In many ways, the ’66 All-City game – the next-to-last ever played – between Corcoran and St. John the Evangelist Eagles was a study in opposites.
Corcoran was in its first year of existence, formed when two public schools from a fading era, Vocational and Occupational (or "VO" to the locals) on the West Side and Onondaga Valley on the South Side, were folded into a single and all-new state-of-the-art facility. Corcoran’s sprawling campus overlooking the city from a hill on the Southwest featured three modern buildings connected by two ultra-modern “bridges” made entirely of glass and steel and spanning a scenic creek winding its way through the school’s well-manicured grounds. In 1966, its inaugural year, Corcoran was home to over 1,600 students, grades 10-12.
St. John the Evangelist, on the other hand, was one of the oldest schools in Syracuse, if not all of Central New York. Formed in 1884 and staffed by the Sisters of St. Joseph, the school was located in what had always been a simple working class neighborhood on the city’s near North Side. Over the years, however, the parish had become less residential as, one-by-one, its modest single-family homes were torn down to accommodate a now booming downtown Syracuse, as well as the expansion of St. Joseph’s Hospital, the Catholic health care facility on nearby Prospect Hill, formed almost a century earlier when a handful of those Sisters of St. Joseph took over an abandoned tavern and installed fifteen beds to tend to the sick among Syracuse’s large population of poor and homeless.
Evangelist’s single brick schoolhouse, a creaky relic from that era, and still blackened from years of airborne coal dust, housed fewer than 200 kids in grades K-12, most of them from the inner city and neighborhoods in and around Syracuse’s North and East Sides.
But the stark difference between the two schools went beyond the physical. Huffman’s starting lineup for the Cougars that Friday featured three African American boys, with three other black kids poised to come off the bench. St. John’s, on the other hand, did not have a single African American in the school, much less on its varsity basketball team.
In addition, Corcoran had a significant height advantage. The three members of Huffman’s front line, the tallest of whom was 6’5” center John Saulietis, were each decidedly taller than their Parochial League counterpart. And St. John’s big man, John Zych, though listed as 6’2”, might have been closer to 6’1”. Meanwhile, at the guard position, Corcoran’s interchangeable and quicksilver backcourt trio, Joe Reddick, Steve Horbanczuk and Howie Harlow, might have all been an inch or two shy of 6’0”, but they could still look down on the Evangelist trio of Tom Downey, Dave Guinta and Billy Jackson, each of whom on a good day might have measured 5’8" or 5'9."
On paper anyway, the game appeared to be a mismatch as Huffman’s Cougars were not merely taller and deeper, but stronger and probably quicker.
For the first ten minutes, however, nothing went according to plan for Coach Huffman. From the opening tip, Evangelist played like world beaters, running, passing and shooting like All Stars, while Corcoran, normally a supremely skilled offensive team, seemed tentative and unsure – and, for the first eight minutes anyway, Huffman’s kids had trouble getting their shots to fall. As a result, behind the torrid shooting of Zych, the ball-handling wizardry of its backcourt trio, Downy, Jackson and Guinta, and a couple of key steals and easy fast breaks, Bobby Felasco’s undersized seniors found themselves one quarter into the game on the sweet end of an 18-7 score.
Early in the period, Jimmy Collins had been whistled for a foul – a call that, in the opinion of many, could have gone either way. He was then immediately whistled for another. Between quarters, Huffman pulled his star aside, looked him in the eye and cautioned him not to be too aggressive. The coach knew that everyone in the War Memorial was focusing their attention on him, and that included the officials. “Jimmy,” Huffman said sternly but softly. “Play hard, but stay in control. We need you out there.”
In the second quarter, as both coaches figured they might, the Cougars started to make a run. Now fully warmed up and into the flow, Reddick and Harlow started picking up steals of their own and scored a handful of easy baskets. Even though Collins continued to be dogged from end to end by St. John’s best defender, a long, lean and athletic Italian from the West Side named Al Denti, and had yet to find his stroke, by halftime Huffman’s Cougars had erased the double-digit deficit and had nosed back ahead, 31-29. The problem was that in the process Collins had picked up a third foul when he tried to follow up one of his own misses by climbing over the back of Zych, Felasco's most complete player.
In the locker room at halftime, Coach Huffman talked about staying in control. His boys were still not shooting well from the outside, but were playing relentlessly on the boards. In fact, although rebounds were not tracked in high school games, some on hand claimed Corcoran grabbed two rebounds for every one of Evangelist’s. Huffman told his team in the locker room to keep their heads up. "Your shots will start falling," he told them, "but in the meantime all you can do is play as hard as you’ve been."
There was something that Huffman didn’t tell his team, however, and didn’t have to. Most of them knew it anyway, because most had been living it since they’d started playing ball back in grade school. What Huffman didn't tell his boys that cold March night was that if the game remained tight, close calls were not going to go their way. It was a simple fact of life and a cold, hard truth for any black player during the eight-year run of the All City game. Certain refs were never going to give them the benefit of the doubt, much less a close call. And the tighter a game got, and the more time ticked away, the longer the odds became that a predominantly black team would get a fair shake from the two game officials – all but one of whom in Central New York were white.
While this was not true of all the city’s refs – in fact, it was not true for most officials in Syracuse, regardless of the sport – in the minds of many of Corcoran’s players, it was as real as real could be. For young men whose birthright was not one necessarily brimming with open doors and ripe opportunities, moments of injustice, disappointment and frustration had become something of a given. Those African American kids knew that when a coin got tossed and they called heads, no matter how many times it tumbled on the way down, the odds were when it stopped spinning it was going to read tails.
So Huffman did not say a word about close calls or officiating. Because even though he was their coach, first and foremost, he was their teacher. He'd already taught them the most important lesson he ever would: to control what you can in life and not worry about the rest. More than basketball, Ken Huffman felt his job was to teach those kids things they'd need to know as men – things that would, hopefully, serve as cornerstones of their lives long after they'd stopped dribbling, shooting and running up and down a basketball court. That didn't mean Ken Huffman, the coach, neglected to school his boys on things like zone defenses, trap presses, and how to run a pick-and-roll. It just meant Ken Huffman, the teacher, was constantly stressing more important things like hope, determination, cooperation, self-sacrifice and, above all, personal responsibility.
Sure, many of his players joked and called him "Old Stoneface" for his almost comically stoic demeanor, regardless of how crazy things got. But they also knew that despite his laid-back and almost emotionless manner, his messages were always going to be positive, honest and delivered with the kind of passion and perspective you'd expect from a man whose priorities were squarely in order.
As he gave them his final few words of encouragement and sent his team back out, Huffman walked up behind Collins and pulled him aside. “Jimmy, I know your shots aren't falling, but don’t worry. I want you to concentrate on playing hard and avoiding contact. If we’re going to win this we need you on the floor, okay? Don’t give them any excuse to hit you with any more cheap fouls. Just stay a couple steps from your man with your hands up.” With that, he patted his star on the backside and sent him out to join his teammates.
In the third quarter what Huffman predicted would happen, actually did. Corcoran’s shooters started to find their range. What's more, although Collins still had not hit his stride, his work on the boards revealed him to be an athlete, clearly, a cut or two above any other on the floor.
With just over five minutes to play in the third, Corcoran held a 35-31 lead and game would stay a four-point affair until, with under a half a minute to go and Evangelist seemingly poised to take the last shot, Downy missed a short jumper. But the talented and hard-working Zych somehow forced his way through a forest of outstretched arms to tip-in the miss. The Evangelist fans roared, buoyed by the prospect of entering the final stanza trailing by just two.
But Collins quickly in-bounded the basketball to his friend, the lightning-quick Reddick, who streaked up left side, planted, and launched a picture-perfect 25’ jump shot. With just two seconds to go, a breathless silence hung over the crowd as the ball floated toward the goal, its rotation and arc in perfect harmony. The ball caught softly in the net just as the buzzer sounded. The Corcoran faithful exploded, echoing the roar that just seconds earlier had emanated from the other side of the building. By the time the cheering had subsided, both teams were back in their respective huddles and the Cougars' lead was back up to four.
The opening minute of the fourth quarter was without scoring but not without incident. On Evangelist’s first possession, Zych drove the baseline and Collins, attempting to provide help from the weak side, soared up and blocked the shot. In the opinion of Ponti, however, he fouled Zych with his body. A whistle blew and the Corcoran star spun in its direction, eyes open and mouth wide. It was his fourth. One more and he'd be out of the game for good, disqualified for having accumulated five fouls.
As he stared at Henry Ponti pointing at him, he did so convinced of one of two things: either the man was a terrible ref, or he had it in for him. In the first half, Ponti had whistled Collins for his first foul and, though he didn’t believe he was guilty of the infraction, he chose to swallow any urge to complain. Now, his frustration inching toward the boiling point, Coach Huffman’s words kept echoing louder and louder in his young brain: “We need you on the court.”
Exhaling, Collins took his position at the side of the lane. Leaning over and with his hands on his knees, he then watched silently through burning eyes as a bead of sweat trickled down his nose and onto the floor.
From the bench, Ken Huffman was trying to catch Collins' eye, but the youngster refused to look in his direction. Exasperated, Huffman rose, strode toward the scorer’s table and yelled out to his star forward. He wanted to tell him no more fouls at any cost, but Collins just stood there under the basket, hands on his knees and staring at the floor. That’s when Huffman sensed it. As he turned back toward his bench, he looked up into the stands and felt an almost palpable hostility radiating from the State Street side. He'd been so immersed in the game, he hadn't noticed it before. Or maybe it had been simmering and only bubbled over after Ponti blew his whistle and called Collins’ block a foul.
Whatever the case, when Huffman looked up he could see hundreds of fans, many of them black, pointing toward the court, making angry faces and howling their displeasure. It was almost as though all the frustration Collins was feeling was being channeled through the thousands rooting for him. And those thousands were letting the refs have it, but good.
Huffman didn’t give it another thought. He couldn’t. He had a game to win. Then again if he had, he might have realized that even though Syracuse had remained relatively free of racial turmoil, the uncontrolled rage that African Americans elsewhere had been exhibiting for years was now starting to work its way into the hearts and minds of black Americans in the Salt City as well. And, as the Corcoran faithful in the stands watched their team's biggest game of the year get hijacked, they grew more and more enraged – near riot-level enraged.
From his perch, Bob Felasco could feel the same thing as Huffman. He'd actually noticed it earlier, back in the third quarter when every call that went against Corcoran, even the obvious ones, was met with raucous howls. The Evangelist coach could feel a growing sense of anger so thick and real it seemed to take shape and form. He'd also noticed in the third quarter that a handful of the cops on hand had started working their way down toward the floor. For the briefest of moments, the 36-year old Felasco got lost in the moment, allowing himself to imagine what would happen if things actually erupted. But quickly he shook the thought away and re-focused, bringing his eyes back to the matter at hand. Like Huffman, he too had a game to win.
As Corcoran and St. John the Evangelist battled down the stretch, the game turned into a see-saw affair. Corcoran's Steve Horbanczuk’s basket with 7:15 gave the Cougars their biggest lead of the game, 44-38. But then Zych and Guinta scored on successive trips to pull Felasco’s team back to within two, 44-42. Two more empty trips for Corcoran were followed, first by an Evangelist free throw and then by a driving basket by Downey, making the score 45-44. St. John the Evangelist, the undersized but still-undefeated Parochial League champion, had its first lead of the half and the thousands of fans on the Montgomery Street side of the War Memorial were on their feet in joyous celebration.
Corcoran, however, was not about to go down without a fight. At the 3:14 mark, Reddick burst through the lane and, after a stunning reverse move, banked the ball softly off the glass to tie the game at 47. Collins followed with two foul shots to give the Cougars the lead once again, 49-47.
With just over two minutes to go, Felasco called a time out to give his seniors a chance to catch their breaths and to tell them how he wanted to play the final two minutes. In the opposite huddle, Huffman implored his boys to keep their zone packed tightly, to remember to move their feet on defense, and to above all, find a man and box him out when a shot went up.
When play resumed, Evangelist worked the ball around aggressively and found an open Downey near the top of the key. Looking for the first good shot as instructed by Felasco, Downey fired away and missed, but in the process drew a foul on Reddick. He went to the line with 1:30 to play and his team trailing by two.
As Downey awaited the ball from Don Blaich, Collins took his spot under the basket to the right side of the lane, just as he had done after his fourth foul. The previous time, Collins didn’t dare look to the bench. By getting whistled for his fourth foul with so much time still remaining, he knew all Huffman would need was one look and he'd pull his star from the game until such a time that he needed him again – should he need him again.
But that was no longer an issue and the point was now moot. With just ninety seconds left, Kenny Huffman had stopped thinking long-term. He was no longer treating Collins as a kid with four personal fouls. Jimmy Collins was his best player – heck, he was maybe the best player in the history of the city – and he needed him right where he was. The lanky Collins, his body glistening with sweat, put his hands on his knees again and, just as he had done before, and stared blankly at the floor.
Downey looked around at the foul line. He'd played every minute of the game and his tank was close to empty. He saw his teammates on either side of the lane and knew they felt much the same way, especially Zych, his team's center who'd been battling the taller, more powerful Cougar front line all night long.
Downey also noticed Denti, the skinny 6’1” Italian kid whose freakishly long arms, huge heart and obsessive nature made him the perfect defensive stopper. All game long it was Denti who had hounded Collins and who'd forced him into the poorest shooting performance of his schoolboy career. Collins, the 6’3” thoroughbred, would go on to play for New Mexico State, become a first-team All American, star in the NCAA Tournament, lead his team to the Final Four, be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and get selected by the Chicago Bulls in the first round of the NBA draft. But tonight, Denti had frustrated him to no end; denying him the ball, regularly cutting off his path to the lane, and forcing him – at least for this one game – to become more a passer and rebounder than scorer.
Of course, while much of Collins’ frustration was a result of Denti’s pressure, he was more upset over his own performance. As a young man who intended to play basketball at a major college level, he felt he should have been able to overcome, not just Denti’s determined defense, but the bad calls. However, as a teenager whose sense of responsibility was not nearly as developed as his body, that particular night Collins blamed the refs – particularly Ponti – for taking him out of the game.
As Downey stood on the line, ball in hand, preparing to take the first of his two shots, the senior guard bent his knees and exhaled. Tom Downey was not the most talented of Bob Felasco’s five seniors, but he was unquestionably their leader. An intelligent, handsome young man, whose two older brothers had starred for Felasco, Downey had grown up in a working-class Irish family and been exposed early on to the intensity of Friday night Parochial League play. As a kid watching his brothers do battle week after week, he knew it would just be a matter of time before a situation like this would present itself. He was more than ready. With a confident flick of his right wrist Downey let his first free throw fly.
The shot hit the front edge of the rim, bounced twice and dropped through. The Evangelist faithful roared, but Downey found himself unnerved. He thought the shot was perfect when he released it, but when he saw it almost fall short he involuntarily gasped and felt his heart race slightly. It must be my legs are going, he thought to himself. Must be getting tired. Better put a little something extra on the next one.
Blaich snapped Downey the ball for the second free throw. The Evangelist point guard took it, spun it gently in his hands, and said a quiet prayer. This one would tie the game with just 1:30 to play. He studied the grain of the ball, lined up its seams and blocked out the crowd. Then, looking up, he took a deep breath, exhaled, and let fly.
From the moment it left his hands, Downey knew he'd overcompensated. The shot hit back-iron, curled around the rim and fell off on the right side, where Collins stood. Boxing out the man to his left, the rail-thin Collins exploded skyward toward the ball and grabbed it with both hands. Then, just as he'd done hundreds of times before in high school, practice and pickup games, Jimmy Collins, stuck his rear end out and swung both elbows to clear defenders away and protect the ball from any would-be thieves.
It was not an entirely legal move – the rules of basketball prohibited throwing elbows – but referees treated the elbow rule much like cops treated jaywalking. When an elbow was thrown, basketball officials would generally, in their parlance, “swallow" their whistles – unless it connected, in which case they'd call a foul on the player throwing it. However, if the elbow was thrown with such menace and disregard for safety that it seemed intentional, even if it didn’t connect, the refs would often enforce the rule, call a turnover, and give the opposing team possession.
The events that followed over the next four seconds of game time were not clear then, nor would they become any clearer with the passage of time. The facts, much like a half-full/half-empty debate, seemed to rely heavily upon the person doing the talking. Jimmy Collins may or may not have hit Al Denti in the face with an elbow. Collins certainly didn’t think so, nor did his coach who would spend the rest of his life contending there was no Evangelist player within two feet of his star.
Felasco, on the other hand, said he not only heard the contact, but saw it with his own eyes. And Denti, for his part, contended Collins’ elbow hit him so hard his first thought was that it had drawn blood.
At least one observer, seated directly under the Evangelist basket, saw things differently than his fellow Parochial Leaguers. Mike Kitts, a 15-year old sophomore at St. Anthony’s and a young man who in time would become one of the most storied gym rats in Syracuse, said that Collins never came close to touching Denti. In fact, he would later say the call was one of the worst he'd ever seen in his life.
And understand, by the time he said that, Mike Kitts had seen – and made – plenty of calls on a basketball court, both good and bad. When he was in his thirties, he gave up playing altogether and focused on becoming a full-time college official. Kitts’ talent for calling a game soon became so razor-sharp (and evident) that within a few short years he'd managed to turn himself into one of the most sought after and hardest working college refs on the planet; compiling a working resume that included at least 40 NCAA tournament games, a handful of Final Four contests, and in 2009, the Naismith Foundation Award as the finest Division I referee in America.
What cannot be disputed is the fact that when Downey’s second shot missed, half the crowd groaned, and the other half exploded. We know too that Jimmy Collins came down with the ball at chest level, his rear end extended and his elbows cocked at each side, as if ready to strike. We are also certain that Collins then fired an outlet pass to Harlow, who raced up the sideline, his team in possession of both the ball and a one point lead.
Unnoticed, however, and drowned out by the thundering roar, was a solitary figure standing well past the top of the key: Henry Ponti, his right hand raised and his whistle bleating madly.
Virtually every last one of the 5,838 fans in attendance, his fellow referee, both coaches, and all twenty four players quickly turned toward Ponti and grew quiet as he started to run in an exaggerated manner toward Collins. Wanting to make sure of his partner’s call, since he was closer to the play, Blaich raced to intercept him.
“I have a foul on number 45,” announced Ponti, swinging his elbows back and forth just as Collins had just done. He pointed accusingly at the Corcoran star. “He elbowed the man in the face.”
As the call got announced, the Montgomery Street side of the building erupted in joy, while the State Street side exploded in a mix of disbelief and horror. Collins just stood there frozen, the realization sinking in that he’d just been disqualified from the biggest game of his life. Perhaps he was in denial, maybe disbelief. He was sure he hadn’t touched Denti. Maybe he'd swung an elbow. Maybe. He often did when grabbing a rebound. But he didn’t make contact. Not even close.
But as he stood and watched, Henry Ponti, the gangly showman who he now blamed for stealing the biggest game of his life, came skipping at him. As Ponti raised his index finger to point in his direction, Collins felt the blood begin to pound in his brain, his eyes growing hot with rage. Finally, Jimmy Collins, the thoughtful, respectful and fiercely talented leader of the Corcoran High Cougars, had had enough. The frustration he'd been swallowing all game long started choking him, to the point he felt like his head might explode.
The slender forward looked down at the object in his hands, and not knowing what else to do, let out a yell and with as much strength as he could muster, slammed it onto the floor.
As it caromed off the hardwood and arced ten, twelve feet above the War Memorial hardwood, the crowd’s roar seemed to somehow find an even higher gear. Then, as the ball reached its peak and slowly started descending, Ponti spun and strode toward the scorer’s table, his two hands banging together in a capital “T” and his voice rising above the throbbing chorus of boos, “That’s a technical foul on number 45.”
The noise grew even more deafening and seemed to shake the War Memorial to its very rafters. As he looked up at the scoreboard, mayhem all about, Kenny Huffman simply stuck his hands in his pants pockets, took a deep breath and exhaled, unable to do a thing about what had just transpired. He stood there a moment and slowly started to absorb the grim realization that not only had his team self-destructed, but his best player was gone and his lead was about to be.
Even before the ball had started its descent, the handful of cops assigned to the game at the behest of Father Sammons had quickly begun working their way into position at the four corners of the court. Knowing they were vastly outnumbered, they looked up at the crowd and then began shooting each other brief, furtive glances.
Collins’ fifth foul was a non-shooting one, and since the Cougars were not in the penalty no foul shots were awarded. However, St. John the Evangelist did have a free throw coming for the technical, and to shoot it Felasco pointed to his tall, blond center with the feathery touch. As the taunts and screams of the Corcoran faithful cascaded down upon him, John Zych calmly stepped to the line and sank the technical to tie the game at 49 all.
Almost forgotten in the mayhem following Collins’ outburst and subsequent technical was the fact that the Corcoran star had fouled out. As many players are instructed to do after committing their fifth foul, Collins was going to stay on the court until one of the refs told him to leave. Neither did; at least not until Dave Guinta was about ready to inbound the ball. At that point the official scorer began signaling frantically that the foul on Collins was his fifth and that he was out of the game.
In 1966, scoreboards did not display how many fouls each player had, so many in the stands were confused as to the exact nature of the delay. All they saw were the two referees huddled over the scorer’s table. Then suddenly, as if shot from a cannon, one of the two, Ponti, turned and sprinted toward Collins, pointing at him and signaling him to the bench.
For those unaware that the All-World Collins had committed his fifth and final foul and was, therefore, disqualified, it appeared as though Ponti had just thrown him out for slamming the ball. When he pointed at Collins and motioned him to the bench, many of the Corcoran faithful rose to their feet and leaned forward, many of them with clenched fists and eyes glowing with rage.
Anyone who'd ever seen an angry mob knew this wasn’t just any heated response to a call; this was something else entirely. There was genuine concern on the part of many of in the arena, especially Sammons and the handful of cops he'd hired. It was now abundantly clear to everyone that the State Street side of the building might go over the edge at any moment.
Fortunately, the public address announcer quickly clarified that Collins had not been thrown out, but had fouled out – information he then chose to repeat over the garbled P.A. system, just to make sure it was heard, and heard clearly. And while many Cougar fans still seemed ready to charge the court, even after the announcement, his words nevertheless seemed to diffuse a good deal of the tension as they washed over the crowd and began to sink in.
With the momentum now clearly in his favor and the ball in his possession, Bobby Felasco called his next-to-last time out. Logic would dictate he set up for one final shot. But logic didn’t have to try to keep the ball away from two lightning-quick defenders like Joe Reddick and Howie Harlow. And logic had no way of knowing just how dangerous a slow tempo might be for his once-in-a-generation quintet. By failing to be aggressive and attack the basket, even for a minute and a half, Felasco would not only be ceding the momentum that had been gift-wrapped for him, he’d be forcing his seniors to play in a manner inconsistent with how they'd played their entire careers.
Instead, Felasco made a gutsy decision. “Alright you guys,” he told his boys. “This game is ours if we want it. Let’s work our offense and take the first good shot we get.” They put their hands together and broke the huddle, and as they were walking away from him he yelled to his five seniors, “Follow your shots.” With that, he took the piece of gum that he had been chewing since halftime out of his mouth and, with his left hand, fired it under the bench.
Meanwhile, Ken Huffman had also chosen to defy conventional wisdom. With his best player now sitting next to him and his team still reeling, many coaches would have elected to play a zone in anticipation of the other team trying to hold the ball for the last shot. Under such circumstances, a zone defense generally does three things: it minimizes the chances of a foul, it greatly increases the odds that your opponent's next shot – maybe his last – will be a long-range attempt, and it puts your big men in great position to rebound a miss.
But as he looked around at his kids, Huffman sensed the time had come to let the reins out and see just how much they had left. Sometimes teaching is about learning. And sometimes coaching is more than simply moving pegs around a board or drawing X’s and O’s on a piece of paper. It’s about looking into a young man’s eyes and trying to measure what you find there. It’s about character; finding it, trusting it and giving it a chance to manifest itself. For Ken Huffman, this was one such time.
“OK guys, we're going man,” he told his team, meaning they'd be defending Evangelist man-to-man, rather than playing a safer, but ultimately more reactive zone defense. “Let’s try to force the action. Go for the steal if you can, but don't take chances. Pressure the ball and deny them the passing lanes. And remember, don’t reach in. Move those feet; we can’t afford any more cheap fouls.”
He saw in their faces they were dog-tired. They’d given him just about everything they had. But he also sensed his decision to play man-to-man had just communicated to his young Cougars the confidence he still had in them. It was as though he had told them, “Look, we don’t have our best player out there, but that doesn’t matter. I know in my heart the five we do have are better than theirs. Now, let’s go prove it.”
As they eagerly turned to head back to the south end of the court, Huffman patted Reddick on the butt, leaned in and said to him, “We need you, Joe.” Reddick nodded without turning back. As he watched Reddick and his four mates trot away, Kenny Huffman sensed in his team a fire that he had not seen in them since the second quarter.
As Evangelist worked the ball around, Reddick watching a pattern develop that he'd seen whenever Corcoran was in their man-to-man defense. Evangelist’s offside guard would set a pick low for a teammate in the corner, who would then fake to the baseline, drive his man into the pick and come up to meet the ball. Reddick had seen the pattern unfold enough to sense what was coming. When he saw the pick forming in the weak side corner, he drifted off his man to cut off the passing lane. His anticipation of a pass to the wing proved spot-on. Just as Guinta released the ball in Zych's direction, the Corcoran guard exploded into the passing lane. Because the pass was crisp, he didn’t intercept it cleanly. But he did knock it away. And as the ball bounded out toward half court and Reddick sprinted after it, Huffman jumped off the bench, his fist clenched, while the Cougar fans leapt to their feet and roared.
Guinta and Jackson, each anticipating Reddick beating them to the ball, immediately began back-pedaling toward the Corcoran basket. Reddick, confident he could reach the ball before anyone, started looking downcourt even before fully gaining possession. What he saw were Guinta and Jackson trying to cut off his direct route to the goal.
A less confident player might have simply picked up the ball and waited for his teammates before heading up-court. Another more cautious player might have even chosen to call a time-out once he'd established possession. But Reddick was a supremely confident young man whose combination of quickness and strength was unmatched by any player still left in the game. Once he gained possession, he looked up and quickly surveyed the situation. He saw the basket ahead of him, guarded by only two men, both of whom he knew he could either jump over or run past. So while other lesser players might have played it safe, Joe Reddick rolled the dice.
Angling his body and bending down ever so slightly while still in a full gallop, Reddick began dribbling with his off-hand down the left sideline. As Guinta raced to cut off his path to the basket, Reddick crossed over with his right hand and pushed the ball up the center of the court. Jackson met him there, but Reddick gave him a stutter step and bounced to the right of the key. He was now just eighteen feet from the basket with the game tied and just fifty-five seconds to play.
As the other seven players raced up court and the crowd rose to its feet, the Cougar guard seemed to slow as if waiting for his teammates get into position. But just as he did that, and Jackson slowed with him, Reddick suddenly crossed over again with his left hand and exploded past the defender toward the foul line. There he met Guinta; arms straight up and holding his position.
Worried that he might plow into the Evangelist guard and commit an offensive foul, Reddick planted both feet and shot straight up. He was now fifteen feet from the basket and head and shoulders above the defender. At the top of his leap, Reddick flicked his right wrist and arched the ball softly toward the rim. As it began descending he felt Guinta – as his wily coach had trained him to do over and over – inching forward in an attempt to take a charge. At that point, instead of watching the flight of the ball, Reddick instinctively looked down and twisted his body to avoid a collision.
The next thing he knew Joe Reddick was flat on his back, his head having smacked hard against the floor. As he lay there slightly dazed, he felt the War Memorial suddenly become enveloped in an eerie, almost surreal calm. On his back and seeing stars, Reddick could barely hear the Corcoran faithful erupting in joy. He couldn’t feel the thunderous pounding of feet in the stands or the vibration that shook the floor beneath him. Nor could he see his friend Jimmy Collins, his coach, or his teammates on the bench screaming his name and pumping their fists in celebration. All he saw as he lay there beneath was a deflated Dave Guinta moving away from him as if in slow motion, slowly blinking his eyes in disbelief and mechanically bringing his hands together to call a timeout.
With 38 seconds to play in the 1966 All-City Championship, the greatest high school game many had ever seen, Joe Reddick had just given his team the lead by using his brains at one end of the court and his body at the other. What Reddick did on defense was the result of carefully studying his opponent and anticipating his next move, while his basket at the offensive end was nothing more than a stunning combination of confidence, athleticism and body control.
* * * * *
On the Evangelist bench, Bobby Felasco felt the knot tighten. He was in the same situation he'd been less than a minute ago – in possession of the ball and huddled with his team – with one major difference. This time, trailing by two, Felasco’s margin for error had been reduced to zero. A minute ago he was simply trying to prevent having to play an overtime period; now he was trying to force one.
“Alright boys, that was a heck of a shot. Now, we gotta go to work,” Felasco barked as he chewed yet another stick of gum. In a voice that seemed to get thinner and raspier with each word, he told his seniors to run their offense, but to look for Zych. Corcoran had been unable to stop the Evangelist center all night and he'd scored 22 of the team’s 49 points on a series of short jumpers and strong moves to the basket.
However, in the other huddle, Huffman sensed that Zych might be the guy Felasco would go to with the game on the line. He told Bob Stroman to deny Zych the ball and front him, if necessary. By “fronting” a player, the defender actually stands in front of the player he is guarding, rather than between him and the basket. Doing so makes it much tougher to pass the ball to that player. However, it is a calculated risk in that, by not standing between the man and the basket, the offensive player is in excellent position to turn to the basket and rebound or tip-in a missed shot.
As Evangelist worked their offense, the clock winding down, Stroman fronted Zych to deny him the ball. It only took Felasco a few seconds of game time to see what Corcoran was doing and he yelled out to his point guard, Downey. “Tommy…Tommy…,” he screamed in a voice like sandpaper. Downey, dribbling, looked over his shoulder and caught Felasco’s eye. The coach held up one finger and mouthed the words, “First good shot.” Downey nodded.
From the right wing, Jackson had a clear line of sight to his coach and saw what Felasco had just said to Downey. There were now less than 30 seconds to play. As the ball went to the left wing, Downey came to pick for Jackson on the right side. Then Jackson, rather than driving his man into the pick and crossing down the lane as he had done countless times before earlier in the contest, faked left and simply stepped back behind Downey. Denti whipped him the ball. Harlow, the defender, was not only tired, he had fully expected Jackson to slash to the basket as he had done so many times before.
So, rather than fighting through the pick, Harlow cheated and ran around Downey into the lane. To his dismay, when he jumped out to cut off Jackson’s path to the basket, he found no one there. Instead, he saw the Evangelist guard seven feet from him, ball in hand and lining up a game-tying eighteen-foot jump shot. Harlow instinctively lunged at Jackson, and as he did, realized he'd just made a major mistake. Jackson’s wide open jumper had left his hands, but not before Harlow’s straining, outstretched hand slapped the Evangelist shooter's right arm with a loud thwack.
Harlow heard the whistle and could only watch as he stumbled past Jackson onto the floor, his eyes fixed on the ball as it sailed toward the basket. The Evangelist faithful let out a thunderous roar as Don Blaich ran toward the now-prone Harlow, his left hand pointing and his right hand forming a fist in the air.
With nine seconds left and his team trailing by a single basket, Billy Jackson went to the line to tie the game. Calmly, he made the first free throw; then took a deep breath and drained the second. With the crowd still on its feet and buzzing, a last-second Corcoran shot went wide and, as though preordained by some higher power, the game moved into overtime.
In the extra period, the strain of playing without their best player finally caught up with Ken Huffman’s team. Collins’ disqualification, coupled with Felasco’s seniors’ ability to withstand Reddick’s late-game haymaker, had them disheartened and deflated, their tanks now truly on empty. Zych scored the first four points, which would turn out to be three more than Corcoran would tally the entire overtime period. In the final minute, with the Cougars forced to foul, the game became a free throw shooting contest, which was never a good situation for any club trying to catch a Bobby Felasco-coached team.
As the clock wound down to zero and the final horn sounded, many of the Corcoran players, completely drained of energy, if not emotionally spent, simply fell to the floor and sat or knelt in silence. On the bench, Collins took a towel and held it to his face. Huffman, after having met Felasco at the scorer’s table to shake his hand and congratulate him, turned back toward the Corcoran bench and saw his players scattered here and there, most staring blankly and alone in their pain. It was only then that the impact of what had just happened hit him.
Kenny Huffman wanted to win just as much as the next guy; maybe more so. But it wasn’t until he saw his kids in the throes of such an agonizing defeat that he realized just how badly he wanted to win this one for them, and how much – and for how long – losing it was going to gnaw at him.
Meanwhile, local legend has it that even as the last vestiges of the final horn were echoing, referee Henry Ponti had already left the court and was running past the stands on his way to the referees' locker rooms. As he neared the hallway leading to his dressing room, a well-dressed, heavy-set black woman with a cloth coat and a pillbox hat screamed at him from above. She then swung her purse directly down on the top of his head, hitting him flush. Hank Ponti never looked up and he never broke stride.
* * * * *
The following week, Ken Huffman was walking down Warren Street in downtown Syracuse when he heard someone call his name. There on the opposite side of street stood Don Blaich, the referee who'd just worked the All City game. “Hold on,” said Blaich, “I want to talk to you.” When traffic cleared, Blaich bounded across the street and stuck out his right hand, which Huffman took. “Look, Kenny. I just want to say, I’m sorry…” His voice trailed off and he stood there for a moment, as though searching for the right words. Finally, he just raised his eyebrows, shrugged, and gave the Corcoran coach a knowing but helpless look. He then turned his palms skyward and said, “What can I say? It wasn’t my call.”
A few weeks later, Huffman was sitting alone in Danzer’s, a popular Bavarian style restaurant on the North Side, enjoying a beer and one of the kitchen’s legendary mile-high corned beef sandwiches. It was late March. The days had grown visibly longer and the sidewalks were dry after a long day’s worth of springtime sun. For one afternoon anyway, it seemed Syracuse might have finally escaped the clutches of yet another winter.
As he sat there and waited for his meal, Ken Huffman opened that afternoon’s Herald-Journal and began reading about the previous night’s NCAA Championship. A surprising upstart team, the University of Texas at El Paso had somehow managed to upset "Baron" Adolph Rupp’s powerful and heavily favored University of Kentucky Wildcats at Cole Field House in Maryland. There was no mention of race in the AP story, but the game would eventually be regarded as one of the seminal moments in the history of American sports, because that night Coach Don Haskins’ UTEP Miners featured, for the first time ever in an NCAA title game, an all-black starting lineup. Rupp, meanwhile, who was to many the embodiment of the Jim Crow South, had started five white kids.
When the bartender brought Huffman his sandwich, he put the paper down, took a bite and began to chew. At that very moment he saw coming toward him an old acquaintance who also happened to be one of the most veteran basketball officials in town. The man gave Huffman a big smile, shook his hand and gave him a warm pat on the shoulder. He told him he’d seen the All-City game a few weeks back and that his kids fought a tough battle, but just didn’t apparently have enough in them that night.
He then sat down, ordered a beer and began commiserating with Huffman, saying something to the effect that it must be hard coaching at a school like Corcoran, knowing how certain types of players get treated by certain refs. It was all Ken Huffman could do not to unload on the guy and begin venting about the injustice he felt had been done to his kids, who he'd grown to love in their time together. Instead he just chewed his sandwich, took a sip of beer and nodded his head in a polite, neutral, I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it way.
“Of course, I’d never do that,” said the man, taking a sip of his own. “I just don’t see color when I’m on the court. Know what I mean, Kenny?” He then added, almost as an afterthought, as he tried to get the bartender’s attention for some peanuts, “No sir, when I call a game I call it exactly the same for the white kids as I do for the niggers.”
* * * * *
