Ky58 presents...

University of Kentucky
Basketball History



"The Point Shaving Scandal"

* Note - The following information comes from
several sources and all sources have been properly
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The pictures where scanned by the webmaster from
publications purchased by the same.


Coach Lancaster and Coach Rupp

Excerpt from:
Adolph Rupp As I Knew Him
as told to Cawood Ledford

It's funny, how you can look back to a day that happened years before, and remember every detail about it. It was that kind of day one Saturday in October, in 1951. It was a beautiful autumn afternoon in Morehead, Kentucky, where I was officiating a football game. I had worked as the umpire that afternoon. By the time I showered and changed, it was a beautiful twilight time as I drove back to Lexington. I turned on the car radio. There it was. KENTUCKY WAS INVOLVED IN THE POINT FIXING SCANDAL! I couldn't believe my ears. The first thing that crossed my mind was Adolph's quote to a reporter that they couldn't touch our boys "with a ten foot pole." Apparently we were involved. I'll guarantee you; both of us were totally convinced that none of our players had been involved. The first thing that went through my mind was that terrible game against Loyola in the NIT, but I still thought it was ridiculous that anybody thought we were involved.

It was pitch dark when I drove up to my house in Lexington. There was a car parked out front. Judge Nolan Carter and his wife got out as I drove up and he said to me, "Harry, are you involved in this thing in any way? Is there anything I need to do for you?"

"Hell no," I told him, "I don't know anything about this." We went on into the house and we sat there and talked until after midnight. None of us could believe it.

Adolph was out of town when the story broke and I didn't see him until the next morning back in the office. We both agreed that the charge was untrue. But as we sat there and talked we began to see how it was possible. Adolph reminded me of the Loyola game. I talked about some of our one-point losses in the Sugar Bowl. Had all of them just been bad luck as time was running out? That's the way we left it. Alex Groza, Ralph Beard, and Dale Barnstable were the first to be charged.

It was several weeks later that Beard and Groza came back to Lexington to see us. They tried to explain to Adolph and me their side of the story - that they never "threw" a game. They had accepted money to try to go above or below the point spread. Adolph was very fond of both Alex and Ralph and was very sympathetic to them.

That all changed when Judge Streit put out a ruling as big as a book. He had implicated Adolph in so many ways. He spoke very harshly of Rupp and hinted that he had been associating with Ed Curd, a known gambler in Lexington. That changed Adolph. He had retired the jerseys of the starters on the "Fabulous Five." He just as quickly unretired them. There was this great big picture of them hanging in the Coliseum. It was there one night. The next morning it was gone. No one ever mentioned it. It was another twenty years before he even acknowledged that the Fabulous Five had ever existed; the scandal had hurt him so badly. Beard and Barnstable, along late in Adolph's career, began to come back and visit him. They buried the hatchet. Groza never did...



Donovan informed us that Spivey was among those being investigated. We were not to play him that season. "Spive" was later cleared of the charges, but he was denied his senior year of eligibility and he never got the chance he deserved in pro basketball. It was a DAMN shame. Dr. Donovan almost declared Hagan and Ramsey ineligible and they hadn't even been in school when the point fixing took place. Dr. Kirwan was the Dean of Men, and was inclined to go along with the President. The efforts of Lexington attorney John Y. Brown, Sr. saved the day for us...

The point shaving charges had run their course by late summer of that year and the University of Kentucky was suspended for the next season. First, the Southeastern Conference voted to not play us. Tennessee was the only school that voted in our favor and Adolph never forgot that as long as he lived. A short time later, the NCAA gave us the same penalty. We would not be permitted to play a game during the entire 1952-53 season. It was the most severe fine that has ever been placed on a university, and there was not a soul on that squad that was ever involved.


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