TRUDEAUX TO KNEIB.
Kneib to Trudeaux.
Trudeaux to Kneib.
Two of Temple's best ball-handlers, Rick Trudeaux and John
Kneib, stood like Easter Island statues in Chuck Taylors, passing the ball back
and forth for minutes at a time. With no shot clock to stop them, the Owls had
decided before their game with host Tennessee in the Volunteer Classic on
December 15,1973, that no matter how ugly or boring it was, or how badly they
desecrated the game of they were going to stall.
For Temple coach Don Casey, this was the Owls' best, and
perhaps only, way to best Tennessee.
"Tennessee had a great team," Casey says. "We
thought this was going to give us the best chance to win. So we took two guys
and put them out by the 28-foot line, had them standing about five feet part,
and we had them pass the ball back and forth, back and forth.
"This was uncharted territory. We didn't know exactly
what we were doing. It got to the point where we said, "Well, what should
we do next?"
Kneib to Trudeaux.
Trudeaux to Kneib.
Kneib to Trudeaux.
As the ball went back and forth and the sands of time oozed
through the hourglass, Tennessee held its ground.
"Temple had a good team," says Len Kosmalski, the
Volunteers' leading scorer that season. "We were prepared for a good game.
Then we got word that Temple didn't think they could play with us. They went
into their stall tactics. We played a disciplined style taught by coach [Ray]
Mears. We were precise. We'd work the ball around until we got a good shot.
Temple thought it would slow the pace down and reverse the roles on us.
[Assistant] coach [Stu] Aberdeen told us, 'Just stay in your positions. Be
patient.' We stayed back in our zone and they passed the ball back and forth at
the top of the key. Six or seven minutes would run off the dock and I'd just be
sitting there in the lane, watching the clock wind down.
"The coaches didn't want us to come out of our 2-3
zone. [Temple] had some good inside players. I guess they thought if they could
draw us out, it would open things for their inside players. The coaches told us
to stay packed in."
Trudeaux to Kneib.
Kneib to Trudeaux.
Trudeaux to Kneib.
The strategy, for lack of a better word, was working Temple
held the ball for the final 11:44 of the first half and went into halftime
trailing by just two points.
Temple went back into the stall in the second half. The
Tennessee crowd, which had lost its patience much earlier, began to well with
hostility. The arena echoed with thousands of boos. Seven or eight police
officers were summoned to stand guard behind the Owls bench, just in case.
Mears also grew angry. "Once in awhile, we'd look down
at them and say, What are you doing? Play some basketball already.'" To
which Casey, in his first year as head coach, would yell back, "Why don't
you come out and get us?"
Says Casey: "I don't understand why they didn't come
out. If they had attacked those two men, there would have been temporary chaos.
We wouldn't have known what to do next."
But as it stood, Temple stalled and Tennessee waited.
"A war of wills ensued," Casey says, "We had no idea what we
were doing. I had no idea how to bring it to a conclusion. It was one of those
things where we got so far into it, we didn't know how to get out of it And
they didn't do anything to get out of it."
Kneib to Trudeaux.
Trudeaux to Kneib.
Kneib to Trudeaux
Temple didn't allow the Volunteers a single shot from the
field in the second half But the Volunteers got four free throws from John Snow
to collect an 11-6 victory. It was the lowest-scoring major college game since
1938. Kosmalski topped all scorers with five points.
Tennessee officials forced the Volunteers to play an
intrasquad scrimmage after the game. "The people had come to see basketball,"
Mears says. "I was angry. I told their coach after the game was over that
this is a game played for our fans. We invited teams from the east and west so
they could see different styles of basketball. Temple had an eastern style. I
told Casey, 'I gave you $10,000 to come in here to play and I'm disappointed.
I'll never invite you back.'"
Casey says he got letters from psychologists, who were
analyzing his personality through how he coached that game. Legendary DePaul
coach Ray Meyers, at the game to see Tennessee in action, forever gave Casey
grief for ruining his scouting trip. Temple didn't get its $10,000 check for
over a year.
To this day, 30 years later, disbelieving fans will come up
to Kosmalski and ask him if the final score was really 11-6.
"People see it in the record book and they ask me about it," Kosmalski says. "I'm like, 'Believe it or not, that was the score.'"
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