For three days,the UC Bearcats endured the cold and wind of Laramie, Wyoming, as they prepared to face the Wyoming Cowboys, led by Joby Wright, the former Miami (Ohio) coach.
They were coming off a 91-88 overtime win at No. 11 Minnesota on Dec. 17, 1994, in point guard Keith LeGree’s first game as a Bearcat following his transfer from Louisville. The next day they flew directly from Minneapolis to Laramie and found themselves marooned in a small town of 27,000 with too much time on their hands before they would play again. The feelings of isolation and boredom were getting to them.
“There ain’t nothing to do,” freshman forward Danny Fortson said after they had been in Laramie for a few days. “There are no malls around here. We just go to basketball practice and then back to our hotel rooms and think about Cincinnati.”
The cold weather didn’t help. My hotel room door opened directly outside. No matter how high I turned up the alleged heat, the temperature stayed in the 50s. I could feel the cold air blowing into my room under the door and along the doorframe. It was so cold I had to sleep with my clothes on.
“Some of us were joking about going skiing,” said UC guard LaZelle Durden, “but none of us could ski.”
UC was 5-2 after getting 25 points from Durden in the Minnesota game, including a three-pointer with five seconds remaining in regulation to send the game into overtime. He then opened the overtime period with a 3-pointer and made two free throws in the closing seconds to clinch the win. But he saved his real heroics for the Wyoming game three days later.
The senior guard, from Rossford High School near Toledo, scored a career-high 45 points against Wyoming, capping his evening with three free throws with no time left on the clock to give UC an 81-80 victory over the Cowboys, who were 2-3.
The night before the game, UC radio play-by-play voice Paul Keels and I drove for a half-hour into the mountains to have dinner at a steakhouse in a tiny town called Centennial. While we were waiting for our food I heard a lout at the bar tell a racist joke. I cringed because Keels is part African-American and I knew he had heard what I heard.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” I said to him when we were outside after dinner.
“You mean that guy at the bar?” Paul said. “Don’t worry about it. I hear that stuff all the time. I just ignore it.”
By the time Saturday arrived, everyone in the UC travelling party was ready to go home. It had been a long week. Wright and Huggins were friends who hung out together in the days leading up to the game. Wright even presented Huggins with a pair of cowboy boots before the game. But for everyone else time in Laramie seemed to stand still.
The 17th-ranked Bearcats started the game as if their minds were on the trip home instead of the task at hand. They missed their first nine shots. Fortson was limited to 20 minutes because of foul trouble and scored only five points, all on free throws. He was 0-for-7 from the field. UC trailed by 10 at halftime, by as many as 15 in the second half, and still trailed, by nine, 78-69, with 1:28 to play.
Durden was considered the best-conditioned player on the team, an advantage for him in the 7,220-foot altitude. He was constantly in motion on offense, running his defender into screens to create open shots. When the game appeared to be getting out of reach for the Bearcats, it became obvious that if UC was going to win, Durden was going to have to show the way.
“In every practice session, I was usually the one with all the wind,” Durden said, “but I was winded too. Huggs kept saying, ‘LaZalle’s going to have to score 50 points for us.’ He kept saying it at every practice session. So when it got to a certain point in the game, Darnell (Burton) looked at me and said, ‘You’re going to have to take it over.’ They just gave me the green light.”
Durden wasn’t shy about firing up shots, so he didn’t have to be told twice to do what he does best to help UC cut into the deficit in the second half. With the Bearcats smothering Wyoming with their full-court pressure, they cut the deficit to one point, at 79-78, with 17 seconds left. The Cowboys’ Aaron Smith then got behind the UC press and was fouled by Burton as he went in for a layup. Smith made one of two free throws to make the score 80-78. UC got the ball inbounds to LeGree with 15 seconds to play. LeGree passed to Durden, as the seconds melted away. With time running out, Durden launched an off-balance 3-point shot that was no good, but he was fouled by Wyoming’s LaDrell Whithead.
“Thank God they fouled me,” Durden said. “The question was, was I really behind the 3-point line? But they fouled me for sure.”
Durden, who scored 33 of his points in the second half, went to the foul line with no time left on the clock. The game was his to win, lose, or send into overtime. With the crowd of 8,688 at Arena-Auditorium screaming in an attempt to disrupt his concentration, Durden made the first foul shot. Before he made his second shot, he put his index finder to his lips as if to silence the crowd.
He shushed the crowd one more time before he released his third free throw. After the shot fell cleanly through the net to give UC the win, Durden and his teammates ran off the court, leaving the crowd and the Wyoming players stunned. It was the only lead UC held the entire game. Durden had scored 10 of UC’s last 12 points.
“It was just a moment of confidence,” Durden said. “It was something you dream about since you were a little kid, to be in a situation like that in the back yard. And then we get to college and Huggs would put us in situations in practice, like there’s no seconds on the clock and you’re going to hit two free throws or we’re going to take off and run suicides. We kind of lived those situations in practice.
“It was just a chance to step into that shining moment. The finger up was just an expression of confidence. I never had a doubt in my mind that I was going to make those shots, especially the way I was feeling that night with the hot hand. It felt good because we were talking smack back and forth with those guys the whole game.”
Durden’s 45 points were the most for a UC player since Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson scored a school-record 62 against North Texas State on Feb. 8, 1960 at UC’s Armory Fieldhouse. The Big O had scored 50 against Iowa earlier that season. Durden was 16-for-32 from the field, 7-for-20 from 3-point range, and 6-of-7 from the free throw line. He also had four rebounds and no turnovers in 37 minutes. His 20 3-point attempts are still the most ever by a UC player in one game. No UC player has surpassed Durden’s 45-point total since Durden did it.
A year earlier, Durden had scored 39 points at Austin Peay on New Year’s Eve 1993. In that game, he made 13 of 18 field goals and was 4-for-8 from long range. After the game, the Bearcats boarded a small plane for the short flight back to Cincinnati from Clarksville, Tenn. They were in the air as the clock struck midnight. The coaches and staff celebrated the start of 1994 with champagne. The players had to settle for sparkling grape juice.
“We were heated about that,” Durden said, laughing. “We couldn’t wait to get home.”
Durden ranks 33rd in UC history with 1,219 points despite playing only three seasons because he was academically ineligible as a freshman under Proposition 48. Had he played a fourth year and averaged 17 points, as he did as a junior and senior, he’d rank among the top 10 scorers in UC history.
He ranks fifth in 3-point field goals with 260 and in attempts with 674. He made 38.5 percent of his 3-point shots, which ranks fourth behind Field Williams, Justin Jenifer and Darnell Burton.
“I put up a lot of shots in a short tenure,” he said.
None of them were more dramatic than those three free throws on a cold night in Laramie, Wyoming.
They were coming off a 91-88 overtime win at No. 11 Minnesota on Dec. 17, 1994, in point guard Keith LeGree’s first game as a Bearcat following his transfer from Louisville. The next day they flew directly from Minneapolis to Laramie and found themselves marooned in a small town of 27,000 with too much time on their hands before they would play again. The feelings of isolation and boredom were getting to them.
“There ain’t nothing to do,” freshman forward Danny Fortson said after they had been in Laramie for a few days. “There are no malls around here. We just go to basketball practice and then back to our hotel rooms and think about Cincinnati.”
The cold weather didn’t help. My hotel room door opened directly outside. No matter how high I turned up the alleged heat, the temperature stayed in the 50s. I could feel the cold air blowing into my room under the door and along the doorframe. It was so cold I had to sleep with my clothes on.
“Some of us were joking about going skiing,” said UC guard LaZelle Durden, “but none of us could ski.”
UC was 5-2 after getting 25 points from Durden in the Minnesota game, including a three-pointer with five seconds remaining in regulation to send the game into overtime. He then opened the overtime period with a 3-pointer and made two free throws in the closing seconds to clinch the win. But he saved his real heroics for the Wyoming game three days later.
The senior guard, from Rossford High School near Toledo, scored a career-high 45 points against Wyoming, capping his evening with three free throws with no time left on the clock to give UC an 81-80 victory over the Cowboys, who were 2-3.
The night before the game, UC radio play-by-play voice Paul Keels and I drove for a half-hour into the mountains to have dinner at a steakhouse in a tiny town called Centennial. While we were waiting for our food I heard a lout at the bar tell a racist joke. I cringed because Keels is part African-American and I knew he had heard what I heard.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” I said to him when we were outside after dinner.
“You mean that guy at the bar?” Paul said. “Don’t worry about it. I hear that stuff all the time. I just ignore it.”
By the time Saturday arrived, everyone in the UC travelling party was ready to go home. It had been a long week. Wright and Huggins were friends who hung out together in the days leading up to the game. Wright even presented Huggins with a pair of cowboy boots before the game. But for everyone else time in Laramie seemed to stand still.
The 17th-ranked Bearcats started the game as if their minds were on the trip home instead of the task at hand. They missed their first nine shots. Fortson was limited to 20 minutes because of foul trouble and scored only five points, all on free throws. He was 0-for-7 from the field. UC trailed by 10 at halftime, by as many as 15 in the second half, and still trailed, by nine, 78-69, with 1:28 to play.
Durden was considered the best-conditioned player on the team, an advantage for him in the 7,220-foot altitude. He was constantly in motion on offense, running his defender into screens to create open shots. When the game appeared to be getting out of reach for the Bearcats, it became obvious that if UC was going to win, Durden was going to have to show the way.
“In every practice session, I was usually the one with all the wind,” Durden said, “but I was winded too. Huggs kept saying, ‘LaZalle’s going to have to score 50 points for us.’ He kept saying it at every practice session. So when it got to a certain point in the game, Darnell (Burton) looked at me and said, ‘You’re going to have to take it over.’ They just gave me the green light.”
Durden wasn’t shy about firing up shots, so he didn’t have to be told twice to do what he does best to help UC cut into the deficit in the second half. With the Bearcats smothering Wyoming with their full-court pressure, they cut the deficit to one point, at 79-78, with 17 seconds left. The Cowboys’ Aaron Smith then got behind the UC press and was fouled by Burton as he went in for a layup. Smith made one of two free throws to make the score 80-78. UC got the ball inbounds to LeGree with 15 seconds to play. LeGree passed to Durden, as the seconds melted away. With time running out, Durden launched an off-balance 3-point shot that was no good, but he was fouled by Wyoming’s LaDrell Whithead.
“Thank God they fouled me,” Durden said. “The question was, was I really behind the 3-point line? But they fouled me for sure.”
Durden, who scored 33 of his points in the second half, went to the foul line with no time left on the clock. The game was his to win, lose, or send into overtime. With the crowd of 8,688 at Arena-Auditorium screaming in an attempt to disrupt his concentration, Durden made the first foul shot. Before he made his second shot, he put his index finder to his lips as if to silence the crowd.
He shushed the crowd one more time before he released his third free throw. After the shot fell cleanly through the net to give UC the win, Durden and his teammates ran off the court, leaving the crowd and the Wyoming players stunned. It was the only lead UC held the entire game. Durden had scored 10 of UC’s last 12 points.
“It was just a moment of confidence,” Durden said. “It was something you dream about since you were a little kid, to be in a situation like that in the back yard. And then we get to college and Huggs would put us in situations in practice, like there’s no seconds on the clock and you’re going to hit two free throws or we’re going to take off and run suicides. We kind of lived those situations in practice.
“It was just a chance to step into that shining moment. The finger up was just an expression of confidence. I never had a doubt in my mind that I was going to make those shots, especially the way I was feeling that night with the hot hand. It felt good because we were talking smack back and forth with those guys the whole game.”
Durden’s 45 points were the most for a UC player since Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson scored a school-record 62 against North Texas State on Feb. 8, 1960 at UC’s Armory Fieldhouse. The Big O had scored 50 against Iowa earlier that season. Durden was 16-for-32 from the field, 7-for-20 from 3-point range, and 6-of-7 from the free throw line. He also had four rebounds and no turnovers in 37 minutes. His 20 3-point attempts are still the most ever by a UC player in one game. No UC player has surpassed Durden’s 45-point total since Durden did it.
A year earlier, Durden had scored 39 points at Austin Peay on New Year’s Eve 1993. In that game, he made 13 of 18 field goals and was 4-for-8 from long range. After the game, the Bearcats boarded a small plane for the short flight back to Cincinnati from Clarksville, Tenn. They were in the air as the clock struck midnight. The coaches and staff celebrated the start of 1994 with champagne. The players had to settle for sparkling grape juice.
“We were heated about that,” Durden said, laughing. “We couldn’t wait to get home.”
Durden ranks 33rd in UC history with 1,219 points despite playing only three seasons because he was academically ineligible as a freshman under Proposition 48. Had he played a fourth year and averaged 17 points, as he did as a junior and senior, he’d rank among the top 10 scorers in UC history.
He ranks fifth in 3-point field goals with 260 and in attempts with 674. He made 38.5 percent of his 3-point shots, which ranks fourth behind Field Williams, Justin Jenifer and Darnell Burton.
“I put up a lot of shots in a short tenure,” he said.
None of them were more dramatic than those three free throws on a cold night in Laramie, Wyoming.
Great story! I remember watching this game when I was freshman at UC . Lazelle was one of my favorites that year. He had a great game later in the season against Xavier too.
ReplyDeleteHe was one of my favorite players to watch in all he years I covered UC.
ReplyDeleteI remember staying up late to watch the game. I groaned when Lazalle took that last off balance three and cheered when the ref called a foul. I could see the look of confidence in Lazalle's eyes when he walked to the line for those final free throws. It was then, before he took the shots, I knew we had the game in the bag. I have many favorite players and Lazelle is one of them because of that play.
ReplyDelete