dynastydefender
02-11-2008, 01:59 PM
TOO MUCH INFO
3/3/1930 Duke Beats KY 32-37 (Darn Joe Croson and his Free Throws!!)
12/18/1956 Duke Beats KY 85-84
11/17/1979 Duke Beats KY 82-76 in OT
3/13/1980 Duke Beats KY 55-54
11/19/1988 Duke Beats KY 80-55
12/22/98 Duke Beats JY 71-60
12/18/2001 Duke Beats KY 95-92 in OT
The series between Kentucky and Duke (Kentucky currently leads 11-8) is one which is made up of relatively few games, however this is more than made up by the sheer number of late-second heroics, stellar plays, tense moments and high profile matchups which have come to personify the series between these two schools.
Over the course of nineteen games, the two have matched up for one national title game, one NCAA semi-final, two NCAA regional finals, one NCAA Sweet-Sixteen, two Hall of Fame Tip-Off Classics, one UKIT Championship (along with the inagural UKIT game), two Jimmy V Classic games and one Sugar Bowl Championship among others. And of those games, no fewer than 12 came down to the final minutes before the game was decided, with a number of those coming down to last-second shots. Included in that mix is one game in particular which has been described by many as the greatest game ever played.
Game by Game Review
The series began in 1930, in the semi-finals of the Southern Conference tournament held in Atlanta, Georgia at the Atlanta City Auditorium. Knowing that the venerable tournament, which matched teams throughout the South, began in 1921, it may seem strange that the two had never met before then. However this is explained because Duke did not join the Southern Conference until 1929. The game would match-up some of the young stars of the day. On the Duke side, Harry Councillor, All-American and future Major League Baseball player Billy Werber and Joe Croson were the top guns (those three incidentally had all attended the same high school, McKinley Tech in Washington DC), while Kentucky featured All-American Paul McBrayer (who would later go on to be a successful coach at Eastern Kentucky University) and Carey Spicer. The leading scorer for the Wildcats was 6-foot-4-inch Cecil Combs. The Blue Devils were coached by Eddie Cameron (who incidentally had faced Kentucky five years before when he was coaching at Washington & Lee and before that as a player at Washington & Lee.) Guiding the Wildcats was John Mauer, in what would turn out to be his final game coaching in Lexington before leaving the school for a more lucrative offer.
The game itself was fast for its day, and the score was close throughout. Duke led at halftime by a single basket 20-18, but the Wildcats came back from intermission to forge ahead. Just when it appeared Kentucky would take the game over, leading by 4 points, Croson hit a shot for Duke and was fouled by Combs in the process. Apparently in that day and age, two shots were awarded on a shooting foul regardless of whether the field goal was good or not. Croson made both of his charity tosses and with this 4-point play, Duke was again tied with Kentucky. This play was enough to turn the tide, and Duke went on to build a big lead and win the game, although Kentucky made it interesting by coming back from an 8-point deficit to close to within 3.
Morgan Blake, the senior columnist for the Atlanta paper (who had reported on all the Southern Conference tournaments going back to the beginning) described the game at the time as "the greatest basket ball game ever played in Atlanta." This game would serve as a fitting precursor to the games to come.
Adolph Rupp
The following year, the two teams met again in the Southern Conference tournament, this time in the quarter-finals. However there had been big changes at Kentucky in the intervening year. Adolph Rupp, a former player at Kansas, had been hired away from Freeport High School in Illinois and had instilled a radical new system. Rupp's teams ran the ball, a stark contrast to the plodding offensive system Mauer favored and a departure from the way most Kentucky teams played prior to Rupp's arrival. From that point on, Kentucky would be known as a running team.
Joe Croson returned for Duke, and scored 11 points to lead the Blue Devils. But gone were his experienced running mates Werber and Councillor from the previous year, and his efforts weren't enough to overcome Kentucky. The Wildcats got off to a big lead at the start of the game, 11-2, based in no small part on controlling the tip-off which occurred after every made basket. Only after Duke solved the tip-off problem did they have a chance to make head-way. Trailing by 13 at the half, Duke steadily chipped at the lead, however the scoring of "Little" Louis McGinnis and the efforts of Carey Spicer kept UK out of reach and Kentucky went on to win the game 35-30.
Eddie Cameron
The next year, Eddie Cameron took his team on a road trip over the mountains and into Lexington for the first time. The capacity crowd at Kentucky's Alumni Gymnasium found the Blue Devils to be worthy opponents who, according to Lexington Herald sports editor Neville Dunn, outplayed UK most of the game. It was during a critical stretch after the second half began that the contest was decided. Trailing by three points at halftime, Kentucky retook the lead by going on a 9-0 scoring spree to start the second stanza. The Devils could never make up the difference and Kentucky won the game 37-30. The Kentucky attack was balanced with Darrell Darby, John DeMoisey and Forest Sale all scoring eight points. Center Roy Albert scored eight points for the Blue Devils while James Thompson and 'wily' John Shaw chipped in six apiece.
As a sidenote, in the game story was mentioned that the following day, Coach Rupp took the Blue Devil team on a tour of Lexington and the surrounding area. This is noteworthy, not because it was unusual at the time (in fact this type of thing was done by Rupp regularly during his career), but because it is so foreign to the way modern teams conduct themselves. Back then, if a team made the effort to take a train to a far-away place, they certainly were going to make the most of it. This is completely opposite of modern-day teams which jet from city to city, often with no opportunity to identify with the local scene, let alone having the opposing coach being the one conducting the tour.
Cliff Hagan operates against
the Duke defense
Soon after that year, the old Southern Conference, with so many schools as to be virtually unmanageable, imploded under its own weight and broke up. A group of the Western teams formed a more manageable conference which, despite a few significant changes through the years, has largely remained as the Southeastern Conference of today. Many of the teams east of the Appalacians stayed in the revamped Southern Conference and eventually split off themselves to form what today is the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).
1953 UKIT
The split effectively put a halt to the series for over 20 years, and as it turned out the next time the two met in the 1953-54 season, it was the first year of the newly formed ACC. That was when Kentucky invited Duke (along with LaSalle and UCLA) to participate in the inagural game of its holiday tournament, called the University of Kentucky Invitational Tournament (aka the UKIT). This tournament was held in Lexington's recently built Memorial Coliseum. The idea of a holiday mini-tournament on campus was one that was fairly new, the first such event was started by N.C. State's Everett Case with the Dixie Classic in Raleigh. Unlike later times, the UKIT attracted some of the top teams from around the country. The concept proved so successful and lucrative at Kentucky, that other major schools soon followed and set up holiday tournaments themselves.
Duke entered the game ranked #8 in the nation, but they faced a Kentucky team which was formidable, with two players (Frank Ramsey and Cliff Hagan) who not only were All-Americans, but would go on to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. The game was tight until the end of the third quarter when Kentucky, leading by a 49-47 score, went on a 21 to 4 run to blow the game open. Hagan scored a game-high 27 points while Ramsey added 19. Duke was paced by 14 points each from Bernie Janicki and Ronnie Mayer and 12 points from Joe Belmont. Kentucky went on to the UKIT Championship where they defeated a LaSalle team which would go on to win the national title that year.
Kentucky finished the season undefeated at 25-0, but did not participate in the NCAA tournament that year. At the time, graduate students were not allowed by the NCAA regulations to compete in the tournament, even if they had basketball eligibility left and played in the regular season. Kentucky appealed the regulation, claiming the rule only hurt those who were forced to stay out of competition for reasons beyond their control, but still did the right thing and graduated in four years (or graduated in shorter time periods). In UK's case, the players had sat out the 1952-53 season when the SEC and then NCAA forced Kentucky to cancel its entire schedule as penalty for a point shaving scandal which occurred with players who were no longer at the school. Kentucky's appeal was denied prior to the start of the NCAA tournament, and it was decided by the coaching staff not to compete if they couldn't use all their players. Despite this, the undefeated 1954 UK team was awarded the National title as determined by the Helms Committee (a private group) in recognition of their achievements. The rule forbidding graduate students from competing in the NCAA tournament was later rescinded by the NCAA.
3/3/1930 Duke Beats KY 32-37 (Darn Joe Croson and his Free Throws!!)
12/18/1956 Duke Beats KY 85-84
11/17/1979 Duke Beats KY 82-76 in OT
3/13/1980 Duke Beats KY 55-54
11/19/1988 Duke Beats KY 80-55
12/22/98 Duke Beats JY 71-60
12/18/2001 Duke Beats KY 95-92 in OT
The series between Kentucky and Duke (Kentucky currently leads 11-8) is one which is made up of relatively few games, however this is more than made up by the sheer number of late-second heroics, stellar plays, tense moments and high profile matchups which have come to personify the series between these two schools.
Over the course of nineteen games, the two have matched up for one national title game, one NCAA semi-final, two NCAA regional finals, one NCAA Sweet-Sixteen, two Hall of Fame Tip-Off Classics, one UKIT Championship (along with the inagural UKIT game), two Jimmy V Classic games and one Sugar Bowl Championship among others. And of those games, no fewer than 12 came down to the final minutes before the game was decided, with a number of those coming down to last-second shots. Included in that mix is one game in particular which has been described by many as the greatest game ever played.
Game by Game Review
The series began in 1930, in the semi-finals of the Southern Conference tournament held in Atlanta, Georgia at the Atlanta City Auditorium. Knowing that the venerable tournament, which matched teams throughout the South, began in 1921, it may seem strange that the two had never met before then. However this is explained because Duke did not join the Southern Conference until 1929. The game would match-up some of the young stars of the day. On the Duke side, Harry Councillor, All-American and future Major League Baseball player Billy Werber and Joe Croson were the top guns (those three incidentally had all attended the same high school, McKinley Tech in Washington DC), while Kentucky featured All-American Paul McBrayer (who would later go on to be a successful coach at Eastern Kentucky University) and Carey Spicer. The leading scorer for the Wildcats was 6-foot-4-inch Cecil Combs. The Blue Devils were coached by Eddie Cameron (who incidentally had faced Kentucky five years before when he was coaching at Washington & Lee and before that as a player at Washington & Lee.) Guiding the Wildcats was John Mauer, in what would turn out to be his final game coaching in Lexington before leaving the school for a more lucrative offer.
The game itself was fast for its day, and the score was close throughout. Duke led at halftime by a single basket 20-18, but the Wildcats came back from intermission to forge ahead. Just when it appeared Kentucky would take the game over, leading by 4 points, Croson hit a shot for Duke and was fouled by Combs in the process. Apparently in that day and age, two shots were awarded on a shooting foul regardless of whether the field goal was good or not. Croson made both of his charity tosses and with this 4-point play, Duke was again tied with Kentucky. This play was enough to turn the tide, and Duke went on to build a big lead and win the game, although Kentucky made it interesting by coming back from an 8-point deficit to close to within 3.
Morgan Blake, the senior columnist for the Atlanta paper (who had reported on all the Southern Conference tournaments going back to the beginning) described the game at the time as "the greatest basket ball game ever played in Atlanta." This game would serve as a fitting precursor to the games to come.
Adolph Rupp
The following year, the two teams met again in the Southern Conference tournament, this time in the quarter-finals. However there had been big changes at Kentucky in the intervening year. Adolph Rupp, a former player at Kansas, had been hired away from Freeport High School in Illinois and had instilled a radical new system. Rupp's teams ran the ball, a stark contrast to the plodding offensive system Mauer favored and a departure from the way most Kentucky teams played prior to Rupp's arrival. From that point on, Kentucky would be known as a running team.
Joe Croson returned for Duke, and scored 11 points to lead the Blue Devils. But gone were his experienced running mates Werber and Councillor from the previous year, and his efforts weren't enough to overcome Kentucky. The Wildcats got off to a big lead at the start of the game, 11-2, based in no small part on controlling the tip-off which occurred after every made basket. Only after Duke solved the tip-off problem did they have a chance to make head-way. Trailing by 13 at the half, Duke steadily chipped at the lead, however the scoring of "Little" Louis McGinnis and the efforts of Carey Spicer kept UK out of reach and Kentucky went on to win the game 35-30.
Eddie Cameron
The next year, Eddie Cameron took his team on a road trip over the mountains and into Lexington for the first time. The capacity crowd at Kentucky's Alumni Gymnasium found the Blue Devils to be worthy opponents who, according to Lexington Herald sports editor Neville Dunn, outplayed UK most of the game. It was during a critical stretch after the second half began that the contest was decided. Trailing by three points at halftime, Kentucky retook the lead by going on a 9-0 scoring spree to start the second stanza. The Devils could never make up the difference and Kentucky won the game 37-30. The Kentucky attack was balanced with Darrell Darby, John DeMoisey and Forest Sale all scoring eight points. Center Roy Albert scored eight points for the Blue Devils while James Thompson and 'wily' John Shaw chipped in six apiece.
As a sidenote, in the game story was mentioned that the following day, Coach Rupp took the Blue Devil team on a tour of Lexington and the surrounding area. This is noteworthy, not because it was unusual at the time (in fact this type of thing was done by Rupp regularly during his career), but because it is so foreign to the way modern teams conduct themselves. Back then, if a team made the effort to take a train to a far-away place, they certainly were going to make the most of it. This is completely opposite of modern-day teams which jet from city to city, often with no opportunity to identify with the local scene, let alone having the opposing coach being the one conducting the tour.
Cliff Hagan operates against
the Duke defense
Soon after that year, the old Southern Conference, with so many schools as to be virtually unmanageable, imploded under its own weight and broke up. A group of the Western teams formed a more manageable conference which, despite a few significant changes through the years, has largely remained as the Southeastern Conference of today. Many of the teams east of the Appalacians stayed in the revamped Southern Conference and eventually split off themselves to form what today is the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).
1953 UKIT
The split effectively put a halt to the series for over 20 years, and as it turned out the next time the two met in the 1953-54 season, it was the first year of the newly formed ACC. That was when Kentucky invited Duke (along with LaSalle and UCLA) to participate in the inagural game of its holiday tournament, called the University of Kentucky Invitational Tournament (aka the UKIT). This tournament was held in Lexington's recently built Memorial Coliseum. The idea of a holiday mini-tournament on campus was one that was fairly new, the first such event was started by N.C. State's Everett Case with the Dixie Classic in Raleigh. Unlike later times, the UKIT attracted some of the top teams from around the country. The concept proved so successful and lucrative at Kentucky, that other major schools soon followed and set up holiday tournaments themselves.
Duke entered the game ranked #8 in the nation, but they faced a Kentucky team which was formidable, with two players (Frank Ramsey and Cliff Hagan) who not only were All-Americans, but would go on to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. The game was tight until the end of the third quarter when Kentucky, leading by a 49-47 score, went on a 21 to 4 run to blow the game open. Hagan scored a game-high 27 points while Ramsey added 19. Duke was paced by 14 points each from Bernie Janicki and Ronnie Mayer and 12 points from Joe Belmont. Kentucky went on to the UKIT Championship where they defeated a LaSalle team which would go on to win the national title that year.
Kentucky finished the season undefeated at 25-0, but did not participate in the NCAA tournament that year. At the time, graduate students were not allowed by the NCAA regulations to compete in the tournament, even if they had basketball eligibility left and played in the regular season. Kentucky appealed the regulation, claiming the rule only hurt those who were forced to stay out of competition for reasons beyond their control, but still did the right thing and graduated in four years (or graduated in shorter time periods). In UK's case, the players had sat out the 1952-53 season when the SEC and then NCAA forced Kentucky to cancel its entire schedule as penalty for a point shaving scandal which occurred with players who were no longer at the school. Kentucky's appeal was denied prior to the start of the NCAA tournament, and it was decided by the coaching staff not to compete if they couldn't use all their players. Despite this, the undefeated 1954 UK team was awarded the National title as determined by the Helms Committee (a private group) in recognition of their achievements. The rule forbidding graduate students from competing in the NCAA tournament was later rescinded by the NCAA.