Tennesse Win Turns Around '59
July 11, 2003 07:52 PM | General
December 6, 2001
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (Dec. 29, 1958) – The West Virginia basketball team was on the ropes when it traveled to No. 11 Tennessee for a non-conference meeting in Knoxville on Dec. 29, 1959.
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| Jerry West scored a career-high 44 points to help West Virginia to a big win at Tennessee. (WVU Sports Communications) |
The Mountaineers were coming off back-to-back difficult losses to Kentucky and Northwestern and limped into the Volunteer State with a 7-3 record.
With All-American junior Jerry West returning, WVU began the 1958-59 season ranked No. 4 in the nation and were coming off a 26-2 record that was good enough to give them a No. 1 national rating. West Virginia had its eye on a deep NCAA tournament run in ‘58 before Don Vincent broke his leg in the Southern Conference tournament.
His injury and a flat Mountaineer performance led to an 89-84 upset loss to Manhattan in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
Before his death last year, “Voice of the Mountaineers” Jack Fleming once recalled that quiet, cold airplane ride back to Morgantown. “No one said a word the whole way home,” he said.
Sitting in the front of the cabin was Coach Fred Schaus, who was being consumed by his own clouds of breath. Schaus first arrived at West Virginia University in 1946 after serving in the Navy. The Newark, Ohio, native became an accomplished star at WVU breaking every scoring record. He left after his junior season to sign a professional contract with the Fort Wayne Pistons where he was named to the NBA all-star team as a rookie. He played two more years at Fort Wayne and one with the New York Knicks before returning to West Virginia to take over for Red Brown in 1955.
His fiery, no nonsense style was just what the Mountaineer program needed. Schaus inherited Hot Rod Hundley, an erratic talent who could be unstoppable when he took the game seriously.
Schaus stomached Hundley’s antics until he was able to construct a team that was good enough to play his fast-paced, unselfish style.
The coach’s big break came in the summer of 1956 when he convinced Cabin Creek native Jerry West to sign with the Mountaineers. Schaus also landed homegrown, 6-5 forward Willie Akers and 6-2 guard Butch Goode to round out a terrific in-state class. Of course West was Schaus' plumb.
Fred Schaus discovered in the mid-1950s that the state of West Virginia had just enough good basketball players to build a program around. Although coal mining and manufacturing had reached its peak in the early 1940s when the mines fueled America's industrialization, the Mountain State had not yet witnessed the massive migration of its people that was to come in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Schaus drove the crooked country roads in his 1957 Chevrolet using the same recruiting pitch over and over again: he went out of state to play ball and was almost a stranger back home -- stay home and stay known. By cultivating his backyard (with an occasional foray into nearby Pennsylvania), Schaus created one of the nation’s best basketball programs in just four short years on the job.
Although West Virginia had a much smaller lineup in 1959 after the graduation of 6-10 center Lloyd Sharrar, the Mountaineers still had West. Noted columnist Milton Gross wrote, “With West no team could be bad.”
After running off five easy wins to start the ‘58-59 season, West Virginia dropped a three-point decision to Virginia in Charleston. Victories against Richmond and Oklahoma State boosted the Mountaineers’ record to 7-1 before West Virginia faced No. 2-ranked Kentucky in the championship of the Kentucky Invitational Tournament.
A year earlier, the Mountaineers ended North Carolina’s 37-game win streak and then upset host Kentucky to win the tournament. In 1959 the Wildcats gained revenge by defeating the Mountaineers, 97-91.
Seven days later, West Virginia hopped on a Piedmont Airlines DC-3 from Morgantown and flew to Chicago to play No. 12-ranked Northwestern.
The two teams battled to a grueling double overtime finish that the Wildcats eventually claimed, 118-109. West, who dropped 36 on Kentucky, got into foul trouble against Northwestern and scored just 17 points.
"That was probably the worst game of my college career," West later wrote in his autobiography Mr. Clutch.
The Mountaineers had no time to mope around because two days later West Virginia had a meeting with No. 11-ranked Tennessee in Knoxville. It was West Virginia’s third game against a top 15 team in a span of just eight days.
Emmett Lowery coached Tennessee in 1959. He was a teammate of John Wooden at Purdue and earned All-America honors for the Boilermakers in 1934. Thirteen years later Lowery took over the Tennessee program in 1947 and led the Vols to a 20-5 record that season.
In the 1950s Lowery had moderate success registering six winning campaigns, but he couldn’t get the Volunteers any higher than fourth in the SEC standings. UT supporters were growing weary of .500 seasons and middle-of-the-pack SEC finishes and expected bigger things from Lowery’s 1959 squad.
The Volunteers were ranked No. 6 in the preseason and had one of the best centers in the country in 6-8 Gene Tormohlen of Holland, Ind.
“Bumper” Torhmolen earned all-SEC honors as a junior in 1958 and was the nation’s second leading rebounder in ‘59. Torhmolen went on to earn All-America honors that season and was a second round pick by the Syracuse Nats in the NBA draft. The center eventually played six seasons with the Hawks from 1962-70 before becoming a longtime NBA assistant and scout.
Tennessee won five straight games against Wyoming (twice), Michigan, Wake Forest and Davidson before losing its first game of the year at Butler. Tennessee rebounded to defeat Virginia, 79-59 before facing a tired Mountaineer team two days later.
The Vols jumped out to an early lead and took a 41-37 advantage into the locker room at halftime.
The second half was a different story as West took over the game. The junior connected on 68 percent of his field goal attempts to lead the Mountaineers to a 76-72 come-from-behind victory. In all, West hit 17-of-25 field goal attempts and added 10-of-11 free throws to finish the game with a career-high 44 points; West also collected a team-high 12 rebounds.
No other West Virginia player reached double figures; the rest of the team combined to make just 12-of-36 field goal attempts. West’s performance was one for the ages. Wrote the Knoxville Journal: “The old basketball maxim that one man can’t beat you holds up 99 times out of 100. Last night was that hundredth time. Make no mistake about it, Jerry West IS West Virginia. Playing as he was last night, he is unstoppable … impressive as they are, the statistics still do not tell the full story. You have to see this boy to appreciate him.”
“At the time, that might have been the most pivotal game of the year because of the losing streak,” said former player and MSN analyst Jay Jacobs. “We might have slid off the map had we lost that basketball game.”
The All-American forward’s amazing effort put a struggling basketball team back on the right track. West Virginia won 14 out of its last 15 regular season games before sweeping the Southern Conference Tournament to earn its fifth straight NCAA tournament appearance.
Instead of folding in the first round, this time West Virginia went all the way to the NCAA finals before losing, 71-70 to California in the championship game.
Tennessee, meanwhile, limped to an 8-4 finish and a fifth place standing in the SEC. By the way, assistant coach Johnny Sines replaced the gentlemanly Lowery in 1960.
West Virginia 76, Tennessee 72
West Virginia (8-3)
West 17-25 10-11 44, Ritchie 0-3 1-2 1, Clousson 2-5 0-0 4, Smith 3-12 3-4 9, Bolyard 4-8 0-1 8, Akers 2-5 1-1 5, Patrone 0-1 0-0 0, Retton 1-1 1-2 3, Posch 0-1 2-3 2. Totals 29-61 18-24 76.
Tennessee (6-2)
Showalter 6-12 9-12 21, Reeverts 3-10 6-9 12, Tormohlen 4-12 6-8 14, Coulter 5-14 1-2 11, Risser 0-5 0-1 0, Scott 2-7 1-1 5, Carter 2-4 1-2 5, Cooper 1-1 2-2 4. Totals 23-65 26-37 72.
Halftime-Tennessee 41-37. Fouled out- Tormohlen, Ritchie. Rebounds- West Virginia 41 (West 12), Tennessee 35 (Reeverts 12). Assists-NA. Total fouls-West Virginia 27, Tennessee 18. Technicals- None.
Attendance - NA.
