The Day Calvin Dropped 68 on Syracuse | Syracusefan.com

The Day Calvin Dropped 68 on Syracuse

Remembering Murphy's 68-point game, 50 years later

Good read. For Mr Cheriehoop maybe. Murphy was a great one.

I was a freshman at SU when Calvin was a freshman at Niagara and in those days there was a freshman team. That year my fraternity brother Frank Hamblen guarded Calvin when they played at Manley and he always bragged that his most memorable moment at a SU as a basketball player was when he held Calvin to 52 points. Bob Kouwe and John Suder were also fraternity brothers and Hambone would tease them that he was a better defender than they were.
 
Remembering Murphy's 68-point game, 50 years later

Good read. For Mr Cheriehoop maybe. Murphy was a great one.

Murphy was unbelievable especially considering his minute size- he was an amazing dunker too. Watching him play when I was a young teenager was unforgettable. His pregame show was a showstopper before the show (game) even started. He was a National baton twirling champion as an 8th grader and did an act before Niagara games with baton ends on fire. Wish they had videos from Niagara’s pregame show that he put on. Couldn’t find any videos from Dennis Duval’s pregame shows at SU either.

Back in my high school days - the Little 3 (Niagara, Bonaventure and Canisius) rivalry competitions were huge. St Bonaventure was led by the huge, talented Bob Lanier vs the magic that tiny talented Calvin Murphy created at Niagara. Bob Lanier even came to our end of year sports banquet in high school as a speaker with his infamous size 22 sneakers.
 

Nice but sure wish they had college videos when he was still competing at baton championships. This was when he was playing in the NBA at Houston 7 years after his last public performance.
 
I was there. Thanks for the memories. Not.

Bill Smith’s great game that night (around 40 points) was overshadowed by Murphy and his 68 points.

I was at a Niagara vs Syracuse game around 1972 when Greg “Kid” Kohl had an awesome game leading to SU beating Niagara. I think I was the only person in that gym at Niagara cheering for SU. Marshall Wingate was Niagara’s star by then after Calvin left.
 
Bill Smith’s great game that night (around 40 points) was overshadowed by Murphy and his 68 points.

I was at a Niagara vs Syracuse game around 1972 when Greg “Kid” Kohl had an awesome game leading to SU beating Niagara. I think I was the only person in that gym at Niagara cheering for SU. Marshall Wingate was Niagara’s star by then after Calvin left.

Smith and Kohl’s are two of my all time favorites. Totally different era though.
 
In 1966 my high school played Murphy's for the league championship. He was a senior. My high school was pretty good, 16-1, state ranked. His was something similar. He averaged 40 that year. They beat us in the opening game of the season and then again in the league championship. We stayed close but never really had a chance to win. They scored 84 and I think he had 45 or 50. I'd never seen anyone with that skill set before nor have I since.
 
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In Murphy's 68 pt game, my recollection is he had 34 in each half but I'm not sure. Is that right?
 
In Murphy's 68 pt game, my recollection is he had 34 in each half but I'm not sure. Is that right?
Correct. From the article linked by Tomcat:

It didn't take long for Murphy to reach 1,000 points. It came on a free throw, one of the 20 he would make, with 5:04 remaining in the first half and Niagara leading 38-34. The Rev. Kenneth Slattery, NU President, presented Calvin with the ball as Coach Frank Layden and the team gathered around him.

The ceremony seemed to energize him and over the last five minutes of the half, Calvin scored 14 more points for 34 going to the locker room. While he made barely half of his shots in the first half, he warmed up in the second, making 11 of 19.
 
Correct. From the article linked by Tomcat:

It didn't take long for Murphy to reach 1,000 points. It came on a free throw, one of the 20 he would make, with 5:04 remaining in the first half and Niagara leading 38-34. The Rev. Kenneth Slattery, NU President, presented Calvin with the ball as Coach Frank Layden and the team gathered around him.

The ceremony seemed to energize him and over the last five minutes of the half, Calvin scored 14 more points for 34 going to the locker room. While he made barely half of his shots in the first half, he warmed up in the second, making 11 of 19.

I love that line "while he made barely half of his shots in the first half". Sheet we'd have killed for a guard that did that over the last two years.
 
If i remember correctly he was also one of the great free throw shooters of all time. I think he held the NBA record for a long time on most consecutive free throws and may still be one of the all time top percentage like more than 90 percent
 
If i remember correctly he was also one of the great free throw shooters of all time. I think he held the NBA record for a long time on most consecutive free throws and may still be one of the all time top percentage like more than 90 percent
78 straight FTs
96% in one season
 
And don't forget "Batman" Murphy's "robin" sidekick Manny Leaks better known as the windex man, most rebounds against SU in a game; 30
 
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And don't forget "Batman" Murphy's "robin" sidekick Manny Leaks better known as the windex man, most rebounds against SU in a game; 30
Didn't Dr J also have 30 rebounds vs. SU?
 
I was there. Thanks for the memories. Not.
I was there too. Those were the days when offense was actually offense and defense, well maybe not so much. Wouldn't have mattered that night no matter what defense we played. If I remember correctly, our freshman team was pretty good that year -- Kohls, Piotrowski, Gil Guerrero but better the next year.
 
Smith and Kohl’s are two of my all time favorites. Totally different era though.

Bill Smith is certainly an SU legend, but was he also unhinged? Because in 1970 he punched a referee after receiving his 5th foul.

West Virginia Brawl
 
A few years ago i wrote a mini-memoir about the first decade of my SU basketball fandom called "Through the Mists of Time". Here some excerpts about Calvin Murphy:

"The most popular games of the 1966-67 season, outside of the St. John’s confrontation, had been the freshman games that preceded the varsity encounters. For years I have been an advocate of having double headers in the Dome with the men’s and women’s teams or of having a junior varsity for players not good enough or not ready for the varsity. It was always fascinating to come into Manley and see a game already going on while the stands filled up, especially when the stars of that team might be the stars of next year’s varsity. In 1966-67, we had a freshman team that might have beaten the varsity. It featured a smooth 6-8 center, Wayne Ward, who would be our answer to the Sonny Doves and Mel Daniels of the world. There was also Ernie Austin, a high scoring guard from Washington DC who was a cousin of former BC All-American John Austin. Ward averaged 20 points and 20 rebounds a game, (actually 19.8/16.1) while Austin averaged 30.0 points a game for the freshman who won all 16 games they played. The two biggest games were against the Niagara freshmen, who were led by Calvin Murphy who was producing an incredible 50 points a game, (48.9) as a frosh. These games were so anticipated that people were actually seen leaving after them and skipping the varsity game. SU won both of them, with the combined weight of Ward’s and Austin’s numbers overcoming the incredible scoring of Murphy.

(I’ve since been able to look up the newspaper articles on those games. SU won the one in Manley Field House 108-96, before a record crowd of 7,105, holding Murphy to a season-low 38 points, (he had scored between 43-66 points in every game), while Austin scored 32 and Ward had 21 points and 19 rebounds. 6-4 Bill Case also had a big game for SU with 25 points and 16 rebounds. A 6-5 lefty named Steve Schaefer scored 28 and had 22 rebounds for Niagara. In the return match, SU won again, 106-101. Murphy scored 46 but Ward had 36, (they didn’t note the rebounds), and Austin 28. Case had only 15 and Schaeffer didn’t play for some reason. In both games Niagara led at halftime, 48-45 and 49-48. SU caught them and pulled away down the stretch, overcoming a 71-83 deficit with a 35-18 run in the second one. We now have entire games that wind up with the half-time scores of those games. They scored the ball in those days.)

...

Then a seven game losing streak crushed SU’s season, including another loss to LaSalle and a 20 point blow-out at the hands of Bob Knight’s first really good Army team. But the most notable of these losses was the first confrontation with Niagara with Calvin Murphy on the varsity. It figured that with the SU varsity having 3 starters remaining from a 20-6 team and Ward and Austin having beaten Murphy’s Niagara frosh twice that SU would be able to win this game, which was the first one I recall televised by a local station, with its own announcers. (I think Carl Eilenberg did the play-by-play.) Murphy got his 50, which is still the Manley Field house record but this time his team outscored SU, 107-116.

...

The team wound up losing 13 of its last 20. The penultimate game was another loss to Niagara. Things had gotten so bad that Lewis had decided we had to stall to hold the score down. We succeed in holding Murphy to a career-low, (I think it was 16), and won the game 50-49. But had it come to this? Did the team that almost scored 100 a game have to stall and score half that to win? Yes, it had.

...

On top of that, somebody had scheduled 10 of the first 11 games on the road, (wouldn’t Dick Vitale love that!). In the second game, SU played at Niagara. Danforth must have been in a macho mood because he junked the stall concept and decided to run with the Eagles. When the smoke had cleared, Calvin Murphy had scored more points than any player had ever scored against a major college team, 68. (Pistol Pete Maravich had 69 vs. Alabama later that year and that record stood for a generation- why LSU and Niagara never scheduled a game in this period is difficult to understand, unless Murphy was the wrong color for the Bayou Bengals). Niagara won, 110-118."


(We also lost to Murphy's team 2/26/69, 92-103 but I didn't write about that game or the next one specifically. I looked those games up on the Post Standard Archive and the article says that Bill Smith actually out-scored Murphy in that one, 33-32 but Niagara was able to pull away at the end by making free throw after free throw: they scored 18 of their last 20 points that way. The teams played once in the 1969-70 season, Niagara winning 83-91. It was Calvin's last home game. We held him to 24 points but Mike Samuel scored 28 and the Purple Eagles were never headed after over-coming an early SU spurt. But help was on the way as Jim Boeheim's 14-1 freshman team beat Niagara's frosh, who had been 16-0, 98-87 behind 29 points by Chuck Wichman, 16 from Mark Wadach and 12 from Mike Lee.
 
Murphy was unbelievable especially considering his minute size- he was an amazing dunker too. Watching him play when I was a young teenager was unforgettable. His pregame show was a showstopper before the show (game) even started. He was a National baton twirling champion as an 8th grader and did an act before Niagara games with baton ends on fire. Wish they had videos from Niagara’s pregame show that he put on. Couldn’t find any videos from Dennis Duval’s pregame shows at SU either.

Back in my high school days - the Little 3 (Niagara, Bonaventure and Canisius) rivalry competitions were huge. St Bonaventure was led by the huge, talented Bob Lanier vs the magic that tiny talented Calvin Murphy created at Niagara. Bob Lanier even came to our end of year sports banquet in high school as a speaker with his infamous size 22 sneakers.
One of my memorable moments at Bonas was seeing Murphy block Lanier from behind. With no dunking allowed Lainer took a pass after the opening tip and went to lay the ball in when Cal came from behind and blocked the ball into the backboard. I believe that the Olean Times Harold had a picture of it .
 

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