Finally, After 52 Years

Finally, after 52 years Oral Roberts University inducted the Elite 8 basketball team of 1974 into their Hall-Of-Fame. That team lost in overtime to Kansas 90-93 in the finals of the Mid-West Regional. The Titans beat Syracuse and Louisville to reach the finals of the regional. The team finished 21-6 and ranked 18 in the final college basketball poll. All five starters averaged in double figures. That team was led by Player-of-the-Year in Florida his senior year in high school and All-American, Sam McCants. That ended a remarkable run of 5 years at ORU where the basketball teams, coached by Ken Trickey, were 118-23.

The basketball program at ORU went from a NAIA program to one of the top D1 programs in the country in 5 years. The Titans (Golden Eagles) went to back-to-back National Invitational Tournaments in 1972 and 1973. During this five year period the Titans averaged over 90 points each of those years and led the nation in scoring two of those years including an unbelievable 105 points per game average during the 1971-72 season. We finished the season 26-2. The 1972-73 team was led by Richard Fuqua, the first of what would become 10 All-Americans to play at ORU and over 15 players drafted by the NBA. Fuqua averaged 35.9 points a game in 1972 and finished as the second leading scorer in the country, less than one point behind Dwight “Bo” Lamar’s 36.3. (An added celebration to the induction ceremonies of the ’74 team into the HOF at ORU was the naming of the auxiliary court after Fuqua.)

I was honored to be the keynote speaker at the induction ceremonies. There were over 20 former players, coaches, and managers at the event. Duane Fox from Detroit, the only starter on the ’74 team that is still living, also shared with the over 70 or 80 people who attended the ceremony.

It was a remarkable and indescribable four years for me as an assistant coach at ORU during this period. Unforgettable, and almost inconceivable, experiences during this period. I was blessed to have been a part of something that will never happen again in college basketball. I devoted over 50 pages to my Oral Roberts experiences in my book Welcome to My World.

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