Part II: '60-61 Hawkeyes Overcame Adversity
Iowa’s promising 1960-61 basketball season looked doomed after four of five starters were declared academically ineligible for the second semester. But the depleted Hawkeyes, under Coach Sharm Scheuerman, managed to win six of nine games, tied for second in the Big Ten, finished the season in the Top 10 and nearly pulled off one of the greatest upsets in college basketball history.
FOUR GONE CONCLUSION
PART TWO
IOWA CITY, Iowa - It’s been called one of the most thrilling games ever played in Iowa Fieldhouse, a Top 10 matchup with a David and Goliath subplot.
It was No. 1 Ohio State, the defending NCAA champion, against No. 9 Iowa. The Buckeyes had all-American center Jerry Lucas, forward John Havlicek and guard Larry Siegfried. All would be named first-team all-Big Ten selections at the end of the season.
The Feb. 18 meeting was Iowa’s third game since losing four starters to academic eligibility. Don Nelson, Iowa’s lone surviving starter, would join the Ohio State trio on the all-Big Ten team at season’s end.
Coach Sharm Scheuerman’s Hawkeyes had won the previous two games, including a 74-67 stunner at Indiana, to improve to 13-4 overall and 6-1 in the Big Ten.
But Coach Fred Taylor’s Buckeyes had won their first nine Big Ten games by an average of 26.3 points. No one had come within 15 points of them. Ohio State had averaged 87.5 points in those games, while allowing 68 points or less every time.
“It might be quite a contest if Ohio State would agree to keep four of its five starters on the bench,” joked Gus Schrader of the Cedar Rapids Gazette.
Asked if any Big Ten team had a chance against Ohio State after his team had lost to Iowa on Feb. 13, Wisconsin Coach John Erickson couldn’t see it happening.
“Some team might have a chance if Ohio State had a bad night, but they never have a bad night,” Erickson said. “Iowa will get killed on the boards because they can’t rebound with Ohio State.”
Wrote the Des Moines Register’s Bert McGrane, “On cold facts, the Buckeyes ought to breeze in, and they probably will.”
But McGrane offered a glimmer of hope. He called the Hawkeyes a Cinderella team “that has done things it wasn’t supposed to do on two recent occasions (Indiana and Wisconsin games), has a fieldhouse full of desire and every intention of causing the Bucks a large amount of trouble. In advance, every concrete factor favors Ohio State except the home environment.”
Iowa has played the No. 1 team in the nation 25 times, winning three of those contests. But in 1961, playing a seemingly invincible Ohio State team with an undermanned lineup, it would have gone down as the greatest victory in program history.
A sellout crowd of 13,500 packed Iowa Fieldhouse, and a five-state television network that included Iowa and Ohio, witnessed a game for the ages. A game that sat in the balance until two shots in the final 10 seconds sat on the rim, defied gravity and refused to alter history.
For much of the game, Iowa looked poised to pull off the improbable. The Hawkeyes led at halftime, 34-24, and still had a 59-52 lead with under 31/2 minutes to play. Taylor had his team press Iowa. Ninety seconds later, Ohio State had taken a 60-59 lead. With the score 59-56, Szykowny fouled Ohio State’s Gary Gearhardt. But Siegfried, an 88 percent free-throw shooter, went to the line and no one picked up on the tomfoolery. He made both attempts.
It became a 10-0 run at with 1:15 to play, 62-59.
Iowa missed a pair of one-and-ones down the stretch that gave the Buckeyes a chance. The first by Dick Shaw, came after he got fouled by Robert Knight…better known as Bob Knight, who coached Indiana to three NCAA titles. Gary Lorenz also missed a one-and-one at the :44 mark, but Nelson got the rebound and put it back in to cut the deficit to 62-61.
Ohio State spread the floor and played keepaway. But Havlicek saw an opening to the basket and drove. His shot was blocked, Reddington got the rebound and Iowa called timeout with :18 to go.
Scheuerman drew up a play for Szykowny, but Ohio State defended it and the ball ended up in the hands of Nelson. He drove in from the right side and put up a 10-footer off the backboard.
“I prayed and I hoped,” Nelson said of his shot.
But it was a bit too hard, bouncing on the front of the rim, sitting there for a moment and then falling off. Shaw worked his way inside and got his fingers on the ball for a tip attempt. The ball rolled around the rim and fell off. The Buckeyes had survived, 62-61.
“It did a complete 360 around the rim,” Scheuerman said.
Nelson and Lucas both scored 25 points. Nelson added 14 rebounds, to 11 for Lucas.
“We were lucky to get out with our lives,” Lucas said.
Erickson’s prediction that Iowa would get “killed on the boards” by Ohio State didn’t come true. The Hawkeyes outrebounded the Buckeyes, 35-23. Ohio State countered by shooting 60.7 from the field in the closing half (17 for 28). Lucas made 12 of 16 field-goal attempts for the game and Sigfried seven of nine.
“Sharm has done a great job with these kids,” Taylor said. “What a bunch of scrappers.”
Forest Evashevski, Iowa’s athletic director, tried to console Scheuerman after the game.
“You guys will probably get pretty tired of me telling you how proud I am of these players,” he told reporters in the locker room. “But that’s all I can say. They played their hearts out.”
Iowa was so impressive in defeat that it jumped from ninth to fifth in the AP poll the following week. The Hawkeyes ended up winning six of nine games without the four starters. Scheuerman’s team was 18-6 overall, tied for second in the Big Ten with Purdue at 10-4 and finished the year No. 8 in the AP poll.
Ohio State went 14-0 in Big Ten play, with a 21.6-point margin of victory. Eleven of those victories came by 15 points or more.
The Buckeyes ran their undefeated streak to 32 games before losing to Cincinnati in the NCAA Championship game, 70-65. The Bearcats had been the last team to play Iowa at full strength that season, back on Feb. 4.
Nelson averaged 26.2 points over those final nine games. He scored at least 21 points in every game and reached the 30-point mark on three occasions.
“I felt more responsibility, and my teammates expected me to carry a bigger portion of the load,” Nelson told Buck Turnbull of the Des Moines Register years later. “I still look back on that as one of the highlights of my whole career. Sharm did a terrific job of coaching, and we played some terrific basketball.”
