Billy Reed: Johnny Oldham, dead at 90, was one of college basketball’s historically important coaches

Before that season, after which he retired from coaching and became WKU’s athletics director, Oldham was hauled before the university’s board of regents to be questioned about whether the rumors about five black starters were true.

“They’re my five best players,” said Oldham, confirming the rumors. To which one of the regents said he would leave the board and withdraw his support of the university.

Both Oldham and the regent were true to their word. That turned out to be the first, and still the only, Hilltopper team to make the Final Four. It also destroyed the next to last of Coach Adolph Rupp’s 41 teams at Kentucky, drubbing the Wildcats 107-89 in the regional semifinals In Athens, Ga.

Here I must interject a personal note that tells much about Oldham. After that historic victory, Oldham did not attend any of the parties that broke out around Athens. Instead, he spent a couple of hours with me and my friend Bill Malone at an almost-deserted coffee shop.

There was a practical side to it. At the time, I was working for Sports Illustrated, and there was a distinct possibility Western would make the cover if it defeated Ohio State in the regional final and advanced to the Final Four in the Houston Astrodome.

But there also was something else. I had written much about Oldham’s teams for The Lexington Herald-Leader and The Courier-Journal of Louisville before going to SI. Oldham never forgot his friends. I’m pretty sure that’s why he bypassed the parties to help me.

A native of Hartford, Ky., Oldham played a season for Western’s iconic E.A. “Uncle Ed” Diddle before leaving school in 1942 to join the Navy. After World War II, he came back to Western and starred for three seasons, earning him a couple of seasons with the Ft. Wayne (now Detroit) Pistons of the NBA.

He came back to Bowling Green in 1952 and spent three years coaching at College High School. He showed enough promise to get the head job at hapless Tennessee Tech, one of Western’s fellow members of the Ohio Valley Conference.

Miraculously, he won three conference championships there, putting him directly in line to replace Diddle at his alma mater in 1964. He did and was the last piece of an interesting confluence of events.

At the age of 69, Diddle had coached at WKU for 42 seasons and was beginning to look tired and stale. On campus, a 14,000-seat arena that would be named for him was under construction. Finally, the state was home to a bunch of talented black players who wanted to stay in the state.

If Diddle began the recruiting of Clem Haskins and Dwight Smith, Oldham finished it. He also recruited Dwight’s younger brother Greg. Those three, along with white players Wayne Chapman and Steve Cunningham, started for the 1965-’66 team that easily could have won the NCAA title.

The semifinals of the Mideast Regional, held in Iowa City, had WKU playing Michigan after Kentucky met Dayton. The Wildcats beat the Flyers by seven, then joined the crowd that watched the Hilltoppers take on a much-ballyhooed Michigan team led by Cazzie Russell.

With WKU leading 79-78 and only seconds remaining, referee Steve Honzo called a jump ball between Russell and WKU’s Greg Smith. Instead of tossing the ball straight up, Honzo tossed it over Russell’s head. Cazzie couldn’t jump and Smith was forced to jump into him.

Instead of calling for a new toss, Honzo called a foul on Smith and Russell made both free throws to give Michigan an 80-79 victory and berth opposite the popular “Rupp’s Runts” team for a Final Four berth in College Park, Md.

The day after the game, Oldham and assistants Gene Rhodes and Buck Sydnor watched the jump ball replayed over and again on the projector set up in Oldham’s room. The more they watched it, the worse they felt. The Hilltoppers, not the Wolverines, should have been playing UK that night.

To his dying day, that was the most hurtful loss of Oldham’s career.

The next year, Western’s title chances were ruined when Haskins, then a senior, broke an arm in an early NCAA tournament game.

But instead of feeling sorry for himself, Oldham went out and recruited the six black players who were the core of the 1971 team – McDaniels, 6-8 Clarence Glover of Horse Cave, small forward Jerry Dunn and guard Rex Bailey of Glasgow, guard Jim Rose of Hazard, and forward Jerome Perry of Louisville.

Here, another personal note. One of Oldham’s recruiting ploys with Perry was to hire a Rolls-Royce limousine to carry him to the State Tournament in Freedom Hall. I took a photo of Oldham and Perry standing next to the limo, and it ran in The Courier-Journal. In those innocent times, it was perfectly legal.

In the 1971 NCAA tournament, Western had to earn the right to play Kentucky by first beating 7-2 Artis Gilmore and pretty much the same Jacksonville team that had eliminated it the previous same.

The score was tied at 72 with eight seconds remaining when the Dolphins turned it over, giving Western one last chance to win in regulation. As Bailey took the ball out of bounds, assistant coach Jim Richards told him to look under the basket where Glover, who had dropped to one knee while feigning the need to tie a shoe, was unnoticed and wide open.

Bailey fired the ball to Glover, who scored to give Western the win and right to play Kentucky.

That’s one of the things Oldham and I would laugh about whenever we saw each other over the years. He always was great company, whether on a golf course or in a New York restaurant or in a quiet coffee shop in Athens, Ga., on the night of what is still Western Kentucky’s greatest victory.