by William Cook
Lost among all the hoopla surrounding Robertson’s performance at Madison Square Garden that night was the fact that he had also broken two University of Cincinnati scoring records; the previous Bearcats single-game scoring record of 49 points had been held by Jack Twyman vs. Western Kentucky in 1955 and the previous field goal record of 19 had been set by Larry Imburgia vs. Cedarvale in 1950.
On Saturday evening, January 11, 1958, two nights after Robertson’s scoring binge at Madison Square Garden and seven straight road games, the UC Bearcats returned home to the Armory Fieldhouse and defeated North Texas State, 127–57. The previous high game total for the Bearcats had been the 119 points that they dropped in against Morehead in January 1957.
Perhaps seeking some revenge for the black cat incident in Denton, Texas, Oscar Robertson scored 35 points against the Eagles, playing guard and forward.
Bob Cousy was due in town with the Boston Celtics the following evening but had he been at the Armory Fieldhouse to witness the UC vs. North Texas game he would have been shocked to see The Big O playing his game. It’s likely that Cooz would have acknowledged that he was witnessing his successor-in-the-making as the best player in the NBA.
Robertson, who had 12 assists in the game to go along with his 35 points, dazzled the fans with some of his passing. On one occasion, Robertson intercepted a North Texas pass and quickly started down the court only to be confronted with a wall of Eagle defenders. Immediately, he began to dribble the ball behind his back until he found an open man in Mike Mendenhall, fed him the ball, and he scored. Another time, Oscar was blocked by the defense as he went by the side of the basket only to pass the ball behind his back to Spud Hornsby who scored.
For a brief moment on a cold early January weekend in 1958, it seemed like Cincinnati had become the world capital of basketball. The weekend of January 11–12 would turn out to be an exciting one for basketball in the Queen City with a total of 14,596 fans witnessing games. In the Bearcats’ Saturday night game against North Texas State played on the UC campus, 7,275 fans had been present at the Armory Fieldhouse. That was a record attendance figure for a basketball game played on the University of Cincinnati campus in a program that began as a varsity sport in 1901, with home games played in a gym located in the basement of McMicken Hall.
Xavier was on the road and lost to St. Joseph of Indiana 66–70, but if they had been at home in Schmidt Fieldhouse, the arena would have also been packed.
Now, however, in the 1957–1958 season, besides basketball being played at UC and Xavier, in the city there was also a new kid in town with the NBA Cincinnati Royals. The night after the University of Cincinnati had drawn its record crowd for the North Texas State game, 7,321 fans were in attendance at Cincinnati Gardens to witness the Royals defeat the Boston Celtics, 115–97. The Royals were led by former Bearcat Jack Twyman with 26 points and Maurice Stokes with 21. For the Celtics, Bob Cousy was the leading scorer with 16 points.
The Royals fans were mesmerized by the brilliant play of Maurice Stokes. It just seemed like Stokes was everywhere on the court, grabbing rebounds, intercepting passes, feeding his teammates, and scoring. He was just everywhere the ball was. On one play, Mo drove towards the basket alone but was blocked by the Celtics’ Tom Heinsohn who had timed his leap perfectly to match Stokes. But while in the air Stokes twisted his body away from Heinsohn, faked a shot, and followed up with a shot that went backward over his head and banked into the goal.
With no disrespect intended for The Big O, some Cincinnati basketball fans, because of Mo Stokes’ hustling style of play, began to wonder if the best basketball player in the city was not playing at Armory Fieldhouse but rather at Cincinnati Gardens. It would have been magical to see these two gifted athletes play as teammates on the Royals.
After playing in his first twelve varsity games at Cincinnati, Oscar Robertson was narrowly the college scoring leader in the nation. Oscar had a slight edge over Kansas’ behemoth 7′1″ center Wilt Chamberlain. In 12 games Oscar had scored 388 points to Wilt’s 322 in 10 games. That gave Oscar an average of 32.3 points per game as opposed to 32.2 for Chamberlain. The formula for deciding the college scoring leader at the time was based on average points per game rather than total points. So, although Chamberlain had missed two games, where his average may have shrunk, he was still on Robertson’s heels because of the formula.
UC coach George Smith helped a little in getting Oscar an edge on Chamberlain by moving him from forward to guard in the North Texas game where he could shoot behind screens. Smith said after the game, “I wanted him to get ahead of Wilt and shifted him outside and he came through. He deserves to be in the lead.”10
Two days later, on January 13, this time at home in the friendly confines of the Armory Fieldhouse, in front of 5,300 screaming fans, the UC Bearcats and “The Big O” defeated Houston again, 93–58. Robertson had 37 points.
On March 1, The Big O broke the Wichita Fieldhouse scoring record with 50 points against the Shockers in a 113–107 double-overtime win by Cincinnati. The previous scoring mark at the “Roundhouse” had been 36 points by Jim McLaughlin of St. Louis University in 1956. The victory clinched the Missouri Valley Conference Championship for the Bearcats giving them a berth in the NCAA Tournament.
On March 14, 1958, the University of Cincinnati Bearcats, riding a 16-game winning streak, traveled to Lawrence, Kansas to make the school’s first appearance in the NCAA tournament playing against the Kansas State Wildcats led by forward Bob Boozer in the Midwest Regional Championship round.
A few hours before the game, legendary coach Hank Iba who would win nearly 800 games in his career at Oklahoma A&M (Oklahoma State), including two NCAA titles in the mid-1940s, was pontificating on the upcoming Cincinnati-Kansas game while sitting with a group of eager listeners in a small restaurant on the edge of Lawrence. While Iba felt that the Bearcats had plenty of firepower, he leaned toward Kansas coming out on top.
“That Oscar Robertson is great, no doubt of it,” said Iba, “but I’ll tell you who makes that ball club go—it’s that Ralph Davis.”11 Unbeknown to Iba, the father, Ralph Davis, Sr., was part of the group listening to him and had not been introduced to him.
Ralph Davis would go on to be named a second-team All-American in 1960 and close-out his college career at Cincinnati with 1,073 points. At the time, the total made him number six on the UC all-time scorers list. Davis was a very underrated player and his potential was eclipsed by the greatness of Oscar Robertson. Had Ralph Davis played his college career among less diverse, less intense, and less skilled players at an Ivy League school like Bill Bradley did, instead of playing in the Missouri-Valley Conference where every game was a barn-burner, his legacy would have been equal to that of Bradley in the annals of college basketball.
Allen Fieldhouse was named after former Kansas State coach, Phog Allen, who had helped to get basketball introduced into the Olympic Games in 1936.
When the game started, there were 17,000 fans in the stands at Allen Fieldhouse and the Bearcats got a lot of vocal support from the University of Kansas fans present that wanted to see their arch-rival, Kansas State, go down. But when the smoke had cleared, K-State, led by Bob Boozer with 24 points and 14 rebounds, had conquered the highly touted Bearcats and Oscar Robertson, 83–80, in overtime. It turned out to be a game in which The Big O showed that he was human after all. Although he led both squads in scoring with 30 points, he shot only 60% from the field. Then, with one second remaining in regulation time, Robertson was at the free-throw line with a one-and-one. The score was Kansas State 74, Cincinnati 73. Robertson hit the first free throw to tie the game 74–74 but missed on the second attempt sending the game into overtime.
Oscar’s missed free throw was not without controversy. With the crowd extremely revved-up, The Big O sunk his first free throw. But feeling the pressure, he walked around, wiped his hands and finally stepped back up to the line. It was learned later that the referees were invoking the seldom-enforced ten-second rule wh
ere a player has ten seconds in which to shoot. As Robertson was nervously preparing for his second free throw, teammate Ron Dykes saw one of the refs counting and he was already up to eight; it is not known if it was Lou Batmale from San Francisco or Johnny Coe from Salem, Oregon. Consequently, Robertson put the ball up and it hit the back of the rim and rolled off, and the game went into overtime.
Entering the overtime session, the Bearcats were plagued by foul trouble, as Connie Dierking and Wayne Stevens fouled out. Then, 34 seconds into the overtime session, Robertson fouled out. The Wildcats then proceeded to outscore the Bearcats 9–6 in the five-minute OT.
The following evening, Cincinnati defeated Arkansas in the consolation game to finish the 1957–58 season with a 25–3 record, the best in the school’s basketball history.
In his sophomore year, Oscar Robertson had established himself as the premier college player in the nation. He was chosen by consensus as a first-team All-American and named the UPI and Sporting News College Player of the Year. Robertson won the national scoring title with 35.1 points per game, besting Elgin Baylor of Seattle with 30.5 points per game and Wilt Chamberlain of Kansas with 30.1 points per game. All three players averaged more than 15 rebounds per game.
The UC Bearcats had failed to make it past the Midwest Regional Championship round in the NCAA tournament and the next afternoon, Sunday, March 16, at Cincinnati Gardens, with Maurice Stokes lying unconscious in a hospital bed after hitting his head in a freak fall against Minneapolis going up for a rebound, the Detroit Pistons eliminated the Cincinnati Royals from the NBA Western Division playoffs winning the second game of the series 124–104 to a complete a two-game sweep.
Still, the basketball fans in Cincinnati wound up with a champion. The Bearcats’ cross-town rival, the Xavier University Musketeers, entered the NIT at Madison Square Garden in New York with a mediocre 15–11 season record and got hot, winning four straight games, while defeating St. Bonaventure, 72–53, in the semi-final round and then slipping past interstate rival, University of Dayton, 78–74, in the final to take home the trophy and finish the season with a 19–11 record.
The University of Cincinnati Bearcats would have another fine season in 1958–59 winning 28 games, but even with Oscar Robertson leading the charge once again, the Cats would come up short of winning a national championship.
On January 31, Cincinnati defeated Wichita State at home in the Armory Fieldhouse 95–87 with Oscar Robertson scoring 44 points, including dropping in 14 straight free throws. At one point in the first half, the Bearcats had a 22-point lead only to see the Shockers battle back in the second half and nearly catch the Bearcats. With the scrappy effort put forth by Wichita, everyone was expecting the Bearcats to have their hands full when the two teams met again.
Three weeks later, the two teams met again at Wichita, and this time the Bearcats defeated the Shockers 88–74. But it has been suggested that Cincinnati may have had a little off-the-court help in defeating Wichita. While a fix of the game seems to border on myth more than direct evidence, here is what is alleged to have happened:
Somewhere out there, Jack Molinas had once again raised his ugly head. Since being banned from playing in the NBA in 1954, Molinas had remained active in gambling on both college and professional basketball games, while setting up a rather large and elaborate game-fixing network.
In Charley Rosen’s book, The Wizard of Odds—How Jack Molinas Almost Destroyed the Game of Basketball, allegedly on February 21, 1959, the game between the University of Cincinnati and Wichita State was fixed for Cincinnati to win.
Dave Budin, a Brooklyn junior high school gym teacher and Coney Island, New York bookie, told another bookmaker that Joe Hackin and Jack Molinas had two Wichita players and one Cincinnati player in the bag. Those player’s names—if they ever existed—are not known.
Rosen’s book claims that Hackin and Molinas wanted to sell the forthcoming Cincinnati-Wichita game to Pittsburgh bookmaker Frank Cardone for the $9,000 front money needed to make the fix. However, Cardone couldn’t raise the money alone, so he brought in a Cincinnati bookmaker by the name of Gil. Half of the money was to go to the players from Wichita and Cincinnati and the other half was to be split by Hackin, Molinas, and their associates. When the deal fell through, Molinas got a backer in Philadelphia to put up the $9,000 front money on the condition he would limit his wagers to $50,000 which would keep the betting line intact. Cincinnati, originally picked to lose in the fix, was now picked to win and the players were informed. Hackin and Molinas bet heavily on Cincinnati, favored by 5½ points to win, and supposedly cleaned up when Cincinnati defeated Wichita 88–74.
In the second half, the Bearcats were comfortably covering the point spread, having a 67–52 lead with eight minutes to go. Then, the Shockers fought back gallantly inspired by the crowd, but they just couldn’t overcome the Cincinnati lead.
According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, “Inspired by the continual roaring of the crowd, the Shockers fought the Bearcats on almost even terms, but in vain in the final eight minutes. Paper cups, spitballs, and other debris showered down on the floor at the end as the disappointed Kansans left the roundhouse.”12 If the Wichita comeback was legitimate, then someone or something put the brakes on it during those final eight minutes.
Oscar Robertson scored 34 points in the game and Ralph Davis added 24 as the victory took Cincinnati a step closer to wrapping up its second consecutive Missouri Valley Conference championship.
According to Jack Molinas, he and Joe Hackin were confident after they had given Dave Budin $5,000 that his contacts were legitimate, so he would use them going forward to fix a lot of other college games during the 1958–59 season. Supposedly, even Lefty Rosenthall of Chicago, portrayed by Robert De Niro in the movie Casino, and his associates were eventually brought into the later action by Molinas through a contact by the name of Dave Goldberg in St. Louis.
It seems reasonable that if something wasn’t on the up in the UC vs Wichita game it would have been noticed by Shockers coach Ralph Miller, an outstanding coach. In 1951 and 1964, Ralph Miller was named the Coach of the Year in the Missouri Valley Conference. In 1968, Miller would go on to become the coach of Iowa and later lead Oregon State to a PAC Ten Championship and later be elected to the College Basketball Hall of Fame.
Significant Wichita players who participated in the game were Dick Cassidy, Ron Heller, John Gates, Lanny Van Eman, and Virgil Brady. All appear to have played the game hard-nosed. So, if there was any deception in play by these players, it was very well concealed.
The 1958–1959 Cincinnati Bearcats roster, coached by George Smith, consisted of the following players: Oscar Robertson, Ralph Davis, Mike Mendenhall, Dave Tenwick, Carl Bouldin, Bill Whitaker, Larry Willey, John Bryant, Ron Dykes, Rod Nall, Mel Landfield, Dick Taylor, and Dick Cetrone. It’s very doubtful that someone on the Bearcats squad was in the bag.
Robertson, Davis, Mendenhall, and Willey were all eventually drafted by NBA teams. From a historical perspective, all the lesser known Cincinnati players look clean as well. Dick Cetrone, a native of Pittsburgh, only averaged 1 point per game. After graduation, Cetrone was an assistant coach at Oak Hills High School (Cincinnati) for a year, then went back to Pittsburgh and coached a high school team for decades. Ron Dykes was from Middletown and had played with Jerry Lucas on the legendary Ohio state championship team. John Bryant, the only other black player on the Bearcats besides Oscar, went on to get a Ph.D. in Education. Dave Tenwick became a lawyer. Bill Whitaker from Hughes High School, the son of a legendary Cincinnati area high school principal (Finneytown), was as straight-laced as they come and wouldn’t have known a bookmaker if one fell out of a tree on him. All of the reserves, such as Dykes, Taylor, Nall, and Landfield, played, but not enough to fix a game. So just who could have been the conspirator?
Following an appearance in the NCAA Tournament, the Cincinnati Bearcats would finish 1958–59 with a record of 26–4 (13–1 Missouri Valley Conference). Their only MVC lo
ss was to Bradley, 66–84, at Peoria. Cincinnati’s two non-conference losses were to North Carolina State and North Carolina in the Dixie Classic played in December 1958.
Once again, Oscar Robertson was Mr. Basketball as he led the nation in scoring with an average of 32.6 points per game and was named Player of the Year by The Sporting News, USBWA, UPI, and the Helms Foundation. Also, for the second straight year, Robertson was named a first-team All-American, along with Bailey Howell (Mississippi), Bob Boozer (Kansas State), Jerry West (West Virginia), and Johnny Cox (Kentucky).
The 21–3 Bearcats advanced to the NCAA Tournament without one of their leading playmakers, Mike Mendenhall, who was declared ineligible. Nonetheless, they defeated TCU 77–73 in the Midwest Regional Semi-Final and Kansas State 85–75 in the Midwest Regional Final. Now the Bearcats advanced to the Final Four, along with California, Louisville, and West Virginia, which would be played at Freedom Hall in Louisville.
College basketball fans across the country were hoping for a championship final between Cincinnati and West Virginia and a shootout between two of the greatest guards in college basketball history. While UC had All-American and Player of the Year Oscar Robertson, the Mountaineers had All-American Jerry West, who would finish the season with a scoring average of 26.6 points per game.
The Mountaineers did their part to advance to the championship final by defeating Louisville 94–79 as Jerry West had 38 points and 15 rebounds. Now it was up to the Bearcats.
In the Midwest Semi-Final, the Bearcats were opposed by the University of California Golden Bears coached by Pete Newell who had played college basketball in 1937–39 as a forward at Loyola of Los Angeles and then tried playing professional baseball as a farmhand with the Brooklyn Dodgers minor league team at Pine Bluff, Arkansas. However, after serving in the U.S. Navy in World War Two in the Pacific theatre, Newell returned to basketball at the University of San Francisco where his squad won the 1949 NIT.
