Originally Posted by
jimsumner
Loyola was ranked fourth by AP in their 1962-'63 pre-season poll. They never dropped lower than fifth that year. Inasmuch as several of their best players came from segregated southern schools, it's not likely they would have been prep All-Americans.
Loyola played one game that, IMO, should be every bit as famous as the '66 title game and would make a great subject for a movie, although Hollywood would no doubt botch it. Mississippi State had won several SEC titles but had been prohibited from playing in the NCAAT because of the likelihood they would have to play integrated teams. They won the 1963 SEC title and faced a court order prohibiting them from playing that year. They were about to be served but were tipped off by a sympathetic sheriff and slipped out of the state before the order could be served. Literally snuck out of Mississippi in order to play in March Madness.
So who do they end up playing? You got it, Loyola of Chicago, with four African American starters and several African American reserves against a school representing a state and a conference that, in many minds, epitomized hard-core resistance to integration and civil rights.
Folks were predicting sharks versus jets, blood on the court, the end of the world as we know it. What they got was a splendid college-basketball game, won by Loyola 61-51, 40 minutes of respect and good sportsmanship, and absolutely not one act or word of racism from any coach or player.
ACC teams had been playing integrated teams since at least the early 1950s but the ACC wasn't the SEC. And the ACC was beginning to integrate. As much as any game ever played, this game shattered the myth that black basketball players and white basketball players couldn't get together on a basketball court and just play basketball. Racists lost big time.
This, along with maybe the 6-3 game against Bama, is usually cited as the greatest moment in MSU sports history. Colvard snuck the team out of town at night on a plane. A North Carolinian, Dean Wallace Colvard later became chancellor at UNCC. He only recently died at age 93.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_W._Colvard
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