It has been 40 years since Loyola University won the NCAA basketball tournament. And that’s plenty of time for one of the principal figures in the triumph to change his view of history.
“For many years, without a doubt, that victory in the championship game meant the most to me,” said Jerry Harkness, an All-America forward on the only Illinois school to win the NCAA Division I basketball title. “A lot of great players have not played on NCAA championship teams. Players like Oscar Robertson, Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West.”
Harkness, a 62-year-old operator of an athletic footwear business in Indianapolis, now values Loyola’s second-round 61-51 victory over Mississippi State as more significant than the thrilling comeback victory over Cincinnati in the title game.
“We made history in the Mississippi State game,” Harkness said. “Players from both teams. We were pioneers. We played a hard-fought, clean game. We helped change some attitudes about race …”
Coach Babe McCarthy’s 1963 Mississippi State team was all white. George Ireland’s Ramblers had four black starters. Mississippi segregation laws banned its college teams from playing in racially mixed events.
McCarthy and his Southeastern Conference champions literally had to sneak out of Mississippi to circumvent the law, evading their state police and governor to play against Loyola in East Lansing, Mich.
Many years after his basketball career ended, Harkness expressed regret that he had not been more active in the civil rights movement in his college years. He has come to realize that the Loyola-Mississippi State game thrust players from both teams into the forefront of the movement.
In 1963, many college coaches followed an unwritten rule about the number of black players they would play at one time: “Two at home, three on the road, four if you’re behind.”
Don Haskins started five blacks when Texas Western beat all-white Kentucky in the 1966 title game and is frequently hailed as college basketball’s racial pioneer. But Ireland, always his own man, had thrown away the unwritten rule three years earlier, starting 6-foot-2-inch Harkness, 6-2 Ron Miller, 6-8 Les Hunter, 6-7 Vic Rouse and 5-10 Jack Egan, the lone white, from St. Rita High on Chicago’s South Side.
“We could not have beaten Cincinnati without Egan,” Harkness said. “Or without Hunter or Miller or Rouse.”
It was a different era. The starters played the entire 45 minutes of the title game. All five graduated in four years. None was a star in pro ball. All have had successful post-basketball lives.
On March 23, 1963, Rouse’s putback shot at the buzzer gave the Ramblers a 60-58 overtime victory over two-time defending champion Cincinnati in the title game in Louisville.
Along with the ecstasy of the moment when Rouse hit the winning basket, Egan said he vividly recalls the Ramblers’ homecoming at O’Hare, where a crowd of thousands, including Mayor Richard J. Daley, greeted the newly crowned NCAA champs.
Loyola began its run to the NCAA title by burying Tennessee Tech 111-42. After Mississippi State came Bowling Green, Illinois and Duke to set up the long-awaited final between No. 1 and No. 2, the Tortoise and the Hare.
Rarely have two teams differed more.
The Ramblers were the highest scoring team in the nation, averaging almost 92 points per game. They never met a shot they didn’t like. Ireland called his offense “organized confusion.” They scored in bunches.
In contrast, coach Ed Jucker’s Bearcats treated the fast break like a contagious disease. They patiently set up at halfcourt. Every shot was precious. Defense was king. So was the stall in an era without a shot clock.
The outcome, even after 40 years, still seems too far-fetched to be true. Loyola missed 13 of its first 14 shots. Ron Bonham, Tom Thacker, Tony Yates and Chicagoan George Wilson took over. Cincy took the lead and expanded it.
With Harkness stuck on zero for the night and the Bearcats leading 45-30 with 12 minutes to play, all but a handful of the 19,000 in Freedom Hall were ready to concede Cincinnati its third straight national title.
“Did I think we were beaten? Absolutely,” Harkness said. “I thought of my family and friends watching on TV in New York. I was embarrassed. I thought, `If we can just make it close …'”
Loyola did that and more. Harkness found his shot and hit back-to-back baskets. Cincy’s lead began to melt. The confident tortoise, however, stayed within its shell. It ignored offense and continued its stall.
The usually impenetrable Bearcats began making turnovers against Loyola’s press. Slowly, as the lead shrank from 15 points, to 11, 9 and 7, fans who were not totally committed to Cincinnati found themselves inexplicably pulling for the rallying underdogs. That included supporters of the teams that had just played for third place.
“The band from Duke,” Ireland recalled years later, “started playing our Loyola song.”
Loyola also captured the Western vote when cheerleaders from Oregon State began working the crowd on behalf of the Ramblers.
With four seconds left in regulation, Harkness drilled a 12-foot jumper to send the game into overtime tied at 54-54.
With the score 58-58 in the final ticks of overtime, Harkness, closely covered by Bonham, passed to Hunter, who shot and missed. But Rouse beat the buzzer with the rebound basket.
“I knew I was going to get the ball,” Rouse said. “I didn’t tip it in. I grabbed it tight, jumped up and laid it in.
“I never thought we’d lose. We came too far for us to lose it.”
Harkness said it was “absolutely fitting” that Rouse hit the winning shot.
“Vic went through so much,” Harkness said. “He had polio as a child. He wore leg braces. He was told he wouldn’t walk normally. He broke his nose three or four times. The Man [Ireland] was always tough on him, because Vic was tough enough to take it.”
Since the 35th anniversary of the title, Rouse and Ireland have died, Rouse in 1999 and Ireland in 2001.
“To me, the game shows what a difference there is between finishing first or second,” said Egan, a 60-year-old Chicago lawyer. “If we had lost, nobody would remember. As it is, it’s been celebrated after 15 years, 20, 25, 30 now 40. And, now we look ahead to 50.”
Looking back
1963 NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP
LOYOLA 60, CINCINNATI 58
LOYOLA MN FG-A FT-A REB A PTS
Jerry Harkness 45 5-18 4-8 6 0 14
Vic Rouse 45 6-22 3-4 12 0 15
Les Hunter 45 6-22 4-4 11 1 16
John Egan 45 3-8 3-5 3 0 9
Ron Miller 45 3-14 0-0 2 0 6
Totals 225 23-84 14-21 45 1 60
CINCINNATI MN FG-A FT-A REB A PTS
Ron Bonham 45 8-16 6-6 4 0 22
Tom Thacker 45 5-12 3-4 15 3 13
George Wilson 41 4-8 2-3 13 0 10
Tony Yates 45 4-6 1-4 8 1 9
Larry Shingleton 45 1-3 2-3 4 0 4
Dale Heidotting 4 0-0 0-0 1 0 0
Totals 225 22-45 14-20 52 4 58
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