Archie’S Boys

By Dr. Randy White and Michael Valentino

About sixty miles north of Houston on Interstate 45, a giant statue soars above the piney woods of East Texas. Its a white concrete image of General Sam Houston, the first and third president of the Republic of Texas. Like everything in this state, it is oversized, and at seventy feet tall, its the largest statue of an American hero in the country.

The statue welcomes the traveler to Huntsvillea small sleepy college town that was the home of Sam Houston, and which now is the home of Sam Houston State University (SHSU) and another Texas icon, the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC). On one side of its wall, convicts struggle with the rigors of prison life, and on the other at the university, another group of youths struggle with the demands of college. The contrast between the two serves as a metaphor for modern American life.

This story is seen from the point of view of a man who experienced events on both sides of the prison wall. On one side of the wall, Randy White was a guardknown as Boss White to the inmates. On the other side was Randy White, a college student in 1972 and the Bearkats (the SHSU basketball team) official statistician. He was part of the story when the Bearkats became a basketball legend in the early seventies.

Football is the renowned culture of Texas. If one has any doubts, then look at the Dallas Cowboys and the popularity of its cheerleading. Now there are cheerleading squads in the NFL as well as on the college football scene. There is nothing new or unique about that. But none are as famous as the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. To make the squad and wear the white short shorts and blue-and-white bolero jackets today is more prestigious than making the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes back in the forties. Such is the stature of football in Texas. So Texas is definitely football country. Basketball lives in the outskirts, something to be played in between football seasons.

Sam Houston State Universitys basketball team had been lackluster for forty years. Nobody expected much from SHSU basketball in 1972, until the early seventies, back when a bunch of basketball players, intent on winning, burst on the scene like a perfect storm. Such is the one that brewed up one October day off New England, and it came out of nowhere. A confluence of different weather-related phenomena had combined to produce what was termed a perfect storm.

That same perfect storm hit Huntsville. It was as if someone had put into a cauldron a unique combination of talent, coaching, spirit, camaraderie, and a new social awareness and mixed them upand out came a dream team, a dream season, a perfect storm. This is the story of that perfect storm, that dream season.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543457360

Dr. Randy White

Dr. White is a tax and small business consultant located in Houston, Texas. Dr. White is the author of several books and one of which is now being produced in feature film. Dr. White and his wife Paula M. White have raised over 17-children without any form of governmental assistance. During this time period, the White's have founded a children's orphanage located in Monterrey, Mexico under a 501(c)(3) organization.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Dr. Randy White.

ISBN:                  Softcover                            978-1-5434-5735-3

                            eBook                                 978-1-5434-5736-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 10/14/2017

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

768616

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One           The Black Culture Of Basketball

Chapter Two           The Recruiting Process—The Roadmap To Success

Chapter Three         The Coach Williams Story

Chapter Four           The Jim Kreier Story

Chapter Five           Continued Interview: Randy White And Jim Kreier

Chapter Six             Interview Randy White And Archie Myers Of Sfa

Chapter Seven         Interview: Randy White And Sports Information Director (Sid) Frank Krystyniak

Chapter Eight          The Coaching Staff

Chapter Nine           Shaping The Bearkats

Chapter Ten             Archie’s Strategy

Chapter Eleven        The Competition

Chapter Twelve       The Perfect Storm Hits

Chapter Thirteen      Accommodating The Perfect Storm

Chapter Fourteen     Basketball Psychology

Chapter Fifteen        Facing The Best

Chapter Sixteen       Beating The Best

Chapter Seventeen   The Ron Battle Phenomenon

Chapter Eighteen     Getting Close

Chapter Nineteen     Closer Still

Chapter Twenty         Showdown In Kansas City

Epilogue

The Team: Shsu 1972-1973

The Aftermath Of Sam Houston State University

References

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

T o my loving and supportive wife, Paula, who was able to outperform even spell-check with many of my adjectives and other grammar deficiencies. Her support was an invaluable contribution to me during this yearlong process of research and writing, as there is a story to be told. There are many who are unaware of the times and accomplishments of this group of coaches and young men.

DEDICATION

T his book is dedicated to the coaching staff and team members of this 1972-1973 men’s basketball team at Sam Houston State University. Many a coach will never have the opportunity to work with such a talented group of young men during their coaching career. The members of this particular team had many a twist and turn in their young lives after their respective high school years, but each had a different path to Sam Houston State University in creating The Fall of 1972: A Season for the Perfect Storm .

PROLOGUE

A bout sixty miles north of Houston on Interstate 45, a giant statue soars above the piney woods of East Texas. It’s a white concrete image of General Sam Houston, the first and third president of the Republic of Texas. Like everything in this state, it is oversized, and at seventy feet tall, it’s the largest statue of an American hero in the country.

The statue welcomes the traveler to Huntsville—a small sleepy college town that was the home of Sam Houston, and which now is the home of Sam Houston State University (SHSU) and another Texas icon, the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC). On one side of its wall, convicts struggle with the rigors of prison life, and on the other at the university, another group of youths struggle with the demands of college. The contrast between the two serves as a metaphor for modern American life.

This story is seen from the point of view of a man who experienced events on both sides of the prison wall. On one side of the wall, Randy White was a guard—known as Boss White to the inmates. On the other side was Randy White, a college student in 1972 and the Bearkats’ (the SHSU basketball team) official statistician. He was part of the story when the Bearkats became a basketball legend in the early seventies.

Football is the renowned culture of Texas. If one has any doubts, then look at the Dallas Cowboys and the popularity of its cheerleading. Now there are cheerleading squads in the NFL as well as on the college football scene. There is nothing new or unique about that. But none are as famous as the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. To make the squad and wear the white short shorts and blue-and-white bolero jackets today is more prestigious than making the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes back in the forties. Such is the stature of football in Texas.

So Texas is definitely football country. Basketball lives in the outskirts, something to be played in between football seasons.

Sam Houston State University’s basketball team had been lackluster for forty years. Nobody expected much from SHSU basketball in 1972.

Until the early seventies, back when a bunch of basketball players, intent on winning, burst on the scene like a perfect storm. Such as the one that brewed up one October day off New England, and it came out of nowhere. A confluence of different weather-related phenomena had combined to produce what was termed a perfect storm.

That same perfect storm hit Huntsville. It was as if someone had put into a cauldron a unique combination of talent, coaching, spirit, camaraderie, and a new social awareness and mixed them up—and out came a dream team, a dream season, a perfect storm.

This is the story of that perfect storm, that dream season.

CHAPTER ONE

The Black Culture of Basketball

S ex, drugs, and rock and roll defined the decade of the sixties in America. Long hair, sideburns, bell-bottoms, and headbands—those themes and the hippie culture began to fade in the early seventies while that decade saw the rise of civil rights, minority rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and feminism. The decade also saw the emergence of a lower middle class and was inspired by self-determination, individualism, and aspirations for a more egalitarian society. Along with this came hostility toward certain authority like government and big business. And to adults. But things move slower in the South, and respect for authority still pretty much reigned.

TV relied on more urban, edgy stories, and music on soft rock and pop music performed by artists like Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, and James Taylor.

But most important to this story is that this era ushered in true integration, especially in college sports.

There is a reason that there are more blacks in basketball and almost none in hockey. While part of that is physical (blacks—with their height, speed, and grace—are naturals for basketball), the other part is cultural. The eventual black domination of the game may be how much it means to these inner-city kids. It often becomes the greatest piece of culture they have: something they will fight for and something at which they will fight to be the best.

A great example of that was in the Nike PLAY campaign when Michael Jordan asked, If there were no sports, would I still be your hero? Sports, especially basketball, is a tremendously valuable cultural object to inner-city youth. Many coaches believe that it is the desire of inner-city black players that separates them from other white players. William Ellerbee—head basketball coach of Simon Gratz High School in Philadelphia, a national powerhouse in basketball—agrees with this hypothesis. Ellerbee believes that Suburban kids tend to play for the fun of it . . . but black ghetto kids look at basketball as a matter of life and death. The white basketball player often is simply not as hungry as the black athlete, and therefore, black players often come out on top.

It is exactly this life-or-death style that defines what the game of basketball is known as today . . . the black brand of basketball. Nelson George emphasizes this definition in elevating the game when he declares, The Black aesthetic has not only changed basketball, but after a rough period in the seventies has been the catalytic force behind the sport’s extraordinary growth in popularity and profitability ever since. To many blacks in the inner city in America, basketball is much more than a sport; it is a form of education and expression. African American culture from the city has brought a much more graceful, speed oriented, physical, all-around-skill aspect to the game. Basketball, especially in these areas, teaches social skills, rites of passage, creativity, and cultural identity.

This point is illustrated in the movie Rocky II where the champ, wallowing in the easy life and luxury, no longer has the hunger, the necessary desire to win—the eye of the tiger he needs to win.

The popular image of kids playing basketball is in the inner-city neighborhoods where they play the skins against the shirts. Basketball became almost universal.

The game was invented in the 1880s by thirty-year-old James Naismith. He was a trainer at the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, tasked with creating an indoor game that could be played all year. He was responsible for most of the rules that we see today: dribbling, traveling, fouling out, scoring, free throw, etc.

Everybody knows that it was Jackie Robinson who integrated baseball back in 1946 when he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers for the 1946 season.

In basketball, Chuck Cooper was the first NBA player drafted by the Boston Celtics in 1950. Then of course, there was Bill Russell who came into the NBA via being traded for two players in 1956. He was, until then, the best there was until Michael Jordan came along and challenged that title.

While this seems like the barrier was broken—actually, when it came to college sports, there was a long way to go. Until 1947, few African American players were allowed in any major college sports program.

But again, there is a big difference when you go from the money sport of professional basketball to college. It all changed in 1963, when Loyal University in Chicago shocked the nation and changed college basketball forever by starting four black players in the NCAA Tournament. Thus, Loyola, under Coach Ireland, is thought to be responsible for ushering in a new era of racial equality in the sport by shattering all remaining color barriers in NCAA basketball.

Up until then, there was a gentleman’s agreement among the authorities not to start more than three black players at any time. And so it began.

In the 1966 NCAA Championship, the Texas Western College in El Paso, Texas, under Coach Don Haskins started five African American players. They beat Kentucky 72-65 to win the 1966 NCAA title. This Kentucky team was considered blue bloods, who were led by future NBA player and coaching legend Pat Riley, teammate Lou Dampier, and Tommy Kron while playing under the legendary coach Adolph Rupp.

In 1970, Illinois State hired Will Robinson as the first African American head coach of a major college