Feb. 28, 2001
Editor's Note: Dave Campbell's column appears in each edition of the Baylor Bear Insider Report, available upon membership in the Baylor Bear Foundation. For information on joining the Bear Foundation, click here. For an archive of his other columns, click here.
By now the euphoria of Baylor's victory over No. 6-ranked Kansas in basketball should have worn off. After all, that game unfolded at the Ferrell Center on Feb. 12, more than two weeks ago. Since then the Bears have played and lost three games -- to Oklahoma and Missouri on the road, to arch-rival Texas at home, surely enough to take the gloss and shine off any conquest, even the conquest of mighty Kansas.
So over and done with and all that, right?
I have a close friend who once assured me in all seriousness that "immortality is a fleeting thing." Hey, if even immortality is a fleeting thing, then I guess we certainly cannot expect the glory of the moment of Feb. 12, 2001, to just last and last and last, can we?
But a strange thing: Preparing to write this column, I went to the files and dug out the official play-by-play of that Baylor-Kansas game and read it through one more time -- and got excited all over again.
Let's face it: for a Baylor fan, that was a night at the Ferrell Center that had a special mystical quality. Seeing was believing, all right, but barely.
The game was framed with magic -- Baylor magic. It was the kind of magic that was invisible and untouchable, as elusive as shifting fog. And yet after just the first few moments you knew it was there.
Imagine, only two minutes and 41 seconds of playing time had elapsed and already Baylor was out in front of Kansas, 10-0. And not just any old Kansas, but the Kansas. Coach Roy Williams' Kansas. Imagine, with 12:53 still left in the first half, Baylor was streaking ahead with a 20-6 lead. Imagine, with 7:32 left before intermission, Baylor was on top, 30-14. Imagine, with 1:36 before halftime, Baylor had more than doubled the score on Kansas, 42-20.
I felt like I was in another place, another time, another zone. This couldn't be happening. This was a Big 12 basketball game and those were the Kansas Jayhawks, and such things just don't happen to the Kansas Jayhawks on a basketball court.
Hey, lucky me. I was there, I got to see it.
MORE THAN 70 YEARS ago the Waco Cubs, the city's professional baseball team, played their home games in a little bandbox of a place called Katy Park. One night, in a game against Beaumont, a little bantam of a guy named Gene Rye (Rye was not his real name, his real name was a jawbreaker and as long as the proverbial well rope, so some enterprising newspaper guy shortened his name to Rye) hit three home runs in one inning.
That had never been done before in professional baseball. It has never been done since. But the point is that Katy Park in those days held maybe 1,500 people, but at least 50,000 people have told me personally over the years that they were there that night to see Gene Rye make history.
It is sort of that way where the Baylor-Texas football game of 1941 is concerned.
The Bears were monumental underdogs taking on the No. 1 team in the nation. That was a crippled Baylor team that had no chance against coach D.X. Bible's finest. The Longhorns already were being talked about from coast to coast because Life Magazine was putting pictures of all their starters on its cover that week. So those Baylor players picked that Saturday to play the game of their lives and tie the best team in college football, 7-7.
WACO'S OLD MUNY STADIUM couldn't hold more than 15,000 fans. Maybe 16,000 or 17,000 if half the crowd crammed into standing-room-only. But at least five times that number of Baylor fans saw that game in person because, at one time or another, I've met them all.
Twenty, maybe twenty-five years from now, 50,000 people rather than the 9,523 who were actually there are going to tell you they had seats in the Ferrell Center the night Dave Bliss' Baylor Bears called down the thunder and upset the super-duper Jayhawks.
And, bless their hearts, by then they are going to believe it. Because, after all, that Baylor victory over Kansas was one for the ages.
Where does it rank in a roll call of great Baylor basketball victories?
Personally, I put it No. 1 for the last 53 years.
Yes, No. 1 for all those years from the present and stretching back to that season of 1948 (the one that also had its share of magic) which found coach Bill Henderson's Bears fighting and clawing and shooting their way to the NCAA championship game at Madison Square Garden before losing to Adolph Rupp's legendary Wildcats of Kentucky.
Understand, in beating Kansas at the Ferrell Center on Feb. 12, the Bears beat the team ranked No. 6 in all of major college basketball. But that is not why the victory over Kansas deserves such a lofty place among all-time Baylor triumphs.
After all, the Bears on Feb. 10, 1990, beat an Arkansas team that was unbeaten (had won 12 straight, which at that time was the longest winning streak in the nation, and the Hogs had won 18 straight in Southwest Conference play) and ranked No. 3 nationally. The Bears, coached by Gene Iba, won that game, 82-77, as David Wesley scored 23 points and, yes, that was a victory as unforgettable as it was delicious. I can still see the Baylor multitude storming the court after that game -- storming it the way Baylor fans did after this season's victory over Kansas.
Then there was the victory the Bears achieved on Jan. 26, 1982, against an unbeaten Texas team that was ranked No. 5 in the nation. Coach Jim Haller's Baylor team won that game, played at the old Heart O' Texas Coliseum, by the score of 64-59 as Terry Teagle scored 22 points and home-grown Ozell Hall (Waco University High grad) dominated the Longhorns' aircraft carrier, LaSalle Thompson, who at the time ranked No. 1 or thereabouts nationally in rebounding.
Another remarkable Baylor conquest on the basketball court came on a neutral court in Abilene. Coach Bill Menefee's Bears upset No. 5-ranked New Mexico State by the implausible score of 87-53 on Dec. 20, 1969. One of the Baylor heroes of that game was current BU athletic director Tom Stanton, who returned to his home town of Abilene to put his best foot forward.
"New Mexico State really was not overrated," Menefee was recalling last week. "They went on to win their way to the Final Four that season (1970)." UCLA won the national championship, the fourth in what became seven consecutive national titles for coach John Wooden and his remarkable Bruins.
There have been several other Baylor victories over teams that held a high national ranking at the time -- one in particular against a heralded SMU team, but I don't recall the year -- and on Dec. 10, 1948, the Bears actually defeated the supposedly invincible Phillips 66 team which had towering Bob Kurland at center and was the defending national AAU champion and had defeated Kentucky in the 1948 Olympic Trial finals.
Baylor won that game played at Rena Marrs-McLean gym, 45-31, after getting out to a 12-0 lead. Sound familiar?
WONDERFUL VICTORIES all, and still worthy of our full admiration. Even so, the Baylor victory over Kansas ranks ahead of them in my book.
Here's why: None of those games was seen on a national TV hookup. The Baylor-Kansas game was (ESPN2). And while Arkansas and Texas and New Mexico State and SMU had a lofty ranking and a good basketball reputation at the time the Bears beat them, they hardly compared in long-standing national stature to University of Kansas basketball.
"Listen," former Baylor basketball coach and current TV basketball analyst Jim Haller was saying last week, "when you beat a traditional national power -- and that's what Kansas is, a traditional national power -- everybody takes notice.
"I've been to quite a few places since that game -- to Florida, Oklahoma, several other Big 12 sites. And I've found people still talking about that game.
"One reason is because it was such a great game, such an upset. But also it was seen by such a wide audience. The normal Fox (TV) games are regional, seen in about five states. This one was a national telecast, which made it available coast to coast. And since Kansas was involved, people watched from coast to coast. That means Baylor's victory made an impact coast to coast.
"You just can't compare a big basketball victory won in the old Southwest Conference with one won in the Big 12. The reputation of Big 12 basketball is so much greater. When we would win a big game in the old SWC, people would pay attention in this state and Arkansas but very few of those games were seen or talked about nationally. Win a big game in the Big 12 and the entire Midwest pays attention, and often a lot more of the country as well. The impact is so much greater.
"So there's just no comparison."
OF COURSE, WHEN BAYLOR upset first a great U. of Washington team and then an even greater Kansas State team in the NCAA Western Regional to reach the national finals against Kentucky in 1948, those victories caught eyes and stirred conversations coast to coast. With Baylor going up against the likes of that '48 Kentucky team (regarded as one of the great college basketball teams in history), and taking on the fabled Wildcats in a Madison Square Garden setting, even casual hardwood fans had to notice.
The wire services did not make weekly college basketball rankings in those days, but it would be logical to assume that both Washington and K-State would have ranked in the nation's top half-dozen teams if such rankings had been made.
Former Baylor basketball coach and athletic director Bill Menefee was on the bench, serving as Bill Henderson's chief assistant, when the Bears won those two unforgettable victories in the Western Regional played in Kansas City.
"I don't know, maybe Kansas State might have been a little more highly regarded. Both certainly were regarded among the nation's (basketball) elite," he remembers.
"But there was no TV that I can recall. The only people who saw the game were those who were there (10,000, according to newspaper accounts). I think this victory over Kansas is going to have such an impact. It showed the entire nation that Baylor can play with teams like Kansas, that we do belong in this league, that we can compete and win in this league."
Menefee said he cannot recall any Baylor game against such a big-name opponent "where the score was so one-sided in Baylor's favor so early. I was really shocked at Baylor's intensity and adrenaline. The Bears really came out on fire and everything worked."
And, said Menefee, "I think the great thing is that this shows people we have a high-quality coaching staff at Baylor now and I think we're going to see more great basketball players wearing Baylor colors than we've ever seen before. I think we're in for some great basketball times at Baylor, both on the men's and the women's side."
And, yes, he's mightily impressed with the job Kim Mulkey has done in her rookie season as a head coach. The Lady Bears are closing in on 20 victories and have given their fans plenty to talk about, too, beating No. 7-ranked Iowa State and perennial power Texas twice.
ONLY TIME WILL TELL us how much that victory over Kansas helped Bliss' program, but those in the know are saying it already has had an impact in recruiting. "That victory has opened some doors for Dave Bliss that weren't open before," one source told the Insider.
Awaiting next season and the improvement that is sure to come (when 6-9, 240-pound R.T. Guinn -- a fierce rebounder who has a nice shooting touch, as he proved in one season as a freshman starter at New Mexico -- and 6-2 point guard Kevin Henry, who started for three seasons for Bliss at New Mexico, become eligible), one can only marvel at the job Bliss and his aides have done with sophomore Steven Othoro.
The 6-10 post from Kikuyu, Kenya, was generally regarded as the project of all projects when he first arrived at Baylor, and he was still classified that way in most minds last fall. But there he was against Kansas' blue-chip hoopsters, playing 26 minutes, scoring 7 points and collecting 9 rebounds.
"Dave has made a new man out of Othoro," said one hoops expert. "He got 9 boards against Kansas, 8 against Texas. Paired with R.T. Guinn, he could have quite a future at Baylor. You know, this (current) team is so fragile, and so lacking in some areas, and Dave has done a fabulous job with what he has, using the strengths of the team beautifully."
Personally, I thought that was never more apparent than in the Kansas game, the one Baylor oldtimers will never forget.
Editor's Note: Dave Campbell's column appears in each edition of the Baylor Bear Insider Report, available upon membership in the Baylor Bear Foundation. For information on joining the Bear Foundation, click here. For an archive of his other columns, click here.
