Bad food and ‘rude’ players? Looking back at the last Kentucky basketball trip to London.
This week’s trip to London will mark the first time the Kentucky Wildcats play a regular-season basketball game in Europe, but the journey won’t be entirely unique.
Nearly 75 years ago, another group of Cats made the trek across the Atlantic. And the members of that traveling party remain some of the most famous in the program’s history.
In March 1948, Kentucky coasted through the postseason to win the school’s first national championship, a run that included just two regular-season losses and a 16-point victory over Baylor in the NCAA title game in Madison Square Garden.
That was just the beginning.
Four days after winning the championship, the Wildcats competed in the Olympic Trials — also played in Madison Square Garden — with the right to participate in that year’s London Olympics on the line.
The tournament consisted of two brackets — one for the top college teams, and another for the top squads in AAU basketball, at that time home to many of the best players in the country. The USA Basketball Committee had previously decided that the 1948 Olympic roster would consist of an equal number of players from each level, with the teams that won their respective brackets getting the most players on the final squad.
Kentucky breezed through its side, beating Louisville by 34 points and winning an NCAA title rematch with Baylor by 18 points. On the other side, the seven-time AAU champion Phillips 66ers (also known as the Phillips Oilers) made it through, setting the stage for a big game at the Garden.
A crowd of 18,475 watched the Phillips team — an Oklahoma-based roster of older players who had already exhausted their college basketball eligibility — defeat the younger Wildcats, 53-49.
“This contest has been termed by many basketball devotees the best played and most exciting game in basketball history,” wrote USA Basketball chairman Lou Wilke, who chronicled the Americans’ Olympic exploits that year.
The assessment from the hometown newspaper wasn’t as glowing.
Larry Shopshire wrote the next day in the Lexington Leader that — while the Cats played hard — they “beat themselves” in their battle with the Oilers and “possibly never in one night made so many glaring errors — possibly the result of being overeager.” (UK also shot just 22.3 percent from the field in that one).
Despite the loss, the Wildcats put five players — Cliff Barker, Ralph Beard, Alex Groza, Wallace “Wah Wah” Jones and Kenny Rollins — on the 14-man Olympic roster. The UK team from that 1947-48 season has since been known as the “Fabulous Five,” and all five Kentucky players that made the Olympic squad have banners in the Rupp Arena rafters.
Five additional Olympic roster spots went to the champion Phillips team, with the four remaining positions going to other standout players from the tournament in New York. The head coach of the USA team was Bud Browning, leader of the Phillips squad, and the associate coaching duties fell to Adolph Rupp, who had just wrapped up his 18th season at Kentucky.
When the UK team returned to Lexington after playing the two tournaments in New York, a reported crowd of 10,000 admirers packed the area around Union Station to greet the Cats.
Proving that hyperbole around Kentucky basketball is nothing new, UK’s acting president, Leo Chamberlain, told the crowd that there was “no better team in the world” than those Wildcats.
Hundreds of fans had also cheered the team’s train at stops in Mount Sterling and Winchester, and the Cats climbed aboard a fire truck for a ride through downtown to UK’s campus, where thousands more cheered them on. According to the Lexington Herald’s report that day, a “mob scene” on campus forced Rupp to usher his team to the basement of Alumni Gym in order to escape the crowd.
Preparing for London
The Wildcats will surely have the finest of accommodations leading up to Sunday’s game against Michigan in London, but there were obviously no chartered jets or multi-million dollar basketball budgets for the Kentucky players selected to play in the 1948 Olympics.
As a means to both get sharp for the London Games and raise funds to travel there, the UK and Phillips teams played a three-game series of exhibitions in the weeks leading up to their departure. The games were played in Tulsa, Kansas City and Lexington — the latter taking place at Stoll Field on UK’s campus, with Memorial Coliseum still under construction and Alumni Gym deemed too small for such an event.
The 66ers beat the Cats in two out of three, with UK winning the Kansas City matchup in double overtime after what was apparently an eventful game.
“The outcome was in the balance until the final second of play,” according to Wilke. “A spectator threw a firecracker which exploded just before the end as a (Kentucky) player was about to shoot. All players relaxed momentarily except the one who threw the winning basket. The gun sounded while the ball was in mid-air, thus ending one of the greatest basketball games of all time.”
In addition to the exhibition series, other fundraising events took place around the commonwealth, including a local golf tournament with rounds at Picadome, Idle Hour and Lexington Country Club — all with the aim of raising money for the Wildcats’ travels.
The Olympic team left Lexington on July 11 — four days after the game at Stoll Field — and departed New York for Europe on the SS America on July 14.
The Americans arrived in Edinburgh, Scotland, seven days later for a pre-planned, four-game exhibition series in the country. Rollins, a Wickliffe, Ky., native, as well as the UK team captain and top senior for the 1947-48 season, kept readers back home up to date on the Cats’ travels with a series of letters sent to the Lexington Herald.
“These people know nothing whatsoever about basketball,” Rollins wrote after two games in Scotland. “And I would say there aren’t two in every 100 people who have ever seen a game. But they received us graciously, did plenty of cheering and are doing their darnedest to understand.”
Rollins added that the Scotland games were played on “a cement floor” with goals that weren’t stationary and tended to move a few inches every time a ball or player touched them. He said the locals were astonished by the sight of the Americans — especially the taller players on the team — and that the squad had its own private bus for the exhibition tour.
“They equal or better our Southern hospitality,” he wrote of the Scots. “And I’m not joking.”
Rollins said the Americans “had a little trouble getting adjusted to the food” but marveled at the Scottish castles and natural beauty of the country.
“The highlands, with the cattle and sheep grazing on them, is a sight to behold,” he wrote.
After four games in four days in Scotland, it was on to London for Team USA.
The 1948 Olympics
With no Olympics in 1940 or 1944 due to World War II, the return of the Summer Games in 1948 were cause for sporting celebration. It was also a milestone Olympics for the sport of basketball, which had only debuted as a medal sport for the first time in 1936. In those Olympics — held in Berlin — the basketball games were played on outdoor courts used primarily for tennis. The Americans won the tournament that year, and the gold medals were presented by the game’s inventor, James Naismith.
Basketball moved indoors for the 1948 Olympics, with Harringay Arena in London chosen as the setting for the games.
The Americans handled their first two matchups — against Switzerland and Czechoslovakia — with ease before running into an unexpectedly difficult test against Argentina. The USA squad won that game, 59-57, but it was a tough contest.
Louisville Courier Journal sports editor Earl Ruby traveled with the team throughout its Olympic journey. He was less-than-impressed with the Argentinians’ antics, as he saw them, on the court.
“This team, like the other South Americans, didn’t play the best brand of basketball but put on a far better act than our side did,” Ruby wrote. “They argued every point and magnified every incident and injury. Midway of the second half, Ruiz, one of the team’s better players, tumbled to the floor after a brush with (USA star) Bob Kurland. Instead of jumping to his feet like an American college player would have, he rolled over and played dead. Stretcher-bearers dashed out. They rolled him onto a stretcher and carefully carried him off the court. Shortly after arriving back in the stands, the player recovered miraculously and returned to the game.”
The Americans later beat Egypt and Peru in group play, but their own playing style was not well-received. A United Press dispatch from London reported that Olympic officials and the British fans regarded the American team as “too tall, too rough, and too rude” going into the knockout portion of the event.
“Crowds at the tournament in Harringay Arena have rocked the rafters with boos for the Americans,” read the report, which ran in the Lexington Leader. “It’s charged that the U.S. team indulged in swearing, insulted a Chinese referee, and willfully violated the rule against talking while entering the game.”
The booing shifted to applause, according to that UP report, when the Americans “put on a fancy display of razzle-dazzle basketball with virtually no personal contact” in the win over Peru.
In one of his letters to the Lexington Herald, Rollins acknowledged some rough play but said it was largely the result of the physical nature of the Argentina game, which led the Americans to switch up their style and tactics.
“We got pushed all over the floor and almost got beat,” he wrote. “We made up our minds that if it was going to be like that, then we would play that way, too.”
Rollins went on to say that he, Barker and Beard had just received a day off and decided to see some of London. The UK trio mistimed the shopping hours, however — their main goal for the afternoon — so they caught a movie, took a stroll around Piccadilly Circus and then ate at one restaurant after getting kicked out of a nicer one for not wearing ties.
Rupp, according to Rollins, spent his off time visiting towns and farmlands outside of London.
“He is certainly enjoying himself — more than anyone, I’d say,” he said of the UK coach. “ … We’re all a little homesick and anxious to get back to Lexington.”
The food in England was not to the Kentucky players’ tastes.
UK players Dale Barnstable, Joe Holland and Jim Line — all reserves for the Olympic team — made the trip to London through additional funds raised by basketball supporters back home. They wrote of having fun watching the games and seeing the sites in England, but they weren’t keen on the menu.
“The food situation is really bad,” the players wrote in a letter to the Lexington Leader. “What little they do have, they seem to mess up in cooking it. Since leaving the States we have had no milk and only one egg. Give us the old USA anytime.”
The Americans won each of their elimination games by at least 30 points, taking the championship contest against France by a score of 65-21. The squad received their gold medals the following day in Wembley Stadium, where “The Star-Spangled Banner” was played for the victors.
Groza, one of the most-decorated players in UK history, led all scorers with 76 points.
Harringay Arena, where the Wildcats won their gold medals, ceased to be a sports and entertainment venue 10 years after the Olympic Games, serving as a food-storage facility for two decades until the building was demolished in 1978.
Back to Lexington
After beating France for the gold medal, the players headed to Paris, where they spent several days before departing for another one-week trip at sea back to New York.
Rupp opined on that final leg of the Europe trip that France seemed to have recovered better than England from the devastation of World War II, and he added a couple of other points in the country’s favor.
“The people in France eat and dress much better than the English,” the Kentucky coach said.
Rollins, in another letter back home, wrote excitedly about the team’s stay in Paris, including a visit to “the best night club” in the city and sightseeing tours that took the Cats to the Arc de Triomphe, the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Louvre. Another “tour of the night clubs” was scheduled for that night.
Several days later, the Associated Press reported that the U.S. Olympic traveling party arrived in New York to the “loudest harbor celebration” since the first contingent of American soldiers returning from World War II a few years earlier.
Bob Kurland, a 7-footer and star player for the 66ers, had been booed by British crowds due to his size and was happy to be back in his homeland.
“It tickles the hell out of me to see that thing,” he remarked as the ship carrying the Olympians passed by the Statue of Liberty.
An article in the Lexington Leader on the day of the Americans’ arrival in New York outlined the individual travel plans for every one of the UK players who’d made the trip to England.
“We have been playing basketball nine months now,” Rupp said in New York. “And everyone is going home for a rest.”
Sunday
No. 19 Kentucky vs. Michigan
What: Basketball Hall of Fame London Showcase
When: 1 p.m. (EST)
Where: O2 Arena in London, England
TV: ABC-36
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Kentucky 5-2, Michigan 5-2
Series: Kentucky leads 5-2
Last meeting: Kentucky won 75-72 on March 30, 2014, in the NCAA Tournament at Indianapolis.
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