March 23, 2016
Commodore History Corner Archive
The Vanderbilt Commodores basketball team would head into the 1964-65 season with a great deal of optimism. But, in the season-ending game of the year, Vanderbilt would be involved in one of the most controversial calls by officials in its basketball history. It happened on March 13, 1965.
All five starters returned from a fourth-place finish in the Southeastern Conference the previous year with a 19-6 (8-6 SEC) record. Led by junior center All-American Clyde Lee, the Associated Press gave the Commodores a No. 6 preseason ranking.
Coach Roy Skinner’s men began the season with home wins over Rice, SMU and Western Kentucky. The impressive margins of victory enabled Vandy to climb into the third spot in the rankings behind powerful Michigan and Wichita. The first road trip of the season would slow down the Commodores’ ambition.
A 69-64 upset loss at Virginia Tech dropped Vandy to No. 9. Two days later, the Commodores traveled to North Carolina and lost, 84-78. Vanderbilt team captain John Ed Miller regrouped his teammates and the Commodores won the Vanderbilt Invitational Tournament. They followed that by winning the Sugar Bowl Tournament in New Orleans, beating Texas Tech and Louisville.
Vanderbilt began SEC play with eight consecutive wins, followed by a loss at Tennessee, then finished the regular season with seven consecutive wins. Their 23-3 (15-1 SEC) record gave Vanderbilt its first regular season SEC championship and an automatic bid to the 16-team NCAA National Tournament.
The Commodores left for the NCAA Mideast Regional tournament in Lexington, Ky., which included Dayton (21-6), DePaul (17-8) and No. 1 ranked Michigan (21-3). Vanderbilt entered their first game with a No. 5 ranking against legendary coach Ray Meyer’s DePaul Blue Demons. Commodore starters Lee, John Ed Miller, Bob “Snake” Grace, Keith Thomas and Wayne Taylor opened the regional against DePaul. The second game matched No. 1 Michigan with Dayton.
Kentucky’s Memorial Coliseum hosted this event before a crowd of 12,000 fans including an estimated 2,500 from Nashville. The Commodores defeated the Demons 83-78 in overtime to advance to the Elite 8. Lee led the Commodores in scoring with 24 points. Thomas finished with 18, Miller 16, and Wayne Calvert 12.
After the Commodores’ victory, they watched from the stands as Michigan devoured Dayton, 98-71. Dave Strack was Michigan’s coach, with All-American Cazzie Russell, his leader for the Big Ten Conference champions. The winner of the Vanderbilt-Michigan game would compete the following weekend in the Final Four in Portland, Ore.
The underdog Commodores jumped out to a 24-17 lead in the first 10 minutes with Lee, Miller and Thomas carrying the first half burden. Russell’s Wolverines took advantage of 12 Commodore turnovers giving Vandy a slim 39-38 halftime lead.
“Bob Grace and I both got four fouls early in the game,” Lee said in a 2007 interview. “Mine came very, very quickly. Coach Skinner first sat me down, and then he decided he was going to play me one way or another. I played a large part of the first half with four fouls and the entire second half with four fouls without fouling out. The biggest way I got into foul trouble, and I’ll never forget this, because I don’t fully understand today. The first two times I got the ball offensively, with my back to the basket, I made a little drop-step move and was whistled instantly for an offensive foul.
“Watching the tapes, it appeared that my elbow kind of wrapped around, and I guess the official thought I was hooking the guy. Keith Thomas who did a very good job of guarding Cazzie Russell did foul out before the game was over so we had to overcome the foul problems.”
The Wolverines took the second half lead, 49-47, on Larry Tregoning’s basket. A Russell free throw upped the lead to 50-47, but Lee led the Commodores back, giving his team a 57-56 edge. Vanderbilt held the lead until Russell’s jumper at the 1:33 mark put Michigan ahead 81-80.
Then the whistle was heard and “The Call” was made.
Miller found an opening in the foul lane and drove for a lay-up and a one point Commodore lead. Or so it appeared. An official signaled a walking violation on Miller disallowing the basket. Less than a minute remained in the game.
Michigan’s Bill Buntin then hit a short jump shot, extending the lead to 83-80. Vandy added a free throw. Michigan responded with basket and Miller answered with a two-pointer, cutting the lead to 85-83. Vanderbilt began to foul in desperation. Michigan’s Oliver Darden made it 87-83 on two foul shoots with 10 seconds left. Calvert hit a jumper with one second on the clock to finish the game. Michigan squeaked out an 87-85 win.
“The Michigan people did not think very highly of us,” said Lee. “They thought we were overrated as a team and that I was overrated as an individual, having made the All-American team. Then, after the ballgame several Michigan fans came up to us and said they didn’t realize how good we were, and we did deserve the ranking. We made a few believers out of some Big Ten folks that night. They didn’t know how good SEC basketball was.”
Vanderbilt fouled the Wolverines on three separate occasions in the final minute, and on each occasion, Michigan missed the front end of a one-and-one. However, the Commodores could not retrieve any of the rebounds.
“Regardless of the outcome, it was a terrific game,” said Miller. “Neither team led the other team by more than six or seven points at any time in the game, which made it very exciting. We had some foul difficulty. Clyde had four fouls, while ‘Snake’ had three and got his fourth within the first two minutes of the second half. Therefore, we had to play a looser defense inside than we would have otherwise and that created some problems.
“Here we are with two minutes to go, and we are ahead in the game. We had a lot of opportunities when they missed their free throws, but we didn’t get the rebounds. We were by far the best rebounding team in the SEC, and one of the best in the nation. If you look at the statistics of ‘Snake’ and Clyde, these guys rebounded like crazy. It was just one of those things that happened.
“The thing that always comes up about that game is what John Bibb (the late Tennessean sportswriter and later editor) put in the paper about that traveling call. He use to kid me about it and he’d say, ‘Now John Ed, did you really walk?’ I’d say, ‘John, what can I say? They called it. It makes no difference.’ John would write about it every three or five years. He would put it in the bottom of his ‘AYEM’ column, he would say, ‘Now I just want to ask you this, do you remember the John Ed Miller walk?'”
Lee recorded a game-high 28 points with 20 rebounds. Thomas added 21 points for VU, and Miller 17. Russell (6-foot-6, 230 pounds) and Buntin led Michigan with 26 points. Lee was named the Mid-East Regional’s Most Valuable Player, with Thomas also joining that Mid-East Regional team.
Sportswriter Dudley Green of the Tennessean wrote, “Men do not cry without being embarrassed. Vanderbilt’s Commodores were no exception. In locker room D in the Memorial Coliseum in Lexington, Ky., after the bitter 87-85 defeat by Michigan in the Mid-East Regional, the Commodores played various devices to hide their tears.
“Wayne Taylor wrapped his head in a towel and wept softly. Keith Thomas leaned over and stared at the floor. Wayne Calvert just looked into his locker. Bob (Snake) Grace closed his eyes and kept sipping a soft drink.
“Only 10 short hours before the locker room had been a ‘ready’ room for the battle plan. The Commodores had completed a short shooting drill and Coach Roy Skinner had called upon Don Knodel, his assistant to brief them.
“On the blackboard Knodel had injected a bit of humor in listing the Michigan starters. He wrote ‘Cazzie Russell, 6-1, 150.’ In further easing the tension, Knodel opened the briefing with this capsule of the Wolverines: ‘They will trade a hamburger for a steak.’ Meaning they will give up a shot in order to get the ball.'”
The officials, Hal Grossman from the ACC and James Lennon from the Eastern Conference, tagged the Commodores with eight fouls and Michigan only one in the first 15 minutes of the second half. Raymond Johnson wrote the next day in his Tennessean column, “One Man’s Opinion:”
“While Vandy followers complained bitterly about the officiating, Skinner hesitated to comment on it. There is no doubt, however, that Roy was not pleased with the one sidedness of the calls.
“‘The fouls really hurt us at the end,” the Commodore coach said. “We were getting only one shot on their fouls (four were called on Michigan in 2 1/2 minutes in the last five) and they were getting one and one.’
“The one and one didn’t hurt the Commodores too much, because they missed three straight after Cazzie Russell had put his team in front 85-81 on two free throws. Russell had missed the second on a one and one about two minutes earlier.
“When a scribe asked Skinner if there were any particular calls that irritated him, he said, ‘Yes, a couple under their end late in the game and that travel call (it gave Michigan the ball in the last minute with the Wolverines one point in front) hurt.'”
Miller was 8-for-16 from the field and 1-for-2 from the line for 17 points. Michigan beat Bill Bradley’s Princeton squad the next week in the first round of the finals, but lost the championship game to John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins, 91-80.
From Roy Neel’s 1975 book Dynamite, 75 Years of Vanderbilt Basketball, “That game remains one of Vanderbilt basketball’s most exciting. Larry Munson’s television and radio broadcasts gave Nashville fans a memorable evening as he almost lost control toward the game’s end. Nashville sports pages would dominate for days with ‘sidebars,’ and various details about the contest.”
Said Miller, “We were 45 seconds away from the Final Four. We always thought we could beat UCLA. Our guard play would have been able to break the press better than Michigan. That is what beat them. Michigan had Cazzie, and the other big guards who couldn’t get the ball down the court. If you go back and look at that particular game, that’s what killed them.”
Miller, Grace and Lee were named First Team All-SEC. Lee would also be named an All-American. Grace was 2-for-4 in field goals and 3-for-5 from the free throw line for seven total points in the game. He collected 12 rebounds.
“He kept his pivot foot, but they thought he moved it when he made a move to the basket,” Grace said about the controversial call on Miller. “We watched that game film 15 to 20 times a day and never saw a walk at all. The film got worn out from us watching it so many times. It was just a bad call. Coach Skinner wanted to talk to the referee after the game, but as soon as the game was over they were gone.”
Vanderbilt’s remarkable and historic 1964-65 season finished with a 24-4 overall record and a final ranking at No. 8. The next season the Commodores matched that record 24-4 (13-3 SEC) with Lee a senior. Those would be the university’s best records along with the 1992-93 Commodores that would become SEC champions under Eddie Fogler at 28-6.
Skinner would win another SEC title in 1973-74 and become the school’s all-time winningest coach (278-135 — since passed by Kevin Stallings) with four SEC Coach of the Year awards. He passed away in 2010. Skinner is a member of the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame and the Vanderbilt Sports Hall of Fame.
“The referee cheated us,” said Skinner in 2007. “He made a traveling call on John Ed Miller and John Ed did not travel. I looked at that film probably 150 times and there’s no doubt about it. But that’s all hindsight and they beat us by two points in the last few seconds. If we had scored, we’d won by one point. I’m sure of it.”
Traughber’s Tidbit: Vanderbilt fans are still stinging from another controversial official’s call that occurred in Memorial Gym on January 25, 1989 against Florida. With the Commodores battling the Gators for first place in the SEC standings, the important game appeared to belong to Vanderbilt at the close of the game. With the score in Vanderbilt’s favor 71-70, Florida missed a field goal attempt and Frank Kornet was fouled on the rebound. With six seconds remaining, Kornet hit the first of a two-shot opportunity, but missed the second shot.
Florida grabbed the rebound and fired the ball down the court and out of bounds. As the ball rolled out of bounds with one second on the clock, approximately four tennis balls sailed onto the court from the student’s section. Referee John Clougherty raced to the scorer’s table and called a two-shot technical on the Vanderbilt fans. Florida’s 7-foot-2 center Dwayne Schintzius hit both shots to send the game into overtime, which the Gators eventually won, 83-80. Vanderbilt finished the season in second place, one game behind SEC champion Florida.
If you have any comments or suggestions contact Bill Traughber via email WLTraughber@aol.com.
