A member of Baylor’s first Final Four team praises Baylor’s current Final Four team
Baylor has returned to the Final Four. Finally.
The Bears made their first trip in 1948 and again in 1950 under coach Bill Henderson. At that time, nobody would have thought it’d take seven-plus decades for Baylor to return.
As one of the players from Baylor’s first Final Four team, Jack Robinson, said in a recent telephone interview from his home in Augusta, Georgia, “I’ve been hopeful every year. I’m just delighted that they’ve gotten there this year. They really do have a good team and a wonderful coach.”
Led by Scott Drew in his 18th season in Waco, Baylor punched its ticket to the 2021 Final Four by knocking off Arkansas, 81-72, in the Elite Eight on Monday. The Bears will face Houston on Saturday with a trip to the championship game on the line against the winner of the Gonzaga-UCLA semifinal.
Baylor’s run under Drew is one of the most remarkable rebuilding jobs in college sports history.
Decades ago, though, Baylor found itself in similar company by landing elite-level talent such as Robinson. Robinson was part of Paschal’s 1945 state championship team under legendary coach Charlie Turner.
Robinson had a stellar high school career at Paschal before moving on to Baylor where he was an All-American point guard. He was part of the Bears’ run in 1948 and also made the Olympic team that year.
In 1948, the NCAA Tournament featured only eight teams broken into East and West regions. Baylor played in the West region with the first two games at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City.
The Bears defeated Washington and Kansas State and advanced to the championship game against Kentucky at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Robinson recalled the train ride from KC to New York, as well as Baylor falling to Kentucky a couple of days later.
“Kentucky was a big and strong team,” Robinson said. “We had a strong team, too, but Kentucky was really good.”
Kentucky won, 58-42. The Wildcats were coached by Adolph Rupp, who won his first of what would become four national championships. That is as close as Baylor has come to a national championship in men’s basketball.
Maybe that changes this year.
Count Robinson among the believers. At 94 and retired after spending his working days as a pastor, Robinson remains an avid follower of the Bears. He knows the opportunity this team has to make program history.
“It’s wonderful,” Robinson said. “Baylor has a really great coach. They really do. And you know how good the defense is.”
Football state
Some things never change, right?
Asked about playing basketball and growing up in the 1930s and 1940s in Fort Worth, Robinson said: “Well, basketball was second to football. The great football teams were at TCU and SMU back then and basketball was a distant second.”
Football still remains king, of course.
Baseball chatter
Major League Baseball opened its season Thursday, and the Big 12 is well-represented with 24 players from the conference on Opening Day rosters. We’re talking about guys who are on the 26-man rosters, not simply with an organization.
That includes five from both TCU and Texas, which leads the conference. The Frogs’ five includes the Tigers’ Tyler Alexander, the Cubs’ Jake Arrieta, the Cardinals’ Matt Carpenter, and Stefan Crichton and Alex Young with the Diamondbacks.
In other baseball news, the Fort Worth-based Bragan Award named Oklahoma’s Tyler Hardman as its player of the week. Hardman went 8-for-15 with two home runs and six RBIs as OU dropped a midweek game against Texas State and went 1-2 in its three-game series against Texas last weekend.
The Sooners (13-11, 1-2) will host No. 12 TCU (17-7, 3-0) this weekend, with games at 6:30 p.m. Friday, 4 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.
