March Madness Memories: Loyola vs. Mississippi State, 1963

There were serious questions confronting head coach George Ireland and the Loyola Ramblers as they entered the 1963 NCAA tournament. They had not looked like the same team since losing Pablo Robertson, a lightning-fast point guard, and Billy Smith, a strong rebounder and inside scoring threat, when both were declared ineligible in early February after failing to pass their midterm exams.  

     It says something about the academic integrity of the university and its athletic department that Ireland’s top two reserves could be booted off a team that was undefeated, ranked No. 2 in the country, and taking aim at a possible national championship. Many other universities would have finagled a way to keep the two players on the team, but at Loyola the term “student-athlete” retained its intended meaning. Loyola’s players were students first and athletes second. As if to drive the point home, the Ramblers’ five starters went on to earn eleven college degrees among them.  

     The five were forwards Jerry Harkness and Vic Rouse, center Les Hunter, and guards Ron Miller and John Egan. They were four African Americans and an Irish kid from the South Side, representing a Jesuit school that was virtually unknown outside of Chicago. Their climb to the top of the college basketball world was an inspiring story in itself, which also took on greater significance as a harbinger of changing times.

 

HARKNESS AND GOLD MEET BEFORE THE GAME.

The absence of Robertson and Smith meant that the five “iron men,” as they soon came to be called, had their work cut out for them. Ireland’s bench produced a total of 15 points in the final six regular-season games, of which the previously unbeaten Ramblers lost two while narrowly averting two other losses.

Loyola opened the tournament on March 11 against Tennessee Tech at McGaw Hall in Evanston. The Ramblers were ready. They scored 16 of the game’s first 18 points and surged to a 61-20 lead by halftime. Loyola shot 56 percent from the floor and presented an almost perfectly balanced attack—none of the five starters scored more than 21 points or fewer than 17. Ireland called off the dogs when Loyola went over the 100-point mark with five minutes left. He emptied the bench, and all four of his remaining reserves not only played but scored. (None of the backups scored another point in the tournament, and just one of them, Chuck Wood, saw further action.) The final score was 111-42.

Among the awestruck spectators was Babe McCarthy, coach of the Mississippi State team that was due to face Loyola next. “I wish I’d stayed home,” McCarthy said. “Nobody can beat a team like that. They are the best fast-break team, the best ball hawks, I’ve ever seen.”

McCarthy, his players, and the Mississippi State administration emerged as heroes of a sort in the following days. Not only was their university all-white, but its athletic teams were forbidden by tradition to even play against integrated teams. Nonetheless, the Maroons intended to keep their date with Loyola on March 15 in East Lansing, Michigan.

The Maroons had accepted an automatic bid to the tournament as champions of the Southeast Conference on March 2, and the question of their participation might have ended there. However, when the brackets were published and the likelihood of a matchup with Loyola became apparent, newspapers and politicians in Mississippi saw a chance to make some hay. A paper in Jackson invited readers “to clip the photo of the Loyola team and mail it today to the board of trustees” of the university. An editor in Meridian was more explicit: “Especially in these times we should make no compromise regarding our Southern way of life; we cannot afford to give a single inch.”

After Loyola defeated Tennessee Tech (itself an all-white team), the issue came to a head. When asked about the controversy, Harkness showed that he was wise beyond his years. “I think that Mississippi State wants to play us,” he said. “If they don’t, they’ll never know how good they are.”

Mississippi State did want to play Loyola—and went to great lengths to do so. The Maroons were scheduled to fly from Starkville, Mississippi, to East Lansing on Thursday morning, March 14. On Wednesday, a state legislator obtained an injunction prohibiting the team from leaving the state. That night, coach McCarthy and several other officials drove from Starkville to Memphis, then flew to Nashville. On Thursday morning, the Hinds County sheriff showed up at the Starkville airport to enforce the injunction. The injunction was duly served—to the Maroons’ freshman team, which had been sent to the airport as a decoy. The varsity team had already left from a small private airport. They met up with McCarthy and the others in Nashville, then continued on to East Lansing.

“We wanted to play,” Mississippi State guard Leland Mitchell said many years later. “We had just won the SEC championship for the third year in a row and we hadn’t been allowed to play in the NCAA tournament the past two years. For us, the biggest thing was getting the opportunity to play in the tournament because it was something we felt we deserved.”

The game attracted an overflow crowd of 12,143 at Michigan State’s Jenison Fieldhouse. Flashbulbs popped all over the arena when Loyola captain Harkness shook hands with his counterpart Joe Dan Gold at center court before the game. 

Mississippi State came in with a record of 21-5. The Maroons were a methodical, disciplined team whose tallest starter was only six-foot-five. The Ramblers also were undersized (the lithe, six-foot-seven Hunter was their tallest starter), but their athleticism made up for what they lacked in height and heft.

From the opening tip, Mississippi State did everything but deflate the basketball in order to slow the pace. The Maroons held Loyola off the scoreboard for almost six minutes as they crept out to a 7-0 lead. A pair of three-point plays by Harkness jump-started the Ramblers, and strong rebounding by Hunter and Rouse carried them to a 26-19 edge at halftime. In the second half, the Maroons patiently stuck to their plan on offense, allowing 90 seconds or so to elapse in each possession before taking a shot (there was no shot clock in those days) and not attempting any shot that was closely contested.

Mississippi State was poised and determined throughout, but ultimately Loyola’s relentlessness proved too much to overcome. “We don’t let up,” said Ireland.

Loyola won 61-51. Harkness tallied 20 points, Rouse 16 points and 19 rebounds, and Hunter 12 points and 10 rebounds. 

 

 Loyola then advanced to the Final Four by dispatching the Fighting Illini 79-64 in the first-ever NCAA tournament game between Illinois schools. After victories over No. 2 Duke and No. 1 Cincinnati, the Ramblers reigned as national champions.

 In later years, as the Ramblers looked back across the decades to the dream season of 1963, their stirring and unlikely victory over Cincinnati in the title game was a fond memory, of course. But the game against Mississippi State was perhaps even more meaningful in the long run. “In a game like that you have two winners,” Harkness said. “Mississippi State made a statement to the community that broke down some of the barriers, and we played a part in it.”

 “It was much more than a basketball game,” said Mitchell. “We were making history, though none of us realized it at the time.”

 

 

Check out our book Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports on Amazon.