Tag: Larry Finch

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Opinion The Last Word

Tiger Hoops: How UM Basketball History Has Shaped Us

CREDIT: Mike Olmstead Collection | Courtesy of Pink Palace Museum

When you step into the Pink Palace Museum, you’re surrounded by the stuff of history: Native American tools, Civil War rifles, a reconstructed Piggly Wiggly, a sign from 1968 proclaiming I AM A MAN. Each artifact tells a story about who we are and how we got here. The stuff of history now includes a Memphis State T-shirt with a basketball drawn inside a pyramid, touting “THE TOMB OF DOOM.”

“Tiger Hoops,” a new Pink Palace exhibit, explores the history of basketball at what is now the University of Memphis. It is packed with objects that reflect the sport’s evolution over a century. You can check out pennants for the first teams at West Tennessee Normal School, an original women’s uniform with bloomers, a trophy from the 1957 National Invitational Tournament, the jerseys of Tiger legends Larry Finch and Penny Hardaway, and the astoundingly enormous sneaker of William Bedford.

Mike Olmstead Collection | Courtesy of Pink Palace Museum

Ronnie Robinson

But Memphis basketball is about more than Tigers on the court. It is about Memphians of all stripes.

What can sports tell us about who we are and how we got here? We wanted to understand what meanings Memphians assigned to the Tigers. As one way there, we asked people to lend their T-shirts. Eighty-four of those shirts now fill an entire wall of the exhibit, representing a passion for hoops.

The shirts chronicle great moments, including Final Four runs in 1985 and 2008. They highlight beloved players such as Andre Turner and D.J. Stephens. They shoot zingers at Louisville and Kentucky. Some feature a penny. Others celebrate the Pyramid, a.k.a. “The Tomb of Doom.” There are also some terrible, terrible puns (“I’m in the CAL-ZONE”).

While donating T-shirts, Memphians reflected on their fandom. Many talked about family and community. For a few, Tiger basketball connected them to a deceased spouse or relative.

On the exhibit’s companion website, (tigerhoops100years.com), fans considered the significance of basketball for the city. Steve Pike, the museum’s former executive director, sums it up as “community pride.” Memphis has much to offer but scuffles for national recognition. The basketball team, with its triumphs and trials over the decades, mirrors this scrappy ambition. As Pike states, “The Tigers are shorthand for us.”

Others emphasize the unifying power of sports. “Like no other sports team in Memphis, the U of M Tigers bring our city together,” states one typical entry on the website. “During the heat of the games, people are no longer black, white, or yellow, Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, Republican, or Democrat. We are all just Tiger fans.”

I admit to some skepticism about that sentiment. Upon moving to Memphis in 2004, I heard many stories about how Larry Finch and the 1973 Memphis State Tigers healed the city’s wounds after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King. I eventually researched and wrote about that moment. The truth, I learned, is more complicated.

Yes, there was extraordinary enthusiasm among both whites and blacks as the Tigers reached that NCAA championship game. But it occurred as a court-ordered busing program was integrating public schools. White flight was underway. City politics were polarized by race. Mayor Wyeth Chandler celebrated the racial healing of the Tigers but also stoked racial tensions over busing. How much did basketball matter?

That question informs our entire exhibit. In “Tiger Hoops,” basketball tells a story about Memphians — sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. It reflects our self-image as proud, modern, and together. It also exposes our patterns of racial and gender discrimination, our exploitation of amateur athletes, our anxieties about being a second-class city.

And now, I guess, it tells a story about me. For years, I was just a casual fan — I like basketball and I like Memphis, but as a Boston native and pro sports guy, I never got too wrapped up in the Tigers. I worked with the Pink Palace on this exhibit because of my academic interests in sports history and civil rights.

But this year, the Goudsouzians split season tickets with another family. And I’m hooked — absolutely, irrationally hooked on the athletic endeavors of 19-year-old kids, the same kids I see in my classrooms. On the way to school, I debate with my two young sons about the best lineups. On the way home, we tune to sports-talk radio. My daydreams often revolve around how Coach Penny can beat zone defenses.

So now we’re real Tiger fans — and real Memphians. But just a few years too late to have entered the CAL-ZONE.

Aram G. Goudsouzian is a professor of history at the University of Memphis and the guest curator of “Tiger Hoops,” which is on exhibit at the Pink Palace from March 7 to October 4, 2020.

Categories
From My Seat Sports

Larry Finch Lives

Larry Finch played his last game for the Memphis State Tigers 22 days after my fourth birthday. But if you looked at the current issue of Memphis magazine — and you can get over the Lester Quinones amount of leg players showed in 1973 — you’d swear the Tiger legend is alive, well, and ready for one more NCAA tournament run.

Among the joys of being a sportswriter is the rare feeling that I am in precisely the right place at precisely the right time. (No, this is not the Alcorn State game at FedExForum on a Tuesday night in November.) Most recently, when the University of Memphis football team won its conference championship and clinched a berth in the Cotton Bowl, the Liberty Bowl felt like earthbound heaven, at least for that moment, that night of fireworks and confetti, December 7, 2019. So many Memphians, so happy, and together, as one. This was Memphis Tiger football. The Cotton f’n Bowl!

This brand of euphoria doesn’t always require fireworks or confetti. It crept up and hugged me rather tightly over the course of several recent weeks in my day job as managing editor for Memphis magazine (the Flyer‘s sister monthly). It began with a business meeting at Spark Printing last December, in which a colleague and I were introduced to a machine called the Jetvarnish 3DS. The size of a computer from 1975 (smallish for the kind of press a magazine typically requires), this printer can apply foil and varnish — separately — to previously printed material. Like the cover of a magazine.

A few weeks earlier, I’d received a press release from the Pink Palace notifying the world that a special exhibit on Memphis Tiger basketball would open in March, one curated to celebrate the culture and impact of this city’s first true home team. It didn’t take long, upon meeting the good folks at Spark, for the staff at Memphis to realize, yes, a spark of inspiration. How might we help celebrate Tiger basketball culture with the new — literally shiny — technology available with that magic printer?

The question then became who might help celebrate Tiger basketball culture, and the answer was as swift as a Derrick Rose crossover, as resounding as a Keith Lee two-handed dunk. If we could find the right picture of Larry Finch in his prime, we had the chance to honor and salute the greatest Tiger of them all while bringing him to life in ways no print media ever had before.

You can now see — and importantly, feel — the result. And it took a village. The University of Memphis athletic department had the iconic image, back when media photos were the norm, before pregame videos became a team’s identifier. Printing the cover required more than Spark alone could provide. Toof Commercial Printing and LSC Communications took the floor in our multi-stage process, one that required well over 24 hours to complete.

Snags? Heck yeah, there were snags. Thankfully, all relatively minor. (I chose to ignore my dentist on a recent visit when he asked if I’d been grinding my teeth more than usual.) Printing to the standards of Memphis magazine is still as much art as science. Applying ink to paper — to say nothing of applying foil or varnish — can be precise, but it’s not a given, ever. Professionals, though, make this magic happen. They collaborate toward a reward that allows you to feel the fingers of Larry Finch’s left hand, to see the name “Memphis” shine as brightly as Finch himself did the night he scored 48 points in a single game.

I’ve missed Larry Finch since he died in 2011. The city of Memphis has missed his presence. An anonymous American once said of Franklin Roosevelt, upon the president’s death in 1945, “I didn’t know FDR, but he knew me.” Finch occupies that place in my heart, and in the hearts of countless other Memphians. I’m grateful to have played a role in bringing him to life on the cover of our March magazine. Stories — those we tell, and those told about us — are the closest any of us will come to immortality. By that measure, Larry Finch is indeed alive and well, among us even. Let him shine.

Memphis magazine can be found at Novel (387 Perkins Extd.). To subscribe, call 575-9470 or visit memphismagazine.com.

Categories
From My Seat Sports

Gameday Gratitude

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

I like to give thanks this time of year for the little (and big) treasures from the local sports scene that have enriched life in Memphis.

• I’m grateful for two years of Stubby Clapp-led baseball teams at AutoZone Park. The Memphis Redbirds’ 2017 championship club — 13-0 in extra-inning games — felt over the top at times. The winning came so steadily, so “easily.” Then 2018 happened and the Redbirds did it again. More than 60 players but one hugely popular manager with a clubhouse touch apparently borrowed from Casey Stengel. The back-to-back Pacific Coast League championships will forever be attached to the height-restricted back-to-back PCL Manager of the Year. Clapp is moving on to St. Louis, where he’ll coach first base for the Cardinals. He managed to transform Memphis baseball both as a player and a manager, a total of three championships left behind in the record book.
Larry Kuzniewski

Jaren Jackson Jr.

• I’m grateful for Jaren Jackson Jr. The day will come — I know it’s hard to stomach — when the remaining members of the Memphis Grizzlies’ Fab Four (Mike Conley and Marc Gasol) are no longer sprinting the floor at FedExForum. A franchise can fall into a post-superstar hangover in which roster comings-and-goings matter little to a fan base. (See the post-Kevin Garnett years in Minnesota.) “Triple J” (or “Trey J”?) may be the bridge to the next era for our NBA outfit. I’ve seen nothing not to like about the 19-year-old forward over the first month of his pro career. Here’s hoping we get to see a playoff run (or two) with Conley, Gasol, and Jackson.

• I’m grateful for Darrell Henderson on first down. And second and third. The numbers for the Memphis Tigers’ junior tailback are silly: 1,521 rushing yards and 20 touchdowns with at least two games left to play. There will never be another DeAngelo Williams, but let it be said Henderson has been a nice reminder.

• I’m grateful for Coach Penny Hardaway. It’s been a unique view. I’m of Hardaway’s generation (two years older), so I’ve witnessed his rise to greatness as a player, his dormant years of early retirement, and now this year’s resurrection as a city’s cultural icon, all the while passing through my own life stages, however distant they are from the limelight. So I feel young whenever Hardaway is described as a new or rookie coach and I feel “seasoned” when I remember he’s older today than Larry Finch was when Finch coached his final Tiger game. Most of all, I’m grateful to again be on a ride driven by Penny Hardaway. He’s yet to disappoint.


• I’m grateful for plans to erect a statue of the great Larry Finch. This was overdue, but many of life’s happiest developments are just so. Memphis recently endured a period of conflict over statues that divided segments of the community. We will soon be able to visit a statue (and park!) that I’m convinced will unify Memphians. For such a bronze idol we should all be grateful.

• I’m grateful to be married to an exceptional athlete. My beloved wife, Sharon, will run her first marathon on December 1st, not quite four months after her 50th birthday. She has become a local running star, whether she’ll admit it or not. (She won the 2018 Race for the Cure women’s division, all age groups.) I’ve witnessed her devotion to the cause, her daily training (well beyond my reach), and the joy she’s taken through the agony of a last mile. You spend your working life admiring athletes from different circles, then find yourself cheering loudest for the person across the dinner table.


• As always, I’m grateful for Flyer readers. I hear from you year-round, appreciate your perspectives, counterpoints, and especially your passion for Memphis sports. The title of this column originated from my own devotion to fandom, to being part of the crowd that makes a sporting event — large or small — worthwhile. Thanks for keeping it alive these 17 years.
Categories
News The Fly-By

Winners and Losers

Perhaps, more than anyone else I ever met, the late William Otis “Bill” Little understood the parameters entailed in being anointed the title of “coach.” His death last month at the age of 79 brought back memories of his befriending me when I arrived in Memphis 30 years ago as a sports reporter. We periodically met while covering the same stories on the high school athletics scene and the then-Memphis State Tiger basketball squads. A mutual admiration and our comfort level with each other soon developed to the point he’d just refer to me as “Smitty,” and I called him “Still Bill.” But it was mostly through other acquaintances that I learned what an icon in the African-American community Bill really was.

When we met, he was the sports editor for the Tri-State Defender. But his impressive resume included being a player with the Memphis Red Sox in the Negro Baseball League. He led high school baseball and basketball championship teams in 28 years of coaching. He was a respected referee in college football circles, including the SWAC Conference for 30 years. However, he always downplayed the subject of his accomplishments. Instead he opted to discuss his belief in the importance of mentoring young minds and the powerful opportunity coaches have to fill voids in those lives with positive reinforcement of ethics and values. Never once did he refer to the stale sports cliché “winning is everything.”

What my friend Bill did acknowledge — and indoctrinated in me — was the steadfast bond between this community and the fortunes of Tiger basketball. It is as if by some Siamese twins connection we collectively shared the euphoria generated by their victories and the plunge into massive depression when they lost.

Let’s be honest. The Grizzlies could win a string of NBA championships and they would never totally wrest away Memphians’ hearts from those who don the blue and gray. The Tigers are our continuing soap opera, bringing us pain, joy, disgust, elation, and frustration. We never seem to get enough of praising or ridiculing. Though players come and go in our hearts, we tend to focus our most rabid analysis on the man with the title “coach.”

In the three decades I’ve been here, whether on the sports beat or not, I have formulated my own opinions on the men chosen to assume the reins of Tiger basketball leadership. I was not a great fan of the late Dana Kirk. His self-promotion was disturbing, as well as a precursor to the disaster he would eventually leave behind for his successor, Larry Finch, to deal with. The homegrown Finch, like his mentor, Gene Bartow, was a man who truly cared about the players he recruited. No, he wasn’t the best “X’s and O’s” coach when it came to on-court strategy, but he tried to make sure the emphasis was correctly placed on the term “student-athlete.”

Tic Price was a walking disaster. Interim head coach Johnny Jones has since proven elsewhere that he might have been the one that got away. Coach Cal? Let’s just say no other coach in college athletics knows more about manipulating the psyche of the African-American collegiate athlete. Feed their egos and their dreams to get them to win. Throw them under the bus as undisciplined morons when they lose. Bobby Knight had him pegged right all along.

I do not doubt the sincerity of Josh Pastner’s passion for the welfare of his players or his allegiance to the University of Memphis. I don’t doubt he frets into the wee hours of the night about what he can do to make his team a cohesive unit, one as dedicated as he is to the task of making Tiger fans proud. At this point, you’re figuring there’s going to be a “but” placed in here somewhere? No. Instead, listen, Tiger fans:

If the team gets wiped out in the first round of the tournament, the sun will still come up the next day. A single jobless mother of three in Memphis will still wake up and wonder how she’s going to feed her kids. A father will worry about how he’s going to pay for his son’s college tuition. Someone will be murdered. Rape kits will remain untested. Babies will be born.

My mentor, Bill Little, a man who embraced sports his whole life, understood its triviality in the biggest game we all play. “Winning isn’t everything” if it teaches you nothing about the things that truly count in life.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Top 15 Tigers

CREDIT: photograph by Rgbe | Dreamstime.com

Tiger coach Josh Pastner loves D.J. Stephens and has enjoyed teasing the media by proclaiming Stephens one of the “top five Tigers” of all time. He’ll acknowledge three other top-fives (Larry Finch, Keith Lee, and Penny Hardaway), then leave one slot open for us keyboard-tappers to consider.

The cold truth, of course, is that Stephens isn’t even among the top 15 Memphis Tigers of all time. Below is one man’s ranking of the top three Tigers at each of basketball’s traditional positions. It’s in no way a rebuke of all Stephens has given the 2012-13 Tiger team but more a commentary on the historic strength of the program.

My one qualifier for this ranking is that a player had to have suited up for at least two seasons with the Tigers. The “one-and-dones” were fun to watch, players like Larry Kenon, Dajuan Wagner, Derrick Rose, and Tyreke Evans. But they don’t belong here.

POINT GUARD — 1) Elliot Perry (1987-91): One of only two Tigers to score 2,000 career points (2,209), Socks led the Tigers in assists and steals for four seasons and led the team in scoring his last three seasons. He’s second in career steals (304) and fifth in career assists (546). 2) Andre Turner (1982-86): The Little General was the team’s pulse for a glorious four-year period that included a trip to the Final Four in 1985. Holds the Tiger record for assists in a game (15), season (262), and career (763). 3) Alvin Wright (1974-78): Wright led Memphis in assists all four seasons he played but is one of only two Tigers to average more than five assists in three different seasons. His 1,319 career points rank 15th in Tiger history.

SHOOTING GUARD — 1) Larry Finch (1970-73): Now and forever, the greatest Tiger of them all. Freshmen didn’t play in Finch’s day, but he still scored 1,869 career points and remains the face of the fabled 1972-73 team that reached the NCAA championship game. There should be a statue of Finch somewhere in Memphis. 2) Penny Hardaway (1991-93): The 1993 first-team All-American averaged 20.0 points per game over his two seasons while delivering the kind of passes we’ve seen only from the likes of Magic Johnson and Jason Kidd. Twice MVP of the Great Midwest Conference, Penny owns two of the program’s three triple-doubles. 3) Antonio Anderson (2005-09): It’s fitting that Anderson has the other triple-double in Memphis history. The “glue guy” for a remarkable period that saw a trip to the national championship game in 2008 and two Elite Eight appearances, Anderson is the only Tiger with 1,000 career points, 500 rebounds, and 500 assists.

SMALL FORWARD — 1) Rodney Carney (2002-06): A second-team All-American in 2006, Carney combined high-flying dunks and three-point marksmanship unlike any Tiger before or since. Holds the school record of 287 career treys. His 1,901 career points are third in Memphis history. 2) Win Wilfong (1955-57): A 6’2″ swingman, Wilfong played only two seasons with the Tigers but averaged 22.1 and 21.0 points, leading Memphis to the 1957 NIT championship game. He was the program’s first All-American. 3) Chris Douglas-Roberts (2005-08): CDR is one of three Tigers to earn first-team All-American status. Averaged 18.1 points per game for the 2007-08 squad, which went 38-2. His 724 points that season are the third-highest in Tiger history.

POWER FORWARD — 1) Ronnie Robinson (1970-73): Finch’s running mate averaged 14.2 rebounds a game as a sophomore, then 13.3 as a junior. Fifth in Tiger history with 1,066 career rebounds and averaged 13.9 points over his three seasons. 2) Forest Arnold (1952-56): Arnold was the all-time leading scorer at Memphis (1,854 points) until Finch came along. He’s one of only four Tigers to score 1,000 points and grab 1,000 rebounds and starred for the Tigers’ first NCAA tournament team in 1955. 3) David Vaughn (1991-95): Vaughn was an integral member of Tiger teams that reached the NCAA tournament’s Elite Eight (1992) and Sweet 16 (1995). Despite being limited to three seasons by a knee injury, Vaughn ranks seventh in rebounds (903) and third in blocks (235).

CENTER — 1) Keith Lee (1981-85): Lee was the star of four Tiger teams that reached at least the NCAA’s Sweet 16. A four-time AP All-American, Lee is U of M’s top all-time scorer (2,408 points), rebounder (1,336), and shot blocker (320). 2) Lorenzen Wright (1994-96): Wright scored 1,026 points and averaged more than 10 rebounds over his two seasons. Chosen seventh by the Clippers in the 1996 draft and played in more NBA games (779) than any other Tiger. 3) Joey Dorsey (2004-08): Twice named C-USA’s Defensive Player of the Year. Second only to Lee in career rebounds (1,209) and blocked shots (264). Dorsey is arguably the most popular Tiger of this century. At least until D.J. Stephens arrived.

As for my top five? Forget the order: Finch, Hardaway, Lee, Perry, Robinson.

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News

Memphis Tigers’ Homegrown Talent

Frank Murtaugh reflects on the Memphis Tigers homegrown players, past and present.

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

Memphis’ Native Sons

CREDIT: larry

It’s been fun this season to watch three freshmen raised in Memphis make an immediate impact on the Tiger basketball team. Point guard Joe Jackson (White Station High School) is the only player to start all 23 games and leads the team in assists. Center Tarik Black (Ridgeway) leads the team in rebounds and blocks and was named a co-captain (with senior Will Coleman) last month. Despite a dreadful shooting slump of late, guard Chris Crawford (Sheffield) leads the team in three-point field goals and has proven himself the best passer on the team. Sophomore Drew Barham, a graduate of Christian Brothers High School, adds even more local flavor to the squad, having started during the Tigers’ four-game winning streak last month. (Barham had five points, seven rebounds, and five assists in the win over UCF on January 26th.)

Memphian Tarik Black

  • larry
  • Memphian Tarik Black

Should the group stay in school two or three years, it could go down as one of the finest home-grown units ever to suit up for the U of M. Which had me thinking about other Memphians to play as teammates for the Tigers. Here are a few that stand out:

1994-95 and 1995-96 — Lorenzen Wright, Cedric Henderson, Chris Garner
Wright’s freshman season was a memorable one, as the Tigers went undefeated (17-0) at The Pyramid, won 24 games, and lost (controversially) to defending national-champion Arkansas in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament. Wright led the team in both scoring (14.8) and rebounding (10.2), a feat he would repeat as a sophomore (17.4 and 10.4), earning first-team all-conference honors both seasons. Garner led Memphis in assists all four seasons he played and is second only to Andre Turner in career dimes (639). Henderson was merely one of the most consistent scorers in Tiger history, averaging at least 12.6 points per game each of his four seasons. He currently ranks sixth in career scoring (1,697). This trio helped the Tigers reach number 3 in the country in 1995-96, but were upset by Drexel in the first round of the NCAAs.

Memphian Joe Jackson

1990-91 — Elliot Perry, Ernest Smith, Billy Smith
Perry’s senior season didn’t turn out the way he would have liked. The Tigers struggled on the road (4-9) and were relegated to the NIT with a final regular-season record of 16-14. (Making matters worse, Memphis lost to Arkansas State — by a single point, at home — in the second round.) The Tigers beat Tennessee, though, and beat Louisville twice before losing to the Cardinals in the Metro Conference tournament. Perry averaged 20.8 points per game and joined Keith Lee as the only Tigers in history to score 2,000 career points. The Smith boys were contributors, too, with junior Ernest averaging 8.2 points per game and sophomore Billy 5.1.

The Smiths would be joined in 1991-92 by another Memphian — guy by the name of Anfernee Hardaway — and reach the regional finals of the NCAA tournament. While Penny was a sophomore sensation (17.4 points per game), Ernest’s role was diminished; he was the rare Tiger to see his scoring average drop each of his four seasons. Billy averaged 11.2 per game. Each of the Smiths would finish his career with more than 1,000 career points.

Memphian Chris Crawford

1984-85 and 1985-86 — Andre Turner, Baskerville Holmes, William Bedford, Vincent Askew, Dwight Boyd
No Tiger fan will ever forget coach Dana Kirk’s final two teams. Over two seasons, the teams went 59-10, reached the nation’s Top 10 (twice), won the 1985 Metro Conference tournament, and reached the ’85 Final Four. The star of the 1984-85 squad, of course, was Keith Lee. But coming from across the river in West Memphis, he represented long-distance recruiting for this era. Turner (the Little General) set a Tiger record for assists in 1984-85 (224), then proceeded to break it (262) the next season. The totals remain the top two in Memphis history. Bedford was a formidable complement to Lee in ’84-’85, averaging 12.2 points, then led the team with 17.3 the next season. Askew and Holmes were dynamic scoring options both seasons, averaging 10.9 and 14.3, respectively, in ’85-’86. Three of these Memphians — Turner, Bedford, and Askew — would gain first-team all-conference recognition, and all five are in the Tiger 1,000-point club.

1972-73 — Larry Finch, Ronnie Robinson, Bill Cook
The most fabled — and certainly most significant — team in Memphis Tiger history. Led by a pair of buddies (Finch and Robinson) from Melrose High School, coach Gene Bartow’s third Memphis team went 24-6, ending their season in the NCAA championship game against mighty Bill Walton and UCLA. Finch averaged 24.0 points per game and was named Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year. He and Robinson were named first team All-MVC all three seasons they played varsity basketball. Robinson is one of only five Tigers to grab 1,000 career rebounds. As merely a freshman, Cook averaged 5.4 points off the bench and was one of only five Tigers to score against UCLA. Finch and Cook are each in the top 10 on the Tiger career scoring chart.