I watched the Razorbacks basketball game with Alabama at home at Fayetteville on Wednesday night, Feb. 5. It reminded me of how the game of basketball can be such a mysterious and frustrating game. The Razorbacks ended up winning the game by 7 points, but not because they played a great game. It seemed that everyone on both teams was having an "off" night, except for one or two players on each team. For the Razorbacks, Bobby Portis scored 35 points, and all the other guys together scored 30 points. The guys who usually do well, like Madden and Clarke and Qualls, couldn't hit the broad side of a barn last night! I'm often amazed with the Razorbacks, that at times when they are up against a great team, like Kentucky, they can do well; but when they are up against a mediocre team, like Alabama last night, they can hardly do anything right. Luckily for the Razorbacks, most of the Crimson Tide couldn't hit the broad side of a barn either. But, our Bobby Portis was having a hot night while most everybody else was cold and "off!"
Since I'm always comparing, last night's Razorbacks and Crimson Tide game made me remember some of our own Pea Ridge Blackhawk basketball days in the 1950s. One of our big rivals in those days was Washburn, Mo. Both of us had good teams during those years. Washburn always relied on one really good shooter. I can't remember his name, but he used to carry the scoring load for them. Their other guys fed him the ball, and he scored the points. It was like Bobby Portis last night in Bud Walton arena.
Not only did most of the Razorbacks have shooting troubles last night, they also weren't getting the rebounds after their missed shots. Getting rebounds was one of my main jobs when I played for the Blackhawks from 1955 to 1957. Like shooting, rebounding can be a maddening job. Sometimes you have games in which you are almost always in the right position, and you can snag those missed shots and successfully put the ball back up for your team. Other nights, you are never in quite the right place, the ball always takes a wrong bounce, and too often the other guy gets it. Most of the time you don't know until you are in the heat of the game whether you are going to be "on" or "off." And when you are having an "off" night it is very hard to turn things around.
Basketball has changed a lot since I first started playing the game years ago. We used to have many jump balls. Every quarter started with a jump ball, and whenever two opposing guys tied up a ball, the refs called a jump ball. I was fairly quick and a pretty good jumper, so jump balls were my thing. But you don't see jump balls in today's game. Also, the free-throw lane is very different now. In the old days, the lane was narrow, and together with the free-throw circle the two formed a key shape. The guys on the lane were really face to face. Now the lane is wide, as wide as the circle. That change came about while I was a Blackhawk. At first I thought I didn't like it, but the wider lane actually is better for rebounders, with fewer bounces over your head. We also had to learn to observe the 3-second rule and not just stay in the lane during play.
In the old days, the girls played half-court basketball. Each girls team had three guards in their back court and three forwards in their front court. The guards were the defense against the other team's forwards who were trying to score, then the guards advanced the ball to their own forwards, but couldn't cross the half-court line. Back then it was thought that the girls were too delicate to play full court basketball. That seems such a strange concept now, and even then it was obvious that many of the girls had plenty of strength and stamina. But they were supposed to be too delicate to run up and down the whole length of the floor.
In today's basketball, most shot styles are layups, dunks or some form of jump shots. In the old days, we did layups, but many of the other shots were set shots. Outside shots, or long shots as we called them, were often two-handed set shots, not jump shots. During our 1950s, the one-handed set shot was popular, especially by forwards in the side corners. Our jump shots were usually inside, within 15 feet of the basket. A few of our centers could pull off a hook shot now and then.
I liked to shoot a turn-around fade-away jump shot from 12 to 15 feet out from the basket. I was probably the last Blackhawk to shoot free-throws using the old-fashioned underhand style. You never see underhand free shots anymore. The old way could make 'em with as good a percentage as the new overhand styles, but people thought I shot funny. Finally, today we have the 3-point shot, a long distance, outside jump shot. We would never have thought to shoot a jump shot from that far out! In our day, a brilliant long set shot was still worth only 2 points. We were a defense-oriented team. We thought, if we can keep 'em under 50 points we can probably beat 'em. We wouldn't have liked 3-pointers at all!
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 02/12/2014