Legends of the Pen: Remembering A Similar Rally

John Fox's Legends of the Pen Archives:
Jan. 6: Great Hoop Starts | Dec. 17: Previous Invitations | Nov. 25: Big and Tall Shop | Nov. 4: Clear The Deck For Football | Oct. 14: The Syracuse-Pittsburgh Rivalry | Sept. 23:The Syracuse-Colgate Rivalry

To the eye of many a flabbergasted beholder, Pittsburgh's 19 straight slam-bangin' points in the first eight minutes of last week's marquee matchup was a TKO waiting to happen -- to the delight of the Petersen Events Center hoolies. Might not the intended victim soon slither to the bottom of the ropes?

Instead, the indignity stirred the unbeaten 'upper' member of the rankings' #3-#4 matchup to an immediate uninterrupted 17 straight points of its own. More than six minutes remaining till halftime, and the fight was on. Five seconds before halftime, Syracuse was briefly within a point; soon after intermission, the board reached 41-41. Only briefly. The turnabout wasn't to be.

The full reversal from flabbergasting early schneid DID happen once, for a Syracuse basketball team that had travelled much farther west than the Steel City. That time it was "Caterpillar City", Peoria, Ill., for a newly-created National Campus Tournament -- all the way to the finale in which the host, top-seeded Bradley, raced to the lop-sided lead. On that occasion 18-zip.

Last Monday, the ghastly shutout ended on a Scoop Jardine three-pointer. On March 31, 1951, Syracuse was on the schneid until Robert "Bucky" Roche's shot cut it to 18-2.

Two years out of Syracuse at the time, I listened at a non-neutral site, the radio being in A.J. "Jim" Robertson Jr.'s convertible. The Binghamton evening newspaper had me covering the Yankees' Binghamton farmclub training in South Carolina. Two years out of Bradley, Robertson was an outspoken candidate for catcher (briefly a Syracuse Chief three years later, before A's stints with Philadelphia and KC). His alma mater's deluxe fieldhouse -- made from two WW2 airplane hangars -- was named for Robertson's athletic-director father, 28 earlier seasons the hoops coach. The Orange had several Binghamton bloodlines: chancellor William P. Tolley, first-year head coach Marc Guley and assistant Andy Mogish all were Binghamton Central graduates, as was senior starter Chuck Steveskey. Roche, from Binghamton North High, was a junior reserve, and SU baseball's pitching ace.

College basketball was in an embarrassed turmoil. Just two months earlier, the early shocks of a burgeoning point-shaving scandal surfaced, including most regulars of CCNY (City College of New York), which had swept the 1950 NCAA and National Invitation Tournament championships (Bradley runnerup in both.) Administrators at many colleges, taking a holier-than-thou stance, declared they'd no longer send their athletes to gambler-ridden (they said) Madison Square Garden. And, coincidence or not, the NCAA Tournament never has returned to the Garden, after six of the most recent Final Fours had been played there.

As a belated option, Robertson Sr.'s organizing committee sent invitations to 25 colleges. In the narrowing of willing participants to eight, those left home included San Francisco and LaSalle, soon thereafter to win three straight NCAA titles. Syracuse (16-9) seemed a borderline preference, but center Ed Miller had gained credence in Sugar Bowl Tournament showings against Bradley (8 points) and national-champion Kentucky (10 points). Its only current Big East opponent was Seton Hall, 45-44 winner at the State Fair Coliseum -- coincidentally on this very Thursday's date.

Beating Toledo and Utah by 17 points each in the tournament's first round and semifinals, the Orange was without its power forward for the Utah and Bradley games; Tom Huggins had a previous date, his wedding set before the tournament's inception.

Within 40-35 at halftime, SU took the lead on three-year scoring flash Jack Kiley's 25-footer with 3:32 left. Three minutes later, nursing a 76-74 lead at 0:08, Kiley called a timeout. Syracuse's sixth, unfortunately: a technical foul and possession. The favorites canned the single free throw of that era and All-American Squeaky Melchiorre's shot at the buzzer went awry. So did Squeaky's portfolio four months later; he and six teammates were arrested in the ever-widening scandal. The tournament was dead after a life of four days.

The Syracuse players, who'd come to Peoria by train, returned to campus on their own.

"Each of us was given $50. I don't think the Syracuse (administrators) thought we'd last out there as long," Bucky Roche told me this week from his Naples, Florida, home.

* * * * * * * * *

SU campus basketball's Loud House population behaved almost more cowed than loud as Tuesday night wore on.

When indeed has a Boeheim team held the lead for so few seconds of three consecutive games' combined 120 minutes!

The game at Pitt, however, was the exact 29th anniversary of what hopefully will remain themost dreadfully silent minutes in the Dome's history.

January 17, 1982, a sub-zero Sunday afternoon, was Georgetown 7-footer Patrick Ewing's debut against the Orange and drawing a near-record basketball crowd of 25,623. (The first of the current 69 times in the 30,000s wasn't until the Hoyas' return a year later.) Syracuse won, 75-70, with backup sophomore center Sean Kerins stealing partinsans' show from Ewing.}

During a timeout five minutes into the game, Syracuse cheerleading captain Michelle Munn, plunged headfirst to the playing floor from the top of an 18-student pyramid routine being performed for the first time in public. She had miscalculated her oft-practiced timing, and her intended "catcher" hadn't completed his previous procedure.

The engineering student from Sayre, Pa., unconscious with her skull fractured and shoulder dislocated, quickly went into convulsions close to the SU bench. Her eerie moans seemed the only sound heard by the shocked spectators, players, and national NBC television audience in the 20 minutes before a stretcher carried her to an ambulance and Crouse-Irving Hospital.. "If we got any coaching in the next 20 minutes, it wasn't from me -- my mind was out of it," Jim Boeheim said later.

Kris Joseph's painful backward somersault onto the rear of his head, against Cincinnati two days before the Pitt game, was too, too reminiscent, but Joseph was conscious, while visibly writhing.

Cheerleader Munn was released from the hospital after several days, and rejoined her squad before the end of the season. The next year, she initiated a lawsuit against the university, but later dropped it. About the same time, the Big East Conference banned future cheerleading routines of more than two tiers.

Syracuse University Athletics

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