A Redlands Connection is a concoction of sports memories emanating from a city that once numbered less than 20,000 people. From pro football’s Super Bowl to Major League Baseball, from dynamic soccer’s World Cup to golf and tennis’ U.S. Open, major auto racing, plus NCAA Final Four connections, Tour de France cycling, more top-flight tennis like Wimbledon, tiny connections to that NBA and a little NHL, major college football, Kentucky Derby, aquatics and Olympic Games, that sparkling little city sits around halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs on Interstate 10. In this story, perhaps Redlands is getting its biggest headline off this brilliant basketball connection. – Obrey Brown.
Redlands. USC. Alhambra. Modesto. Kansas State. Utah. U.S. Olympic team? The NBA’s Utah Jazz?
“Black” Jack Gardner’s basketball insight was apparently so keen that he was selected as 1964 tryouts coach for that U.S. Olympic team. Princeton’s Bill Bradley, North Carolina’s Larry Brown, UCLA’s Walt Hazzard and a few other future NBA players were on that gold medal-winning squad.
A few years earlier at Utah, 6-foot-9 center Billy McGill led the NCAA in scoring at 38.8 points in 1961, including a memorable 60-point game in a 106-101 rivalry win over BYU.
“Black” Jack Gardner, also known as “The Fox,” had some insight on ways to coach against basketball’s biggest names – nearly against Kansas’ Wilt Chamberlain, actually going up against University of San Francisco’s Bill Russell. If Gardner hadn’t moved on to Utah from Kansas State, he’d have had to scheme against Wilt twice a year.
Truth is, he tried to recruit Wilt while he was at Philadelphia Overbook High School. As for Russell, imagine that excitement in Utah when Gardner called Russell’s Dons “the greatest team ever assembled.”
University of San Francisco’s Bill Russell, who led the Dons to a pair of NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956, went up against Utah in one of those tournaments. Unable to stop Russell, Utah coach Jack Gardner watched his team lose, 92-77 (Photo by Wikipedia Commons).Gardner’s top player at Utah, McGill, had scrimmaged in Los Angeles summer leagues against both Russell and Chamberlain. McGill was one of L.A.’s best players when he led Jefferson High to a pair of city titles. Scrimmaging against Chamberlain? Russell?
“That was a player I had to have,” said Gardner, referring to McGill.
Scheming on court duels against Chamberlain and Russell was another matter. During our 1998 phone chat, Gardner asked, “Are you sitting down, Mr. Brown?”
As a matter of fact, I was. He was about to offer insight toward background in coaching against two of basketball’s greatest icons. Sitting down? I should’ve called for some oxygen. Or sedation. This was a dream interview for a small-town reporter.
“Is it possible in anyone’s thinking out there,” mused Gardner, “that Mr. Russell and Mr. Chamberlain could be considered equals in this sport?”
Russell’s 1956 University of San Francisco squad, which took a 29-0 record into that year’s NCAA Tournament, knocked off ranked teams – John Wooden’s No. 8 UCLA, Gardner’s 18th-ranked Utah, No. 7 Southern Methodist and No. 4 Iowa – and USF beat them all by at least 11 points.
Iowa, that year’s Big Ten champ for a second straight year, came into that year’s NCAA final on a 17-game win streak of its own before losing, 83-71. Utah lost, 92-77, to USF in their West Region final.
“You had to figure a way to score against Mr. Russell,” said Gardner. “What’d we have – 77 points? It’s not bad, but their defense led them to score a lot of points.”
Hal Perry, USF’s All-Tournament player, along with future Boston Celtic guard K.C. Jones was part of the Dons’ mystique, not to mention Russell. “No one plays this game alone,” said Gardner.
“Regardless of what anyone else says, including Mr. (Red) Auerbach in Boston. It’s a team game, always has been a team game and, for the winning teams, always will be a team game.”
Include Chamberlain, he said, in that discussion.
“Anytime you played a team with Mr. Chamberlain on it,” he said, “you had to draw up a defense to stop him – just like you had to devise a good offensive game plan against Mr. Russell. You see the similarity there? Practice time would’ve been vastly different.”
Playing against Russell was mythic. Gardner’s teams never had a chance to play against Wilt.
But Russell versus any other team, or Chamberlain against other teams posed remarkably similar problems, reflected Gardner. “You really have to be good at both ends,” said that Redlands-based Hall of Famer, “no matter who you were playing against.
“If you’re going to be a good team, you’ve got to be able to score and you’ve also got to be able to stop the other team. Coaches have to have defense AND offense on the court.”
He came close to coaching against Chamberlain, a Kansas sophomore, in 1957. Utah finished 16-8 overall in 1956-57. “You had to win your conference to get into the (NCAA) tournament,” he said, “which was only 32 teams then.”
Here’s his headlined story: Chamberlain, still at Philadelphia’s Overbrook High School, had been promised to Kansas back in Gardner’s coaching at Kansas State.
“Yes. I was after him,” said Gardner. “I had my ways. KU was better than Kansas. They hid him from me. I couldn’t get to him. I think you know what I mean, Mr. Brown.”
That 1957 season, though. Lost some close Mountain States Athletic Conference games – by five points to Denver, four to BYU, plus a four-point loss to Utah State.
“Turn those games around,” Gardner said, “which we should’ve won – I remember all of them – and we’d have gone up against Kansas. I can tell you that.”
Out of the blue, I asked Gardner a fairly personal question, basketball-related, of course. “You’re a USC guy. Did you ever think of coaching there?”
His quick answer? “Never had a chance,” he said. “Things didn’t work out. I was a USC guy … you’re right about that. I wouldn’t have minded chatting up coaching there.”
“Black” Jack coached against his one time Trojans – 3-8 against them, in fact.
A few seasons later, in 1965 at home in his Utes’ Huntsman Center, Dean Smith’s North Carolina squad got him. By five points.
In 1984, Stockton’s selection as NBA’s 16th selection – that same draft as Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, among others – it was Gardner’s strong recommendation that left Utah with an eventual Hall of Famer.
That same year, 1984, was when Gardner himself was inducted into that National Association of Basketball Coaches’ Golden Anniversary Award. At that point, he was at a record-setting attendance performance. Between 1939 and 1997, Gardner never missed a Final Four – whether it was coaching or attending.
Gardner-at-Utah was legendary. There was another Redlands Connection. Shortly after serving his mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, onetime Long Beach State recruit Jon Hansen, a 6-foot-5, sharp-shooting Redlands High alum, transferred to Utah.
For years, Hansen saw Gardner at Utah – heard stories, saw his Hall of Fame plaque on a wall, even met that man. Years after his own prep graduation, Hansen learned something new about Gardner. They were both one time Terriers. He seemed overwhelmed by such a notion. Said Hansen: “He graduated from Redlands High School?”
It was a surprising revelation about a man he’d only viewed from afar – having graduated 56 years apart from that same high school campus. It was in 2000 that Gardner died, age 90, in Salt Lake City.
There was a list of Top 100 college coaches released in 2011. Most basketball fans would know those names. Gardner was slotted in at No. 27, trailing Kansas legend Phog Allen, ahead of Don Haskins, trailing Rupp and Jerry Tarkanian but ahead of BYU’s Stan Watts in a heavily-listed coaching group that went far and lengthy.
At the top, of course, was John Wooden.
