Uncommon sport movie from a meeting amongst the Kansas Jayhawks and Oklahoma A&M Aggies in 1957 at Gallagher Hall (now Gallagher-Iba Arena) in Stillwater, Oklahoma. The Aggies have been coached by the incomparable Mr. Henry Iba, and incorporated a quite notable player… Eddie Sutton, who would later coach his alma mater to two Last Fours. The visiting Jayhawks had been coached by Dick Harp, who took about for KU coaching legend Forrest “Phog” Allen soon after Allen’s retirement in 1956. One particular of the most notable participants in this sport is 7-footer Wilt Chamberlain, who would later on go on to perform for the Philadelphia 76ers and Los Angeles Lakers. Oklahoma A&M overcame a halftime deficit to defeat the 2nd-ranked Jayhawks 56-54 on a sport-winning shot at the buzzer by Mel Wright. Regrettably, there was no audio integrated with this sport movie.
Strange position for the Oklahoma players during their time out at 6:43 ! I believe this was the first season that the lane was widened to 12 feet (previously 6 feet). It is interesting to watch the contrast in styles. Beginning at 12:16, Oklahoma passes the ball over 20 times before attempting the long shot at 12:56. Once KU gets the rebound, they are off on a fast break and it leads to the Wilt dunk only one pass later at 13:03 .
Interestingly, Oklahoma A&M was not the best team in Oklahoma this year. Small Oklahoma City, unlike A&M, finished the season ranked in the Top 20. OCU would go on to lose to Kansas 81-61 in the NCAA Regional Finals in 1957. Unfortunately, in the NCAA game between OCU and Kansas, played in Dallas, there was alot of racism directed against the two Kansas African American players, Wilt and Maurice King. Today, OCU is not even a Division I team; they are in the NAIA.
Love the way the OSU center doesn’t bother to jump at 0:14. OSU does a nice job of passing the ball around until they get an open shot. Of course, Iba realized that they couldn’t win if they tried to run with Kansas so they were forced to play the slow-down game much as Iowa State did when they beat Kansas earlier in the year. By the way, Oklahoma A&M changed their name to Oklahoma State on 5/15/57, prior to the start of the ’57 season.
In the ’56-57 season, Kansas won its first 12 games, then lost 39-37 to Iowa State. KU then won its next 5 games, before losing this one to OSU when Oklahoma State held the ball for the last 3 minutes and 40 seconds. Can’t wait to watch that those last minutes in Part 3 !
This was the 2nd match up between these two teams in ’57. In the first game of the season, Kansas defeated OSU 62-52. In the second game, Chamberlain scored an arena record of 32 points. The high OSU scorer with 18 points was forward Eddie Sutton, who would return to his alma mater as head coach in 1990. Jerry Adair, who would later go on to play Major League baseball, had no fouls and one field goal, and was four-for-four from the free-throw line.
OSUathletics : Thanks for posting this classic. This game was one year after Kansas legendary coach Phog Allen retired. Kansas won the last meeting between Phog Allen and oklahoma state’s Hank Iba, 56-55, on Jan. 31, 1956, giving Coach Allen a 17-16 edge in head-to-head matchups between the legendary coaches.