"From the Mists of Time"
Roy Danforth inherited a mess. Harper, Hicker and Cornwall were gone now. Wayne Ward who had had a decent sophomore season, averaging 13 points and 6 rebounds and shooting 58%, was lost due to academic and legal problems. Ernie Austin who had a poor sophomore season, shooting 37%, was academically ineligible for the first half of the season. Bob McDaniel aced that by flunking out of school, (although he returned for the next season). There were rumors about Bill Smith’s status but he managed to stay eligible. SU’s media guide for 1968-69 says, truthfully, “At the pre-season stage, it is hard to pinpoint a genuine strength.”
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.
After a loss to Fordham came the trip to Kansas to play Kansas State and Kansas on successive nights. Both were national powers in those days. The Wildcats had no problem with SU, winning 68-88. But the real embarrassment came the next night when SU took on the Jayhawks for the first time ever. They were led by their star, Jo Jo White. Danforth decided the only way SU could stay in this game was with the stall. NC State had famously upset Duke in the ACC tournament the previous March by carrying the stall to its absurd end in a 12-10 win:
On March 8, 1968... - StateFans Nation
The thing is, they couldn’t even execute that properly. White and his teammates destroyed it with defensive pressure, running away from SU 41-71 while the crowd booed the Orange’s unwillingness to play normal basketball as well as their ineptitude at even executing their chosen strategy. This was the first of several games in this period that would contend for “The Bottom”- the time when the situation was as bad as it could be, with nowhere to go but up.
The strangest game was the trip to Provo to play Brigham Young. (I suspect that these games were arranged to give SU a national profile in the wake of the Bing years and the good recruiting that followed. Unfortunately we came up empty at the wrong time). The Cougars would go on to win the WAC that year but on this night, SU beat them, 77-73. Not only did the Orange win the game but they won the brawl that broke out with the Mormons at the end of it. But the optimism that created blew away in Portland, Oregon, where SU played Washington State, Arizona State and Yale, (yes Yale), and lost to all three by an average of 18 points.
After a home win over Pittsburgh, SU traveled to Connecticut to play an 0-10 UCONN team. They got blown out, 94-103, (they were down by 20 points much of the game). If I had to choose a low point in the entire history of my career as an SU basketball fan, that might be it. They lost another five in a row after that. I was “dazed and confused”, wondering how the SU powerhouse I expected to be rooting for had turned into a 4-14 disaster.
