder in my hometown, I was an ardent fan of the namesake college of OKC. I grew up within two miles of the campus, having living my first ten years in an inner city neighborhood near Linwood Boulevard and Northwest 6th Street.  After a move in 1964. my address at Northwest 21st and Flynn allowed an easy walk to the University.   Until my time to drive in 1969, many a night and Saturday afternoon I would take the five block walk from my home to Frederickson Field House to watch the best college basketball team in the state of Oklahoma.

From an age of nine or ten years old, I attended almost all home games of the Chiefs, which continued until my late fifties.  Many times I attended with my friend, Skipper Smith, my first best friend of my life.  I have  witnessed many of the most significant moments of Oklahoma City University basketball, from the mid 1960’s to the late 2000’s.  OCU, as a member of the NCAA Division One, was a powerhouse in college basketball, with numerous appearances in the NCAA tournament, the leading scoring team in the country many years, and various All-American basketball players.  The Chiefs put in their fair share of players into the NBA.  When the school moved the athletic program to the NAIA, OCU became a stalwart in national championships in small college, with the highest number of men’s titles and the longest win streak in NAIA history.  Those records still stand today in NAIA ball.

I don’t remember a lot of those first games I attended as a four or five year old back in the late 1950’s, but do remember going to, with my Dad,  the All-College tournament in downtown OKC at the Municipal Auditorium.  Take Hub Reed, All-American in 1958 and I had a glimpse of his play, even as a tike.  Hub Reed, an All-American, played many years in the Association as the starting center for the Cincinnati Royals.  Hub was the first opponent of Wilt Chamberlain play the man as a non-bigoted post player in college.  Wilt said so after their meeting in the NCAA tournament. They played against each other many times as pros and were great friends.

I will be writing on various games and teams I watched I as a fan, a student at OCU, and an alumni.  This is a personal project for me and I would hope that somebody would think what I write is interesting. If not, that is good too. Sports is personal, and I get that.

This first article looks back at a significant game from the 1965-66 season, one of the greatest teams that OCU put on the floor in their history.  Head Coach back in 1966 was Abe Lemons, the funniest man in basketball.  Good old Abe was a hell of a basketball coach besides a first rate comedian.  It was my pleasure to watch his teams perform at OCU.   It was great to have him teach a basketball class on campus too. 

Date:  February 8, 1966-  Oklahoma City University vs Nebraska University-Lincoln (ranked #9 in the nation at game time)

My Dad was great for me.  He was a sportsman, a former high school and college athlete that played two sports at a major division school in Shreveport, Louisiana.  A starting half/full back on one of the biggest high schools in Oklahoma (Classen), he was also on the starting five of the basketball team for the Comets in 1938-39.  As for his folly and the love of life over book learning of the times. my Dad was, as you might say, an old man of twenty when he graduated from Classen in 1939.

Today Dad, as a student, would have a classification of being a “learning disabled” student.  Not a good reader, he did build his first boat, from plans he purchased, at age sixteen. A person of doing and not reading, he was offered a scholarship to play football and basketball at Centenary College and accepted, and spent his freshman year in Louisiana as a member of both teams.  At the time, frosh were not allowed to play on the varsity. Centenary played a difficult schedule, and he was scheduled to play a significant role the next year on the football team.

As of the war rumblings in the world, my Dad was told he could join the Army and play for an Army division team so he quit school to serve.  My point?  My Dad loved athletics and he was the one that encouraged me love sports, regardless of the sport.

My father was, besides a man that could build boats (some as large as twenty foot cabin cruisers), a boat racing daredevil, winning trophies and money.  The boat he raced he built from scratch.  So on that morning of February 8th, my Dad drove over to Frederickson Field House and bought two of the last tickets remaining for the Nebraska Huskers/Chiefs game. The Cornhuskers (15-2), the best team of the Big Eight at the time, leading that standings on that day, were a tough and veteran team with a up and coming head coach, Joe Cipriano.  Cipriano would become the most winning coach in Husker history when he passed away from cancer fourteen years later, still the head coach in Lincoln.

Nebraska had played the previous evening against Oklahoma, beating the Sooners in the Fieldhouse in Norman 85-81.  A back-to-back in 1966 was not unheard of.  For a late season non-conference game with Oklahoma City, a sell-out crowd of 3,500 was assured and I thank my Dad for getting us the two tickets to watch the game. It might be noted that the Chiefs rarely sold out their games, and this would be the first game in my remembrance  that the section, row, and seat would be important, no matter that our seats were up in the corner of Frederickson.  If you had ever watched a game in Frederickson, you would know there were no bad seats and every seat was like being on the first row.  That night, my seat was my seat and it was taken.

The game was everything it was built up to be.  Both teams were loaded with talent, both coaches were on the top of their game, and the play would be of what good college basketball was in the early to mid 60’s. The black athletes were now on the best teams, and OCU was one of the first in the southwest part of the country to take to these athletes.  Nebraska was playing the black player in the Big Eight as the conference was becoming the modern league we have come to know.

There would be none of that shitty stall ball thank you Mr. Iba, still filling the job as head coach up in Stillwater. No, both teams, the Huskers and the Chiefs, would play the game for the fans in the house, a run and gun excitement every second of the game.  A game void of strategies that a lessor opponent had to use so not to get run off the court. Yes Mr. Iba, as much as I respect you as the most significant coach in college basketball history (with respect to Neismith), “your hold the ball” and run the clock out bullshit that you used in the later part of your years at Oklahoma State,  trying to hide your inferior teams and ball players from getting beat badly.  Fact is,  Oklahoma State’s basketball program sucked in Iba’s last decade, and for that matter, so did the big dog Sooners of the Oklahoma University in Norman.  From 1953 through 1973, OCU was the premiere college basketball team in Oklahoma. Check the records and that is a fact.  Abe Lemons, OCU’s coach, was a part of Mr. Iba’s coaching tree, playing for a former Aggie player of Mr. Iba, Doyle Parrick, who was Abe’s coach at Oklahoma City.  Parrick had moved on to Norman to coach Oklahoma.  Mr. Iba would have done his school a good deed if he had hired Lemons once he began to win on NW 23rd Street.  Fact of the matter, Mr. Iba and Abe were best of friends and Mr. Iba would travel to Frederickson Fieldhouse on occasions to watch OCU play various teams after his retirement and up to his death.  It was on one of these occasions I got to meet Mr. Iba, on a night my Uncle John Pratt (a great high school coach at Midwest City High in Oklahoma and former student/graduate assistant for OSU in 1949-50), and Coach Lemons visited with the Iron Duke in the southwest corner of Frederickson before a ball game.  I was in on the basketball conversation.  It was an honor of my sports life.

I can remember sitting with my Dad in that upper corner seat that night.  I have a thing with coming to sporting events early, real early.  We were one of the first to walk into the not yet but future historic Frederickson that night, finding our reserved seats on the wooded bleacher row, the black of the seat number standing out on the varnished wood that we would put our ass on for three hours.  I was, as a thirteen year old, in my church, ready for my serving of the most important food for my being, OCU basketball.  Even at that time, I knew that I would attend the school in five years, to become member of the student body of my most cherished school.  That was hard as I was also one hell of a Oklahoma Sooner fan, with OU football, just as important as OCU basketball.  Anyone that knew me at the time would attest to the fact that I never missed an OCU or OU football game, either live and in person or listening on the radio, usually WKY radio sports I might say.

Watching my Chiefs warm up to play a most important contest that night, I knew it would be a game that would matter for both, but especially the Chiefs.   NCAA Tournament bids were not like of today. You could be one of the top thirty teams in the country and you still didn’t have your ticket to the NCAA tournament punched.  OCU as an independent, needed to beat the best teams on their schedule, as was the Huskers.  Nebraska would have to win the Big Eight to go. Second place teams in conferences were not going to the tournament.  As NU was ranked 9th hitting the hardwood of Frederickson that night. Coach Lemons, under his breath was pissed that his Chiefs were being hosed by the voters and didn’t show up in the list of the Top Ten ranked teams until a week later.

“I’d just as soon stay out of their (Top Ten).  The only time I want to be rated is at the end of the season.  Those ratings are nice for your scrapbooks.  You can say ‘look, I was #10—for two days. And I was fired two days later.”  Yes, Coach Abe was not happy coming into the game not ranked as one of the best in the country.  At season’s end, the Chiefs got their due, ranked #3 in the country by the major polls.  The game with Nebraska had a lot to do with that high ranking.  Nebraska went on to finish the season at 20-5, second in the Big Eight.  OCU would again be in the NCAA tournament at seasons end.  Nebraska would stay home.

For OCU, a win would be a feather in their hat, putting a prestigious win on a Top Ten team. With a 17-3 record, the Chiefs had shown to be the top independent in the South/Midwest, and with a group of high end college stars,  they were looking forward to win another game at home.  The Chiefs were undefeated at Frederickson, and to a player they expected to stay that way.

With one of the best reputations in the country, Head Coach Abe Lemons was always filling his schedule with the better teams, home and away.  And remember, at the time, Frederick Field House, was one of the finest college basketball venues in the country, and for the state of Oklahoma, the newest and best.  OU’s Fieldhouse in Norman was larger, but, as I will use the word again, a shitty rat hole to play in.  Sure, the crowds that filled the place at OU were loud and great, but only for conference games against the better teams, like Kansas and Kansas State and for sure Bedlam.  OU was not a basketball school for many reasons, and one was their home court.  The Fieldhouse on the campus just north of Owen Field was old, smelly, and for the current day in 1966, rather small for a big time college team.  Hello Alvin Adams and not one year later.

As for the Pokes home court in Stillwater, Gallagher Arena was historic, yes, but was rarely filled except for the Bedlam games.  As of this day and age with the last season of Travis Ford  still on our minds, the basketball program in Mr. Iba’s last ten years was down.  Enough that the final rumblings brought down the old coach and the program was not really revived until Coach Lemons great assistant coach that night, Paul Hansen, took over the program and took the Cowboys to a Big Eight title in the 1982-83 season.  From 1954 to Hansen’s 1982 team, the Pokes made two NCAA tournament appearances, no conference titles and did not win NCAA tournament game in that span.  Fact of the matter, OSU finally won an NCAA tournament game in the 1990-91 season, under another great coach Eddie Sutton. The Pokes went 36 years of drought in men’s basketball.

The Chiefs were a “loaded” team in 1965-66.  Jerry Lee Wells, a senior guard from Glasglow, Kentucky, was as good a playmaking/scoring guard in the nation that year.  Coach Lemons commented that Wells “was an All-American if there ever was.”   Wells did make All-American after the  1966 season, having averaged 27 points a game as OCU was the third highest scoring team in Division One.  Gary Gray, another of Abe’s Native American player, a Deleware sharp shooter, from Fort Cobb, Oklahoma, was the shooting guard, and was scoring over twenty points a game. Gray would lead the Chiefs in the following year with a 27.5 ppg (6th best in major college) and would also make All-American in that 1966-67 season.  Gray played in the NBA after graduation.  Gray was much the better scorer than Wells, but not the basketball player.  Many on the national level called Gray a “scoring machine.”   Both guards for OCU that night would and could go all-out for forty minutes if needed.  Add a three point line Gray would have average upwards of 35 points a game as his long range shooting was on par with anyone in the country, including the Pistol. No team in the country could claim better starting guards. Yes maybe as good, but not better.

The big man for OCU ws the country’s leading rebounder in James Ware.  “Weasel” Ware was as good a college rebounder as you could find in the day.  And he would let everyone in ear distance know.  In the big meeting later in the year Ware bragged about how he would dominate the great front court of the Miners of Texas Western, the eventual National Champs.  In the NCAA tournament game, Ware had to eat his words as David “Big Daddy” Latin out played Ware in the 89-74 defeat for the Chiefs.  To be fair, the Chiefs had just come off a trip to Hawaii a few days earlier and fatigue in the second half was a key for the loss. The Chiefs fell behind at half and never could catch up  For OCU and Texas Western to play in the NCAA a few weeks after the Huskers game one must remember that many schools still refused to recruit and play the black man.  Texas Western was the first team to win the Championship with five blacks starting and Kentucky was their Lilly white opponent. Time were changing. But at UK, and even in Texas (UT-Austin), the color barrier still held the day. (For the record, Nebraska was an integrated team and OCU started  three black players.)

The fourth clog in the OCU starting line-up was Charles “Big Game” Hunter, a 6’6 power forward that all would garner honorable mention All-American honors the following year.  Hunter gave OCU four first line players that could have started for any team in the country. Hunter was, as Coach Lemons would say, “a baller”.  After the season “Big Game” was drafted by the Boston Celtics but suffered a severe knee injury in pre-season workouts and his competitive career was over before he played a regular season in the Association.  To note Hunter was close friend of Jerry Lee Wells in Kentucky high school basketball ranks and took the OCU ride even though he was the first African-American to be offered by Louisville University.  Big Game Hunter was BIG GAME.

The game was as exciting as the build up.  I do remember standing up most of the game, as the Chiefs pulled out the win as Jerry Lee Wells scored two field goals in the final four seconds in overtime as OCU downed the Huskers 85-81, the same score that NU had beaten OU the day earlier.

Final statistics had Jerry Lee Wells with 27 points, Gary Gray with 22, Charles Hunter 18 and James Ware 14.  Ware pulled down 22 rebounds in the game as he dominated the boards as usual. Those four were, in the end, just too much for Nebraska on that night in February.

(More on the 1965-66 Chiefs later)