Hilltoppers have long, storied history at arena
Published 12:00 am Sunday, March 7, 2010
- Joe Imel/Daily NewsThe Western Kentucky Hilltoppers have a long history at Freedom Hall in Louisville. Some of the memories are good, some aren’t - such as WKU’s 102-75 loss to the host Louisville Cardinals on Dec. 19.
As of late, much ado has been made of the University of Louisville’s final basketball game in Freedom Hall, which was an upset victory Saturday over No. 1 Syracuse. The Cardinals move into a new downtown arena next season.
But Western Kentucky University has some colorful connections to the building, which was initially designed for horse and cattle shows instead of basketball games.
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I was a 13-year-old seventh-grader in Elizabethtown when my dad drove the two of us to Louisville to the new Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center to see the Hilltoppers dedicate the official opening of Freedom Hall in a game against University of San Francisco on Dec. 19, 1956.
Even though we were traveling on the recently opened Kentucky Turnpike, the 38-mile trip seemed to take forever.
San Francisco was not just any team. After winning back-to-back NCAA titles in 1955 and ’56 behind legends Bill Russell and K.C. Jones, the Phil Woolport-coached team would assure Freedom Hall’s first game of being a national media event.
But why did Western get the honor? Why not U of L or the University of Kentucky?
Sixty-four years later, it’s difficult to uncover a definitive answer.
Back then, it mattered little to me how it happened. My dad and I walked as fast as we could across the biggest parking lot I’d ever seen, on a cold, wind-swept night.
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“It looks like they’re going to have a big crowd,” I recall him saying.
I could hardly wait for him to get in line to buy the tickets as I stepped inside the huge lobby, out of the cold. I don’t remember asking – or him saying – how much the tickets cost, but probably no more than two dollars. A good sum of money back then, but this was Western playing in the biggest building I had ever been inside in my life.
Dad was right. There was a big crowd – almost 16,000. And the next day, sports pages all across America screamed with headlines that the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers won 61-57 before the largest crowd to ever see a basketball game in the South.
Wow, I was there, and although a kid, I knew it was special and I never forgot it.
I’m not alone.
“It was a sea of red,” remembers WKU guard Ronnie Clark, of Franklin. “What an experience, everybody yelling for us. It was like playing a game in Bowling Green with five times the crowd.”
A forward on that ’56 team, Bob Daniels, now living in Versailles, remembers the excitement and anticipation.
“As a player I don’t remember the dedication part of the game,” he says. “Our emphasis was on the game and who we were playing, the defending national champion.”
Eric Back led Western in scoring that night with 17 points.
Although coach Ed Diddle’s Hilltoppers were used to playing in big arenas – Madison Square Garden being one of them – they had never had this kind of support. Without question, the game at Freedom Hall proved that Western Kentucky was a draw and that it was time to begin thinking about a larger on-campus facility than the 5,500-seat Old Red Barn.
Meanwhile, speculation about why Western Kentucky was chosen for the Freedom Hall matchup, and not U of L or UK, remains purely that: speculation.
At the time, U of L was not the big draw that it is today. In the 1950s it was UK and Western Kentucky, with U of L a distant third as far as basketball tradition went. And for sure, U of L didn’t want the Wildcats playing in Louisville.
Jim Richards, a former Hilltopper basketball coach and a WKU student in 1956, thinks Diddle’s connections with the governor, Lawrence Wetherby, initiated the school’s involvement.
“Mr. Diddle’s popularity was very, very strong,” Richards says. “And he had a great relationship with the governor.”
Clark further expands on Diddle’s influence with Wetherby.
“Paul Garrett (a former Western Kentucky president) died in 1955, and Mr. Diddle wanted his friend Kelly Thompson to be Western’s next president,” Clark says. “Apparently there were two or three regents who were a little hesitant about it, so Mr. Diddle talked to Gov. Wetherby, who replaced those regents with ones who supported Kelly.”
Former Western President Dero Downing isn’t quite sure how the dedication game was arranged. But looking back all these years, his assessment was simple yet to the point.
“They knew we could fill it,” he says.
Downing’s positive thinking in hindsight was correct, and according to sportswriter Billy Reed, then-U of L basketball coach Peck Hickman had not yet committed to playing home games in the huge arena.
“Peck wasn’t sure they could draw crowds on a consistent basis,” Reed said. “So he only played a few games there the first year.”
Up until then, Louisville played its home games in the Jefferson County Armory, which seated about 7,000.
Another factor that perhaps worked in Western’s favor was Thompson’s inclusion on a five-person selection committee to name the new arena.
“The American Legion had a contest to name the building,” says Reed, who has recently published a book, “Celebrating 54 Years of Freedom Hall.”
“And Kelly was one of those helping to pick the name. With Coach Diddle and Kelly Thompson leading the way, you can see why Western was the school of choice to play San Francisco.”
The Hilltoppers played two more games in Freedom Hall during the 1958 and ’59 seasons. The first was a 74-72 loss to West Virginia and the great Jerry West. Western Kentucky was led by its own All-American senior, Ralph Crosthwaite, and sophomore Charlie Osborne. A couple of weeks later, Army fell to the Toppers 94-73.
That same year, West Virginia went on to play in the NCAA championship game, where it lost to California 71-70 in – you guessed it – Freedom Hall.
All-American guard Bobby Rascoe, arguably the greatest player in WKU basketball history to not have his jersey retired and raised in E.A. Diddle Arena, played several games in Freedom Hall.
Three days after winning an opening-round NCAA Tournament game in Lexington over Miami, Fla., Rascoe and his teammates faced Ohio State in Freedom Hall. The Buckeyes were led by sophomores Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek, two of the all-time greats. Bobby Knight, who would later leave his mark on the game as a coach, was a sub.
“As I recall, we were up by six at halftime,” Rascoe says. “In the second half we just ran out of gas.”
At the time, I was a junior in high school in E-town but found a way to get tickets for the games in Lexington and Freedom Hall. I was a sports junkie and knew all about Lucas and his team. I also remember keeping up with the fact that Rascoe and teammate Harry Todd were well aware of the gang from Ohio, as they had played against many of them as high school seniors during the Kentucky-Ohio All-Star game. It was this familiarity – and the fact that Western was playing great – that made me think WKU was really going to win.
However, it all came crumbling down in the second half. I will never forget how Lucas seemed to elevate his game. Despite Todd playing behind him and Charlie Osborne in front, Lucas, time after time, delivered his patented turn-around jumpshot with accuracy. An occasional jump hook sealed the deal as Ohio State went on to win 98-79. Back then, NCAA regionals had consolation games, and the following night the Hilltoppers beat Ohio University 97-87. Though it was not quite Ohio State, it still was an NCAA win.
That Ohio State team, which many consider one of the great college teams ever, eventually won it all by defeating the University of California 75-55.
The Hilltoppers were in the four-team field of the Bluegrass Tournament at Freedom Hall in the 1960-61 season, beating Utah State 86-72 before losing to Louisville the next night, 86-71. The following year Western played in the same tourney, losing to St. Bonaventure 66-65 and Texas 78-68.
John Oldham took the helm of Hilltopper basketball in 1964-65 and – believe it or not, considering all of his great WKU teams – coached only one game in Freedom Hall.
But what a game that was.
I was living and working in Bloomington, Ill., at the time and knew I would be returning to Kentucky for the Christmas holidays. I also knew Western was playing Jacksonville on Dec. 23, 1970, in Freedom Hall.
I had to see the game. It was a rematch of two of the best teams in the country, as well as a pair of titan big men: the Dolphins’ 7-foot-2 Artis Gilmore, and, of course, 7-foot Jim McDaniels for Western. It was a sellout and I had no way to get in. Thank goodness a friend got me a pair of tickets. To this day he has never let me forget it.
The year before, Jacksonville had defeated Western 109-96 in the NCAA tourney, so a matchup of this magnitude on a neutral floor was big.
“I’m not sure how it was scheduled,” Oldham recalls. “They didn’t want to come to Bowling Green, and I didn’t want to go to Jacksonville for sure.”
Still, the so-called neutral floor of Freedom Hall was anything but neutral.
“I was on the floor talking to one of the Jacksonville assistant coaches,” remembers Paul Just, WKU’s former sports information director. “Back then in Freedom Hall, the teams didn’t enter the floor directly from an exit. They came out from behind some end zone seats. On one end of the floor, the Western fans first saw Big Mac’s head appear and came to their feet, and as the team came on around the seats and more people could see them, they all came to their feet like the wave. It was something to see, and the Jacksonville coach looked up and saw all of that red and said ‘Oooh my gosh, what have we done?’ ”
So much for the neutral floor.
I’ve never been much on remembering jersey numbers, but Big Mac wore “44” and it read “Western Kentucky” across the front, leaving little doubt where our team was from. Oldham says it was the best game his team played all year. And after the 97-84 WKU win, you would have to believe him.
McDaniels remembers leading his team onto the floor that night. Nearly 40 years later, most Hilltopper fans who were around back then say it was probably the greatest single-game performance on one of the biggest stages in the school’s history.
“I remember looking down at their end of the floor during warm-ups and thinking Artis looked like a Goliath out there,” laughs McDaniels. “Here we were in Freedom Hall, two top-10 teams, and they were national runner-ups the year before. It was unbelievable.
“I could have shot it from the Ohio River that night and it would have gone in,” McDaniels says today. “I was in a zone. I loved playing in that place.”
Big Mac had good reason to like playing there. He lit up Jacksonville for 46 points and 11 rebounds. He made 20 of 29 shots and six of eight free throws, pouring in points against a player who stood 7-2 – plus another two or three inches if you count his afro. McDaniels recorded a game for the Freedom Hall ages.
McDaniels, at a slightly exaggerated 7-0, had some big-time help that night, especially Clarence Glover’s 14 boards and Jerry Dunn’s 10.
And for the record, Gilmore didn’t exactly have an off night, compiling 29 points and 18 rebounds.
Western went on to reach the Final Four that year, defeating Jacksonville in the first round in South Bend, Ind. I was there for that one, too.
The Jacksonville game was not Big Mac’s first game in Freedom Hall. He played there as a prep star at Allen County High School, first in the Louisville Invitational Tournament and then in the 1967 state tournament. His 42 points that summer in the Kentucky-Indiana All-Star game in Freedom Hall still stands as Kentucky’s all-time record. McDaniels also played there in the Kentucky-Tennessee All-Star game, and his 27 points and 18 rebounds earned McDaniels MVP honors.
“I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed playing there,” McDaniels continued. “It was just a shooter place. I’ve played in them all, the Forum, Madison Square Garden, you name it, but Freedom Hall is special. It was very friendly to my jump shot.”
Big Mac points out that one of his best nights ever in Freedom Hall came in an American Basketball Association All-Star game, just before the merger with the National Basketball Association.
“I was on a team with (Julius Erving), Artis Gilmore, Rick Berry, Dan Issel and Charlie Scott,” he says. “I scored 24.”
Lloyd Gardner served as a student manager under both Diddle and Oldham, and at the time was working with the ABA’s Kentucky Colonels.
“Mac put on a show in the fourth quarter,” Gardner said. “He scored 18 of his points in that period. It was the last game he ever played in Freedom Hall, because he soon left the Carolina Cougars and signed with Seattle in the NBA.”
Most Western fans know McDaniels and Courtney Lee are tied as the Hilltoppers’ all-time career scoring leaders with 2,238 points. But to put Big Mac’s accomplishments into perspective, he reached his total in three years as compared to Courtney’s four, because freshmen were not allowed to play varsity in McDaniels’ day. In no way does this diminish Lee’s accomplishments, but it reinforces how great Big Mac was, considering there was no 3-point shot and no dunking was permitted during his college career.
No one has seen more basketball games at WKU than radio man Wes Strader. His first game behind the Hilltopper microphone was Oldham’s first as head coach in the 1964-65 season.
As the “Voice of the Hilltoppers,” he also covered the team through the eras of Jim Richards, Gene Keady, Clem Haskins, Murray Arnold, Ralph Willard, Matt Kilcullen and one year with Dennis Felton.
It’s unlikely that many people, outside of Louisville residents, know their way around Freedom Hall like Wes. Certainly the media room and all the rest rooms in the proximity of press row were familiar to him. Not only did he call the Western-Louisville games, but his resume includes numerous state tournaments and all-star games played in Freedom Hall.
“I have lots of great memories of Freedom Hall,” says Strader, whose last season calling Hilltopper games was 1999-2000. “But the two that really jump out were, of course, the Western-Jacksonville game and the 1993 win against Louisville.”
That Louisville game was a thriller. I worked as Wes’s color man for some 12 years and was beside him when Darrin Horn, with Western trailing by one, nailed a two-point shot from the left corner to put WKU ahead.
“Darrin’s shot went in with just over six seconds to go,” Wes recalls. “Just enough time for Dwayne Morton to get the inbound pass the length of the floor for a shot.”
It was also enough time for Western’s Darnell Mee to race down the floor and force Morton to alter the shot, which clanged off the underside of the rim, preserving a 78-77 Hilltopper victory.
Success is often measured in the eyes of the beholder, and although the Hilltoppers have not posted positive numbers over the last 54 years in Freedom Hall, their 9-18 record nevertheless includes some of the most impressive wins in Hilltopper history.
“A breakdown of the games reveals that Western is 3-11 versus U of L, but we have won two of the last four,” says Just. “Against all of the other teams we have played in Freedom Hall, we are 6-7.”
Western will hopefully play more games in Freedom Hall, but probably not against Louisville. With the Cardinals’ departure, I think you can expect to see UK visit the venue a couple of games each year. So it would be nice to see the Hilltoppers return to play a top-notch opponent.
I have purposely not mentioned Ted Hornback until now. Although I don’t know for sure, I would bet he had a hand in that very first Western game at Freedom Hall. As Mr. Diddle’s trusty sidekick, it was usually Hornback who took care of the details. And as much as anyone wants to take deserved credit for the basketball successes and tradition on the Hill, coach Hornback was right there. As the athletic director during Oldham’s coaching years, you can bet he was instrumental in the neutral-site arrangement for the Western-Jacksonville game in Freedom Hall.
As a sophomore at Western in 1962, I enrolled in a basketball coaching class under Hornback. Years later, I got to know him quite well while serving as the director of the Hilltopper Athletic Foundation. It was Hornback who first organized the old Hilltopper 100 Club back in 1965, and we would close every meeting by asking him if he had anything to say. For those who could stay around long enough, the stories turned into a history lesson.
Later on, I visited the coach in his Covington Avenue home, talking about his days at Western, the red towel, the NCAA, his garden, and of course, coach Diddle. He shared pictures of himself taken with the famous and not so famous.
I reminded him of the coaching class I took. I’m not sure he remembered me being in the class, but nevertheless he said he did. He asked me what grade I made. I told him a B-plus. “I should have given you an A,” he said.
I always left there thinking I needed to return, but next time with a tape recorder. I never did. On occasion, when I drove by his home, I would see coach Hornback picking up sticks or raking up a few leaves. I would wave and honk the horn, always in a hurry or too busy to stop.
That’s the way it is in life. I’m not too busy to stop now, but coach Hornback isn’t there anymore. Have you noticed that the older we get, we find ourselves not in such a hurry to get wherever it is we’re going?
Go Hilltoppers!
— Gary P. West was executive director of the Hilltopper Athletic Foundation for 13 years and was executive director of the Bowling Green Area Convention and Visitors Bureau for 12 years. He is the author of five books and writes for several statewide publications, as well as a syndicated newspaper travel column, which appears monthly in the Daily News.