The Clyde Lovellette Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Thursday, September 15th,
2005
As
a sophomore you were fourth in the nation in scoring, and you finished fifth
as a junior – earning All-Big Seven and All-America honors both years. What
tactics did opposing coaches employ in an effort to slow you down?
I
guess there were a lot of double-teams, and a lot of sagging off. They also
tried to push me out from my normal shooting range – keeping me away from
the basket was a big strategy on both ends of the court, actually. Putting
a guy in front of me, and a guy behind me, that was the most common defense
that I had to deal with. But if you've got a good ball club, and they're
working with you, and I'm working with them, then it gets to the place where
a defense can do that for a little bit – but pretty soon it's going to break
down and we're going to run our offense. They can stymie you for awhile.
But if you've good a good nucleus of players who can shoot from outside and
drive to the basket –and good passers – then the cream will come to the top,
and that's what we had. We had a great bunch of guys that just loved to
play basketball and loved to win. If we won, great, and if we lost, then
we'd go back to the practice court, figure out what we'd done wrong and
correct it for the next game.
Everything came together for you as a senior – you led the nation in
scoring, and you led the Jayhawks to the 1952 NCAA Championship. You were
All-Big Seven, All-America, and the Helms Foundation NCAA Player of the
Year. Take me back to that senior season – what memories stand out after
all these years, and did you expect to finish your collegiate career in such
storybook fashion?
I
think you have to go all the way back to when Phog recruited me to come to
Kansas, and when he recruited all of those guys out of Kansas. We had a
plan, even though there were times during the course of our sophomore and
junior years when that plan would go awry; we'd lose a game here and there,
and we weren't doing as well as Phog was wanting us to, but the important
thing was that we kept our focus on improving as a unit. I can't speak for
the other guys on the team – Glenn Hart, Robert Kenney, the Kelley brothers
and the rest – but I think we had a mindset that we were going to go out and
play hard every game, do the best that we could, and do what Phog wanted us
to do. I think we were convinced that if we did these things we'd have good
success in every game, win or lose. So I think that mindset carried us the
entire year.
Fortunately, we had a great nucleus of ball players. We had a range of guys
that could play the game, and bring their own unique skills to the team –
whether it was passing, rebounding, defense, or scoring. We started off
winning , and kept winning until we hit a snag and lost two games in a row.
Phog was upset. We worked very hard in practice after that second loss,
because he knew – and we knew – that we couldn't lose any more or we weren't
going to win the Big Seven and have a chance to win the national
championship. Well, we didn't lose any other games after that. Every game
we played, we played the game hard and we played it to have fun…and we
played it to the best of our ability – both individually, and as a team.
And, as it turned out, we won the Big Seven and went on to become national
champions.
You were
unstoppable during the postseason, scoring 141 points on your way to earning
tournament MVP honors. How were you able to dominate the best teams in the
nation?
I
don’t know if you can call it providence, but we were determined to fulfill
the prophecy that Phog had given to us as freshmen. We came together, and
the team as a whole was unstoppable. And I think I just came to the point
in my career where I understood what was expected of me if we were going to
win the national championship. I knew that I needed to raise the level of
my game. It had to be better than what I'd produced during the regular
season, although I had a great regular season my senior year. It had to be
better because one loss in a tournament means that your season is over –
and, in the case of the seniors, that meant the end of a college career.
I remember coming out the locker room for those tournament games, buckling
down and then taking care of business on the court. The other guys on the
team had the same attitude. We might be behind or tied at halftime, but
we'd come out with a big spurt at the start of the second half and dominate
every team that we played.
While at
Kansas, you developed into something of an extrovert, even hosting a radio
show at WIBW in Topeka called "Hill Billy Clyde and his Hound Dog Lester."
Please tell me about this part of your life.
You're
right – in high school I was 6'-8" and head-and-shoulders above everybody
else. It got to the point that I became very shy. I didn't go out very
much. I didn't want to be looked at or stared at. But by my junior and
senior years I had blossomed as an athlete, becoming an All-State basketball
player and gaining recognition for what I could do on the court. I started
dating, and I found a good core of friends to bum around with together – I
was very careful in that regard, because sometimes I think my popularity as
a basketball player made me popular with a lot of the guys and girls at
school. I never let them get to the point to where they were using me. I
kept my distance from the ones who wanted to be associated with me simply so
that they could say 'Look who I know'.
When I first got into college it was a completely different atmosphere. In
college they don't know who you are and they don't really care. They're
interested in getting an education. But once I started playing basketball I
found myself in the same situation, with people wanting to latch onto me
because I was a high-profile athlete. They were more interested in who I
was, and it made them look good to be seen with someone who was doing well
in that regard. So even though I was more of an extrovert in college, I
still chose my friends very carefully. I wanted people to associate
themselves with me because of who I was, and not what I did as an athlete.
And when we went out, we didn't talk about basketball. We didn't talk about
the big game the team had just played, or the big game that was coming up.
We talked about other things – what was going on in the State of Kansas, or
what was going on in the world.
It was like that in other parts of the country as well – pretty much
wherever we played. There were always people – hangers-on, I called them –
who loved to come around the locker room, get an autograph and hang out with
you for a little bit. And then other people would see them hanging around
the athletes, and it would give them a bloated ego. So we as players just
had to be careful about who we associated with.