And now for a postgame wrapup …
If Rick Mount had had his druthers, “The Rocket” would not have been the first high school team athlete to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated during the 1965-66 basketball season.
“I was in school [at Lebanon] and [coach Jim Rosenstihl] came to me and said, ‘Sports Illustrated is thinking about doing an article on you,’” said Mount, 1966 Mr. Basketball. “‘Put it on the cover.’ I said, I don’t want to do that.’ He said, ‘Yeah, you are.’ Everybody interviewed me, but I wasn’t big on talking about myself. I very rarely would talk.”
Frank Deford was the writer, and it was one of his first assignments for the magazine. Deford, who went on to become a prize-winning author in many genres, arrived in Lebanon with a crew, recalled Mount. “They’re following me around all over school, taking pictures. You know how your peers are; they’re standing there making fun of you. The crew was here for two or three weeks.”
Mount chuckled, then added, “This is a great story. There was a pool room uptown, on the square. There was a guy named Pistol Sheets—he’s in the article. He was a big basketball fan and liked to gamble. We’re up on the square and it’s on a Friday. Deford and all the Sports Illustrated crew are there and we’re trying to get in the middle of the street.
“All the farmers are coming into town. It’s crowded. It was snowing and there was a lot of slush. We had to get off the street, because here came a lot of cars. Pistol is looking out that window. A few minutes later he comes out and he’s got a pistol in his hand. He’s waving it and says, ‘Rick, I’ll stop these cars for you.’
“Deford and all his guys are looking like, ‘What have we got ourselves into?’ Pistol laughs and goes back in and the guys from Sports Illustrated are kinda thinking, ‘What’s going on?’ Then Frank says, ‘What was the dip on that?’ I said, ‘Well, you’re in Lebanon, Indiana, you’re not in New York now.’”
Mount will never forget the day Rosenstihl told him SI was going to shoot the cover photo north of town. “I said, ‘It’s snowing and it’s cold.’ Rosie said, ‘Just put these wool warm-ups on over your underwear. You won’t be cold.’ I took my clothes off and put those wool warm-ups on and we were out there three hours. I ran up and down that lane maybe 150 times while they took pictures. I’d jump in the car and try to get warm. I’ll bet they took over 150 pictures and that’s how they got the cover.”
The cover and story turned out to be a boon for Mount and Indiana high school basketball. “I think state-wide I was pretty well known at that point,” he said. “That cover and story put me on the map nationally. Fathers and grandparents will bring their kids to my basketball camp and they’ll always mention that article.”
In March, 2005, Mike Warren, who played on two of John Wooden’s record 10 NCAA Division I championship teams at UCLA, accompanied the Hoosier legend from California to South Bend for the McDonald’s Ail-American High School Game festivities at Notre Dame.
“That was really special,” said Warren, a South Bend native. “Wooden is on the McDonald’s advisory board and since the game was in South Bend, he decided I might like to go back home. I jumped at the opportunity.” Wooden, who coached at South Bend Central from 1934 to 1943, and Warren, who played at Central, went to a luncheon on the Notre Dame campus for people who played for Wooden either in high school or college.
Warren says Wooden loves to laugh. “He’s not always as serious as people might think. When you consider all the things that he has accomplished, and all the accolades and awards he has earned over the years, I don’t know too many people who can remain as level-headed and as humble as he has remained.”
Mike has the rights to Wooden’s life story and hopes to make a movie of the man from Martinsville. “I have a writer and we’re in the beginning stages,” said Mike. “We pray that it’s going to be a feature film. But we’re looking at a couple of years down the road. Coach’s impact on basketball all across Indiana is amazing. What he’s done for basketball in Indiana and California is immeasurable.”
Billy and Dave Shepherd of Carmel are the only brothers ever to be named Mr. Basketball in separate years. Billy Shepherd was the 1968 Mr. Basketball. Dave received the honor in 1970. Dave played one year with Billy under their father as coach of the Greyhounds and he loves to tell the story of his first varsity game.
“I was having a real good game against Westfield,” he said, chuckling. “At the end of the third quarter I think I had like 24 points, eight or 10 rebounds and three or four assists. I think Billy had about 20 points.
“I was getting ready to go out for the fourth quarter and I was all fired up. Scott Richards, one of our subs, taps me on the shoulder and says, 'I'm in for you.’ I said, ‘What? In for me?’ I learned fast that no sophomore is going to come in and outscore Billy Shepherd in the first game of his career. I sat out the fourth quarter and watched Billy put on a little show. He ended up with 30. Of course, I ended up with 24. Big Bill taught me a lesson. Here’s how it is, kid. You 11 have your chance later on, but right now that’s not how the program’s set up.”
Dave says his favorite story of that sophomore season was “telling that Billy and I combined for 88 points one night. They say, ‘You gotta be kidding. You and Billy scored 88 points?’ Yeah, I say, he got 70 and I got 18.” That 70 is the Carmel one-game record. In Dave’s senior season he scored 66 against Frankfort in a home game. “My dad took me out with about 2 minutes left and the fans went crazy. He put me back in. I told him it was a little late. I wound up with 66. I always tell people, 'It’s hard to believe a guy gets 66 points in a high school basketball game and not have the school record.’”
When Chuck DeVoe, who played high school basketball at Indianapolis’ Park School before it became known as Park Tudor, was at Princeton, he was involved in two bittersweet games against Ivy League foe Columbia.
“We had the longest winning streak in the country my junior year (1950-51) and Columbia was right behind us, also being undefeated,” said DeVoe. “We had a play set up out of bounds. It was to go to me. The play worked perfectly, but I blew a layup with about 20 seconds to go. We got the rebound and I had the ball stolen from me. A guy took it down the floor and scored as the game ended. Columbia won by one point.
“About 20 years later I was tapped on the shoulder at Detroit Diesel Allison in Indianapolis. I turned around and the guy said, ‘You don’t remember me.’ I said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’ He said, ‘I’m the guy from Columbia who stole the ball from you.’ The guy’s name was Bob Sullivan.”
In DeVoe’s senior season, Princeton won the Ivy League and qualified for the NCAA tournament. The Tigers played Columbia twice. Jack Molinas was Columbia’s star player. “Molinas burned us real bad in the first game at Columbia,” said DeVoe. “In the second game I guarded him and held him down quite a bit. I always was very proud of that. I always thought that was the best defensive game I ever played, until the news broke about Molinas shaving points all through his college career and becoming the master fixer. It was like the air went out of the balloon.” Molinas was later killed, reportedly by the mob.
George McGinnis, who led Indianapolis Washington High School to the 1969 state championship and then was named Mr. Basketball, always seems to be smiling. “I am who I am,” he said. “I never try to portray myself as anything other than what I am. I don’t think I’ve changed much in terms of personality.
“A speech teacher at Washington had a profound effect on me. I remember the time I was a sophomore when Channel 13 came out and did a report on our team. They brought me over to say a few words and the guy put the microphone to my mouth and I just froze.
“My speech teacher saw that TV clip that night. She called me in the next day and said, If you want to be an athlete, and you’re going to be out there in the public eye, you need to learn to speak properly. If you’re willing, I’ll spend some individual time with you after school’ We became great friends. I went home with her and we did little things, and I got up and I did speeches. It was people like that who really made a difference, who set the base for you. She didn’t have to do that, but she took time out of her life to help somebody.”
An eight-column headline in the Evansville Courier of March 22, 1948 read: “Bears Are Welcomed Home By 4000 Fans At Central Gym.” Lee Hamilton, former U.S. House of Representatives member from southern Indiana, remembers well the homecoming his Evansville Central High School team received after finishing runner-up in the state tournament.
“I was not able to walk,” said Hamilton, who suffered a severe knee injury in the morning round of the state finals at Butler Fieldhouse (now Hinkle Fieldhouse). “I came in on crutches. We came by bus from Indianapolis and I remember we had a stop in Petersburg, Indiana, where a very large number of people came out to see us.
“In those days one of the interesting things was that the college game had not really taken hold yet. This was right after World War II. The NBA I don’t think was even in existence. At least it was not prominent. So all of the sports energy, if you would, focused on high school basketball. For a town like Evansville it was THE big event.
“Today you’ve got Indiana University, you’ve got the NCAA, you’ve got the NBA, and you’ve got a lot of other things. It was a very different environment back then. Veterans were just coming back from World War II and the sports leagues had not really gotten underway, although the IHSAA was well organized. But the attention that the town (Evansville) gave to basketball and to basketball players was just extraordinary. We had the kind of attention you would give to an Indiana University national contender today.”
Hallie Bryant, whose basketball career has extended from Indianapolis’ Crispus Attucks High School to Indiana University to the Harlem Globetrotters and beyond, says players like Oscar Robertson and Larry Bird might have been gifted. More important, in Bryant’s estimation, is that they both paid the price to be great.
“Yes, I paid the price in my career,” said Hallie, and that’s how the other 38 players profiled in this book got to enjoy so many glory days in basketball.