(Early in the third quarter, the Jayhawk faithful had to suffer through a ten-minute period in which the station had “technical line troubles” and had to interrupt the broadcast.) When the final buzzer sounded at about 1:30 AM Central Time, ecstatic students (including a “sizeable sprinkle of co-eds,” as the Kansan put it) threw coats over their pajamas and crowded into cars in search of spontaneous pep rallies. Not surprisingly, he was a near-unanimous selection for tournament MVP.īack in Lawrence, students had huddled around radios to listen to the championship game. In the words of the University Daily Kansan, “Lovellette swept the NCAA record book clean” as he established new records for the most field goals, free throws, and points made by a single player in the tournament’s history. Lovellette’s numbers in the NCAA tournament proved particularly impressive. Kansas saw four of its five starters voted onto the all-tournament team when sportswriters placed both Lovellette and Kelley on the first team and put Charlie Hoag and Bill Lienhard on the second team. The team’s victory brought to fruition Allen’s brash promise to his prize recruit four years earlier. Kansas’s 41-27 halftime lead grew into a nineteen-point advantage after three quarters and ended in an 80-63 romp. Lovellette, who had been recruited from Terre Haute, Indiana, by Allen (in one of his first attempts to recruit nationally) with the promise that Allen would build a championship team around him, managed to score thirty three points despite the St. John’s geared its defense to stop Lovellette, but in so doing opened up Kansas perimeter players – Bob “Trigger” Kenney, Bill Lienhard, Charlie Hoag, Bill Hougland, and Dean Kelley – who sank easy baskets. Second, the Jayhawks maintained their lead for the remainder of the game. First, it was apropos considering that sixty fouls were called during the game. The first score of the final came on a Lovellette free throw, which might be considered significant for two reasons. (Indeed he had begun recruiting in 1947 with an eye on winning the title in 1952 and taking his team to the Olympics.) The 1952 team gave him a chance to rectify that shortcoming on his record. (The Jayhawks’ loss that year to Indiana by a score of 60-42 stood as the most lopsided result in an NCAA final for 20 years.) Thus for all of his other accomplishments, Allen had never won the tournament that he had helped to initiate. It was the second time Kansas had made it to the NCAA final, but in its previous trip to college basketball’s most prestigious event in 1940, KU had fallen short. John’s University of New York, which had knocked off Illinois in the other semi-final. This victory set up a championship showdown between KU and St. The first game of the Final Four pitted KU against Santa Clara University in a game that Kansas won by nineteen points. Its current format of 64 teams dates from 1985.) The field has been expanded a number of times since then. ![]() ![]() (In 1952, only 16 teams received invitations to the tournament. ![]() (His achievement stood until Wilt Chamberlain shattered it in his first game as a Jayhawk in 1956 when he scored 52 points.) Having won their region, the team prepared to travel to Seattle for the 1952 Final Four. The second game saw KU’s 6’9” center Clyde Lovellette, one of the five starting seniors and a three-time All-America selection, set a University record by scoring 44 points. The 1952 NCAA tournament began as well as the Jayhawk faithful could have hoped, with Kansas knocking off Texas Christian and St. Their two losses had come in a four-day stretch to Kansas State and Oklahoma A&M (Oklahoma State), but since the two-game skid, KU had rallied off an impressive nine consecutive wins. “Phog” Allen had won his 700th career game while his Jayhawks had compiled an 11-1 record in the Big Seven Conference and an overall record of 22-2. By the time the sixteen team-NCAA tournament was set to tip off, coach F.C. The University of Kansas’s men’s basketball team sailed practically unscathed through its 1951-2 season.
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