Wooden: A Coach's Life (16 page)

The development did not make a huge splash back in Terre Haute, warranting only a mention deep in Bob Nesbit’s Sunday column reporting that the change “enabled Wooden to shift his squad at the last moment and take Clarence Walker, the East Chicago speed merchant, on the trip. Wooden revealed to Nesbit that he had been told Walker probably would be the only colored boy playing in the meet.”

However, the news was a big deal in Kansas City, where the prospect of the tournament losing its connection with the U.S. Olympic trials was cause for much concern. No outlet followed the events with more interest than the
Call
, Kansas City’s most prominent black newspaper. Though the paper’s sports columnist, John I. Johnson, was pleased by the end of the Negro ban, he was realistic about the reasons behind the decision. “We would like to report that the committee saw the injustice of its racial prejudice bars and voluntarily voted to remove them, thus showing to the world that the motivation came from a spirit of fair play and sportsmanship. But this is not true,” Johnson wrote. “We can’t shout glory, glory for the rescinding committee as we would like to do, for their act was somewhat forced, and the hallelujahs belong to others.”

Those “others,” alas, did not include Clarence Walker’s coach, but by then Walker didn’t much care. In his journal, he announced the reprieve in matter-of-fact language. “At the last minute, I was sought by coaches, friends, etc., and the reason being that I was to go to Kansas City, Mo., to play in the NAIB tournament,” he wrote. “Mr. Wooden readily understanding the situation got in contact with me and talked the deal over.”

*   *   *

On their way to Columbia, Missouri, where they were going to spend the night before completing the trip to Kansas City, the Sycamores stopped to eat lunch at a local restaurant. Shortly after the players ordered their food, a woman approached Wooden and told him that Walker couldn’t eat there. Wooden replied that if Walker couldn’t eat there, none of them would. “You can’t leave,” the woman protested. “You already ordered.”

“Watch us,” Wooden said. And they left.

“I thought they might get some local policeman or something but they didn’t,” Wooden said. “To the best of my knowledge that’s the only problem we had. I didn’t expect any there because we had checked in advance.”

The hotel where the team was staying in Columbia was segregated, too, but since there were no Negro hotels or private homes available, the hotel allowed Walker to stay in a storage room next to a bathroom in the basement. This was a demeaning arrangement, but Wooden apparently felt he had no choice but to go along. The hotel staff rolled in a cot and placed it next to some broken furniture. Walker had a fitful night because of the noise emanating from a sorority party upstairs. At around 2:00 a.m., a group of boys used the bathroom next to Walker’s space. “About ten minutes later, they all cleared out but believe me they did not take everything with them,” Walker wrote in his journal. “The aroma coming from the bathroom through a furnace inlet was unbearable. I had to get up and shut the inlet off. One can guess how much sleep I got.”

Once the team arrived in Kansas City, Walker again had to sleep in a separate hotel. Things were not much better for him inside Municipal Auditorium. Before Indiana State’s first-round game, he was in the bathroom at the arena with a teammate named Dan Dimich when he heard a member of another team ask, “How did you guys happen to have a nigger on your team?” Making history was no fun.

The NAIB’s Negro ban officially ended in the first round when Walker made his entrance during the first half of the Sycamores’ 72–40 win over St. Francis, but you’d never know from reading the city’s two major newspapers that something significant had occurred. The only evidence came from the box score, which noted that Walker had scored one goal, made one free throw, and committed zero fouls. Even the fans, to their credit, were nonchalant. “I can’t remember anybody booing him or anything like that,” Klueh said.

The fans were plenty excited, however, about the tournament, which had grown significantly since its inception ten years before. It was so prominent that Brigham Young University, which had won its conference, turned down its automatic invitation to the NCAA tournament to come to Kansas City. (The league’s runner up, Utah, went in BYU’s place.) This promised to be the most wide-open field the NAIB had ever assembled. Even though Indiana State had gone 23–6 during the regular season and had almost won the tournament two years before, nobody considered the Sycamores a threat to win it. On the eve of the opener, the
Kansas City Star
named twelve teams it considered to be headliners. Indiana State was not among them. Even after the field had been whittled over two days from thirty-two teams to sixteen, a poll of five sportswriters determined that six other schools were the favorites.

The group of teams that came to Kansas City reflected just how prevalent fast break basketball was becoming. Piggy Lambert’s vision for the game was finally taking hold. After the first day’s action, the
Star
reported that out of the sixteen teams that had played that day, Kirksville (Mo.) Teachers College was the only one that “used defensive basketball in earnest.” The sport was getting faster, with scoring inching higher and higher. “One observer went so far as to remark that they’d have to change the name of the game to ‘run and shoot,’” the article noted. “The main reliance of modern basketball teaching is on making points and letting the defense be a potent offense.” It was assumed that this trend would not sit well with the coach who lorded over the sport. “Hank Iba would have a field day giving pointers to the sixteen teams which played opening day. The old master of the ball control school would have seen nothing familiar in the eight games. Not once did a team honestly freeze the ball to protect a lead.”

The Hurryin’ Sycamores fit right in. The faster the pace, the more the games played into their hands (not to mention their well-conditioned legs). For the rest of the tournament, Indiana State’s games followed the same pattern: the opponents built a big lead, and the Sycamores came storming back late in the second half. The machine was working exactly as its engineer had designed it.

When Indiana State won its first two games with dramatic second-half comebacks, the local writers finally took notice. “The Sycamores uphold the old Indiana basketball tradition that the last half is the most important,” read the next day’s account in the
Kansas City Star
. “The Sycamores have what might be termed average height for a basketball team. They have plenty of speed and their attack is tricky and hard to stop.”

The team saved its most dramatic comeback for its semifinal contest against Hamline University from St. Paul, Minnesota. As a crowd of around eight thousand looked on, Indiana State built a 12-point lead in the first half, but Hamline charged back to claim an 11-point advantage with eight minutes left in the second half. Indiana State slowly carved into the deficit but still trailed by 2 in the final seconds. Klueh’s attempt at a game-tying shot fell short, but he was fouled. He sank two clutch free throws to send the game into overtime. “I wasn’t a great free throw shooter,” Klueh said. “I don’t remember if Wooden said anything to me, but he was a very optimistic guy. He’d give you that smile, and when you got there, you were confident that whatever you were doing was going to be okay.”

In the extra session, Hamline took a 1-point lead into the closing seconds, and once again Klueh had the ball in his hands. As the clock was winding down, Klueh flung a running, underhanded shot toward the backboard. The gun went off, and then the ball bounced off the board and dropped through the net. Ball game. Klueh’s teammates were delirious. They rushed the court, hoisted him onto their shoulders, and carried him to the locker room.

The win vaulted the Sycamores into the championship game against Louisville. There would be no more overlooking this undersized bunch. “The Indiana team has thrilled fans on successive nights with a second half rally that has all the elements of a horse opry chase,” read the story in the next day’s
Star
. “The Sycamores—and they should really have a name more fitting their run-for-cover break—have pulled two out of the fire and now stand on the threshold of a title.”

The local press was also finally starting to focus on the intense, bespectacled man on Indiana State’s sidelines. Wooden was a full sixteen years removed from his senior year at Purdue, and memories of his playing exploits were already fading. In introducing Wooden, the
Star
reminded its readers that when the Sycamores had reached the NAIB finals two years before, they had been coached by Glenn Curtis. “The coach now is John R. Wooden,” the paper wrote. “Wooden is a protégé of Curtis and helped Curtis win the Indiana state high school basketball championship for Martinsville High. Wooden later achieved All-American honors at Purdue University under Ward (Piggy) Lambert.” The newspaper mistakenly reported that Wooden “is still considered the best dribbler to come out of Illinois high schools,” but it paid him the ultimate compliment as a coach: “Whatever else Wooden teaches his team, one thing is certain. The boys don’t know when to quit.”

This newfound attention was having some unintended consequences. That same day, Bob Nesbit wrote in his column in the
Terre Haute Star
that “a note from Los Angeles claims that U.C.L.A. is trying to sign Johnny Wooden as its basketball coach. We hope the story is wrong.”

The championship game against Louisville was broadcast in Terre Haute on WTHI radio, where an announcer offered play-by-play from a transcription that came in via telephone from Kansas City. The station joined the game in progress after the completion of the high school state semifinals. (High school hoops was still king in Indiana.) When Louisville and Indiana State took the floor of Municipal Auditorium on the night of March 13, more than 9,000 paying customers had settled into their seats. They were about to get their money’s worth.

Like Wooden, Louisville coach Peck Hickman believed in the fast break, and the two teams raced up and down the court at breakneck speed. This time, the Sycamores would spot their opponents an 18-point lead at halftime. Indiana State came rushing back once more after intermission, but Louisville’s free throw shooting down the stretch enabled the Cardinals to claim the title with an 82–70 victory. “We had a difficult time getting inside because we weren’t very big,” said Klueh, who scored 25 points in the final and was named the tournament’s most valuable player despite the loss. “We were disappointed but we weren’t tremendously upset because we hadn’t really thought about getting that far in the first place. We just played.”

Plenty of history was made at the 1948 NAIB tournament. The 9,200 people who watched the final set a new single-game attendance record for the tournament. So did the 53,704 who watched over six days, as well as the total of $65,777.59 they paid for admission. The event had drawn schools from thirty-one states, also a new high. And of course, a black man had competed for the first time.

In the end, Clarence Walker’s presence on the court drew little notice—which is exactly what Walker wanted. Though the two major newspapers in town never mentioned the breakthrough, the reaction (or non-reaction) from the fans and players had a profound effect on John Johnson, the sports columnist at the
Call
. “The opposing players regarded Walker as just another basketball player. At no time was there any evidence of difference shown to Walker by players whether they were from the North or the South, the East or the West,” Johnson wrote. “The spectators for the most part appeared to savor the participation of the Negro player, for they applauded his play whenever he was recalled to the bench. No expressions of disapproval were heard. Judging by this acceptance of the first Negro to ever play in the NAIB, the inference is that sports fans are not too much concerned with the race of a player; in fact, they seem to welcome the change and came out in larger numbers to see democracy in action on the fields of contest.”

Walker had a few more unpleasant experiences on his way back to Terre Haute. When the Sycamores stayed overnight in a hotel outside St. Louis, he again had to sleep in the basement. Wooden met him for breakfast the next morning. As they were leaving the hotel, Walker walked past a woman holding her young daughter. “Look, Mommy, a nigger,” the girl said, pointing. The woman hushed her daughter by saying, “Sh! A colored boy.”

For all the indignities he suffered, Walker wouldn’t have traded that week for anything. He met the Olympic track star Jesse Owens, boxing champion Henry Armstrong, and Floyd Bates, a black professional basketball player. Walker spoke with Bates until five in the morning and was so excited he couldn’t sleep. He learned some important lessons, many of them unpleasant, all of them worthwhile. He understood that his presence in Kansas City had resulted because someone confronted an unjust system, not the man he knew and revered, but rather strangers who lived thousands of miles away. This realization presaged the larger struggle to come in America. “An important trait among men is their ability to assert themselves in relation to other men,” Walker wrote in his journal. “It is not necessary to win all the little battles, but if and when human issues arise—we must take a stand—and this we must do by assertion.”

*   *   *

Because the Sycamores had lost to Louisville, they did not get to compete at the Olympic trials, but their performance in Kansas City was still hailed as a triumph back home. They ended the 1947–48 season with a 27–7 record, the best ever at the school. They also set a new single-season team scoring record, while Klueh shattered his own single-season mark by 260 points. When the team got back to Terre Haute, the whole town turned out to greet them. The players were paraded down Wabash Avenue in a caravan of fire trucks that took them to the gymnasium for a huge pep rally. The day included frequent predictions that the team’s success would be the catalyst for the new field house the school had been hoping to build.