Tales from the Cincinnati Bearcats Locker Room

by Michael Perry

  The first game of his sophomore season, Robertson had 28 points, 15 rebounds and 14 assists in a 105-49 victory over Indiana State. It has been reported that Dick Baker, UC’s play-by-play announcer on WSAI radio, that night dubbed Robertson “The Big O.”

  From 1957-60, the Bearcats would go 79-9 with Robertson in the starting lineup. He was a three-time All-American and three-time National Player of the Year. He averaged 33.8 points and scored a school-record 2,973 points.

  More than 40 years after he left UC, the Basketball Hall of Famer said he remembers few details about the games in which he played. He said he doesn’t recall much about the six games in which he scored at least 50 points, including his school-record 62-point effort against North Texas State in 1959-60. “I remember I didn’t think I was shooting that well,” Robertson said.

  Not shooting well? He went 23 of 29 from the field and made a 50-foot shot at the buzzer just before halftime. And remember, there was no three-point shot.

  Points weren’t what mattered to him, though. It was the total game: Scoring, rebounding, passing, defense. And, of course, winning.

  He remains UC’s all-time leading rebounder, too, and is fifth in assists.

  “He was so knowledgeable about the game of basketball,” Machock said. “And he was always under control, no matter what he did.”

  HOW DID HE DO THAT?

  John Bryant, a Withrow High School graduate, was discharged from the U.S. Army in June 1957. That summer, UC offered him a partial scholarship to play basketball.

  While serving in the military, Bryant had heard about this freshman at Cincinnati named Oscar Robertson. But the two didn’t meet until the fall 1957 when the Bearcats freshmen, including Bryant, went to scrimmage the varsity in the Armory Fieldhouse.

  “I want you to guard Oscar,” freshman coach Ed Jucker told Bryant.

  Considered by many to be the most complete basketball player of all time, Oscar Robertson (12) established 19 Bearcat and 14 NCAA records during his collegiate career. After college, Robertson co-captained the 1960 U.S. Olympic basketball team that won a gold medal in Rome. (Photo by University of Cincinnati/Sports Information)

  “The scrimmage started and I thought I was doing a pretty good job really, as far as playing good position basketball and not letting him get easy shots,” Bryant said. “All of a sudden, Oscar went to the baseline and looked to me like he was almost out of bounds underneath the basket. He turned around and threw in a left-handed hook shot. I shook my head, of course.”

  At the next timeout, Bryant went over to his coach and said, “Juck, I’m playing very good defense and I’ve got him taking bad shots.”

  Jucker laughed. “With him there aren’t any bad shots,” he said.

  Bryant and Robertson would become good friends.

  SUDDEN IMPACT

  Once eligible to play as a sophomore, Robertson made an immediate impact not just at UC, but in the basketball world.

  The Bearcats took an 8-2 record into their game against Seton Hall at Madison Square Garden on January 9, 1958. That night, the 19-year-old Robertson—who came in averaging 29.7 ppg—put on a show, scoring 56 points. (Seton Hall finished with 54 in a 64-point loss.) That was a record outing at the 30-year-old arena for any basketball player at any level.

  Robertson finished 22 of 32 from the field and 12 of 12 from the foul line. He had 30 points at halftime.

  “Honey Russell was their coach; he never forgave George Smith for that,” Connie Dierking said. “I just remember how unbelievable Oscar was and how lucky I was to be a part of that whole thing.

  “When you play with a guy that good, you end up sometimes just watching him.”

  Robertson remembers there were few fans in the stands (attendance was 4,615) and that the Seton Hall coach was shouting to his players, “Get Robinson.” He sat out the final 2:46, left to a standing ovation and recalls being surrounded by the media in the locker room after the game.

  During postgame interviews, he looked over at Machock, a former player who had just became a student manager a few weeks earlier. They were rooming together on the trip, and Machock was about packed up. “Hey, just remember, we’re walking back together,” Robertson yelled.

  The team bus went back to the hotel without them. Robertson and Machock walked to the hotel together in a light snowfall.

  “It’s just the two of us,” Machock said, “and he’s talking about the game. We went back to our room, laid down, turned the light off and went to sleep. Now you tell me how many kids today, after scoring 56 points, would walk back three or four blocks without the rest of his team with his buddy, not even turn the TV on, and go to bed?”

  During that season, Robertson would score 50 points against St. Louis, 50 against Wichita State and 56 in the NCAA Tournament against Arkansas. He averaged 35.1 points and 15.2 rebounds and was the first sophomore to ever lead the country in scoring. Robertson led the Bearcats to their first ever NCAA Tournament bid in 1958 and was named National Player of the Year.

  LIFE SURE CAN TEST YOU

  Robertson’s on-court accomplishments are even more impressive given what he endured off the court. A law student wrote letters to the student newspaper, questioning the admittance of a black basketball player and indicating UC, then a private university, was lowering its academic standards.

  Other examples:

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  DECEMBER 1957

  Cincinnati was staying at the Shamrock Hilton Hotel in Houston. Robertson was rooming with Machock.

  Coach Smith came to their room late at night and told Robertson he had to leave.

  “I thought he meant we—the whole team—had to leave,” Robertson said.

  “Where are we going?” Robertson asked.

  “No, just you,” Smith said. “They don’t want you staying here.”

  “Me?” Robertson responded. “What the hell did I do?”

  The hotel officials did not want an African-American staying in their establishment. He was taken to Texas Southern University and stayed on campus there.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Robertson said. “I wasn’t naïve. But it took me by surprise. You know, you get on a university campus and your team rises to the top of college basketball and you’re told a lot of things about doing all these things together.”

  He lay awake in bed that night and thought about how Smith preached unity and how the team was always supposed to stick together. Yet, there he was, alone. And, he said, none of his teammates ever addressed the situation the next day. He said he never felt the same about his standing on the team or attending UC functions as a player.

  Robertson considered not playing the next day. Before the game, he said, he did not take any warm-up shots. He said fans were booing and throwing hot dogs and coins at him.

  Before a crowd of 2,000, Robertson scored 25 points in a 70-53 victory.

  “Makes you grow up fast,” Robertson said. “It had nothing to do with my play. I think as an athlete, you’ve got to get rid of your personal problems and concentrate on playing basketball. That’s the way life was.”

  Before leaving to play at Houston and North Texas the next season, Robertson told teammate John Bryant, the team’s only other African-American player, to bring some extra money.

  “Why?” Bryant asked.

  “If we don’t stay together as a team this year, you and I are coming back (to Cincinnati) whether we have to take a train or a bus or whatever,” Robertson said. “We’re going to stay together as a team or that’s it.”

  Ever the ferocious rebounder, Oscar Robertson (12) still stands atop the UC record book for career rebounds (1,338) and rebounding average (15.2 per game). (Photo by University of Cincinnati/Sports Information)

  They did. The Bearcats were housed in a dormitory on the University of Houston campus. Blacks still were not permitted in the hotels.

  RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA

  DECEMBER 1958

  Before the Bearcats headed south to play in t
he 1958 Dixie Classic, Robertson received letters in Cincinnati from the Ku Klux Klan saying that if he showed up to play in the tournament, he’d be killed.

  “If you’re from the south, you get used to that,” said Robertson, who was born in Tennessee. “It didn’t bother me at all.”

  What did bother him was that UC—along with Michigan State—was not allowed to stay at a Raleigh hotel because it had African-American players on its team. The Bearcats and Spartans, who also had black players, ended up at a fraternity house outside of Raleigh.

  When UC entered the arena for its first game, one man seated behind the UC bench wearing an army uniform, stood up and shouted at Robertson: “You black son of a bitch. Whoever said you were an All-American? You couldn’t make Little Sisters of the Poor.”

  Cincinnati beat Wake Forest, then lost to North Carolina State and North Carolina. Robertson was verbally abused throughout the tournament. Each night, a sellout crowd of 12,400 attended.

  In the first game, Robertson got into a brief scuffle with Demon Deacons junior David Budd, who was white, after they both dove for a loose ball. The officials called a foul on each player. The crowd was incited and stayed that way for the entire tournament.

  Against North Carolina, Robertson finished with 29 points—21 in the second half—and 11 rebounds. As he walked to the locker room after the final buzzer, an eight-year-old white boy asked Robertson for his autograph.

  “Hell no,” Robertson responded as he continued on.

  Teammate John Bryant told the kid to give him the program he wanted signed, then took it to Robertson in the locker room.

  “No, I’m not signing that,” Robertson said. “Did you hear what those son of a bitches are saying?”

  “Yeah,” Bryant said, “but this kid, in spite of everything they’re saying, wants your autograph.”

  Robertson signed the program, and Bryant took it out to the child.

  Soon after that, Coach Smith came charging into the locker room with tears streaming down his face. He was sweating and disheveled. Smith walked over to Robertson, hugged him and said, “I don’t give a damn what these SOBs say, you’re still the best damn basketball player in these United States.”

  “That helped a tremendous amount,” Bryant said. “(Privately), Oscar was saying, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here. I’m leaving the university.’”

  DENTON, TEXAS

  JANUARY 1959

  When in town to play North Texas State less than two weeks after the Dixie Classic, UC did stay at a local hotel. But the restaurant did not serve African-Americans. So, the owners closed the second floor so the Bearcats could eat there, separated from the other customers.

  It was on that road trip, as the team approached its hotel, that a 12-year-old white boy with a thick Southern accent approached Bryant.

  “Aren’t ya’all from the University of Cincinnati?” he asked. “I heard what they did to Oscar over there in Raleigh. That was about the sorriest thing I ever heard of.”

  The child said he had talked to his minister and invited the players to come worship at his church.

  That wasn’t possible because UC had to practice, but Bryant did get the kid tickets to the game.

  North Texas State is where someone put a black cat in the Bearcats locker room because of Robertson.

  ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

  FEBRUARY 1960

  In a restaurant around the corner from the team hotel in St. Louis, customers were dumping out their plates of food and leaving because the Bearcats arrived and Robertson and Bryant were being served. An elderly white woman approached them and asked, “Are you Oscar Robertson? I’m from Dickson County in Tennessee. We’re awfully proud of you.” That’s where Robertson was born; he moved to Indiana when he was four years old.

  “There were always little things that sort of offset some of the negative things,” Bryant said.

  When Robertson’s statue was unveiled outside of Shoemaker Center in 1994, former teammate and close friend Bryant was one of the speakers. He talked about how Robertson knew he was a pioneer in helping break the color barrier in the UC basketball program and how he hoped to open doors at the university and in Cincinnati.

  “As much as I marveled at the basketball talents of Oscar, I respected the man more,” Bryant said.

  Bryant falls in a similar category. He became the first African-American basketball coach (at Withrow) in the Cincinnati Public Schools and in 1968 became an assistant coach for the Bearcats—the first African-American on UC’s basketball staff. His hiring was announced the same night Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

  ROBERTSON IN A NUTSHELL

  There was a Saturday morning pick-up game that Bryant remembers. First team to 15 baskets—you had to win by two baskets—would win. The losing players had to buy the winners 15-cent bottles of beer.

  The game was tied at 16 when one of Robertson’s teammates took a blind overhead shot that missed badly. Robertson stopped the game and asked, “What kind of shot was that?”

  “It’s only a game, Oscar,” the player replied.

  “Game nothing. I’ve got money riding on this.”

  “Oscar, if we lose, I’ll pay your 15 cents.”

  “You miss the point. If I get up at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning to play basketball, I’m playing to win and I’m playing to improve.”

  Bryant calls Robertson “the most precise, meticulous, basketball player you ever saw.”

  One day before practice, Robertson called over the six-foot-four, quick Bryant and asked him to guard him on a specific shot he was working on.

  Then Robertson asked Bob Wiesenhahn, who was bigger and stronger but not as quick, to do the same.

  Ditto for Paul Hogue, who was even bigger and stronger.

  “He was trying the same thing on each one of us to see how each one of us would react to it,” Bryant said. “He wanted to know in game situations how different people would tend to react to him.”

  EYE ON THE FUTURE

  One day early in Robertson’s junior year, after a hard practice, he and Bryant went to the student union cafeteria for dinner. Earlier that day, Robertson had been presented with a large framed black and white picture commemorating the 56 points he scored against Seton Hall at Madison Square Garden in January 1958.

  One of the cafeteria servers at the student union was named Priscilla. She was a small, middle-aged African-American woman who saw the picture given to Robertson. She asked him to give it to her. Robertson told her it was special to him and that he would be glad to get her a copy of the picture from the university and sign it for her.

  Priscilla was adamant. She wanted that specific picture.

  “I don’t know why you are being so high and mighty,” she said. “In two more years, you will be washing dishes just like me.”

  “Priscilla,” Robertson replied. “Two years from now, I’ll be hiring and firing people like you.”

  SHOOT IT, QUICK

  If there was a low moment in Robertson’s UC playing career, it might be during an 83-80 overtime loss to Kansas State in the Midwest Regional of the 1958 NCAA Tournament in Lawrence, Kansas.

  UC trailed 74-73 and had the ball with five seconds remaining in regulation. Naturally, the inbounds pass went to Robertson, who was fouled by Bob Boozer with one second to play. Robertson nailed the first foul shot to tie the game. He was on the line getting ready for his second shot and telling his teammates not to foul. Teammate Ron Dykes started yelling, “They’re counting. Shoot the ball.” Robertson had 10 seconds to shoot the ball, and the official counting was at eight.

  Robertson shot it quickly and missed. The game went into overtime. Robertson fouled out with four minutes left. Robertson would blame his inexperience.

  “Now I would’ve thrown the ball to the ref and faked tying my shoe,” he said.

  Feeling the officials had wronged him, Robertson took his frustration out on UC’s consolation game opponent, Arkansas, scoring 56 points i
n a 97-62 victory.

  BIG MAN ON CAMPUS

  In 1994, the University of Cincinnati unveiled a bronzed statue of Robertson outside of Shoemaker Center, which became the basketball team’s home in 1989.

  Though he was honored and humbled at the ceremony, truth be told, Robertson was not wild about the idea when it was first presented to him.

  His long-time attorney J.W. Brown was ill, and his son told Robertson that his father wanted to pay for the statue. Robertson first met Brown, a UC booster, on his recruiting visit in 1955.

  “If he wants it, then I’ll do it,” Robertson said.

  He spent a day with the artist outside of Salt Lake City, Utah, getting measured and having pictures taken.

  When the statue was finally dedicated, Robertson said, it was “an emotional night for me.”

  “It brought up a lot of memories,” he said. “It’s funny. I had written a speech, but I never used it. When you have so many experiences, things just start coming to your mind.

  “Fate decides things for you. (UC) wasn’t my first choice, but it worked out great for me.”

  THE ENFORCER

  There was a football coach at Austin High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, who had relatives in Cincinnati who were always telling him about this basketball player at the local university named Oscar Robertson.

  “Of course, nobody believed that anybody could be that good,” Paul Hogue said. “But it kind of piqued our curiosity.”

  Hogue just had to include UC as one of his college visits in December 1957, and as soon as he saw Robertson play, “that pretty much made up my mind” where he wanted to attend college. Robertson was even better than advertised.

  This nine-foot bronze statue of Oscar Robertson sits outside of Fifth Third Arena near the entrance to the Richard E. Lindner Center, home of UC athletics. (Photo by University of Cincinnati/Sports Information)

  The six-foot-eight Hogue wasn’t just big and aggressive on the court, but he had kind of an intimidating look because of his sports glasses that had a big rubber bridge across the nosepiece.