The KC Jones Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Sunday, August 4th, 2002
After the
Cal victory there was much optimism surrounding the
‘53-‘54 Dons. Then came the second game of the
season at Fresno State. Would you please share
what happened to you before that game, and how it
impacted the team’s season?
I started to experience stomach pain after
the game against Cal. It got progressively worse
as we approached the game against Fresno, which was
scheduled around the Thanksgiving holiday. At
first I thought that maybe I’d celebrated Thanksgiving
a little too much, that I’d eaten too much.
[Laughs.] It got worse, and the doctor diagnosed
it as a mild form of appendicitis. Well, on the
bus ride to Fresno the pain became unbearable. I
was turning flips it hurt so bad. We were in the
locker room before the game, I was doubled over in pain,
and the coaches were going over the scouting report with
me. [Laughs.] I remember that the pain was
just tremendous. My appendix burst, and that was
the end of my season.
You
returned for the ’54-’55 season and the Dons roared
past Chico State in the opener. The next couple of
games were lackluster to say the least, prompting Coach
Woolpert to make an historic decision. When
Woolpert inserted Hal Perry into the starting lineup, he
broke a significant color barrier. For the first
time ever, three of the five starters on a major college
basketball team that would go on to win the nation title
would be African-American. Were you aware of this
event’s significance at the time?
We were a close-knit team, and we just played
basketball. It was no big deal to us, because we
didn’t look at our team as being made up of black
players and white players. We were just players.
A week after losing to
UCLA in Los Angeles, USF hosted UCLA – then ranked
sixth in the nation – in a rematch at the Cow Palace.
The final score, 56-44, was hardly indicative of USF’s
dominance that night. At this point in the season
were you entertaining thoughts of a national
championship?
The games that you mentioned in your previous question
were against Loyola, which we won, and against UCLA,
which beat us by seven points. And although we
lost to UCLA we came away from that game with a great
deal of confidence. We were all shaking in our
boots before the game [laughs], but after it was over we
knew that we could beat these guys. We’d only
lost by seven points in their gym. We’d beaten
Santa Clara by something like 75-35. So when
we played them in the Cow Palace we were ready for them,
and we knew that we could play with anybody.
A week later you hit the
road for the All-College Tournament in Oklahoma City.
Upon arriving at the tournament site, you learned that
black players were going to be denied access to hotel
rooms. What was the team’s solution to this
problem, and did it help the team grow in terms of
handling adversity?
We camped out in a college dorm closed for the holidays,
and we practiced wherever we could. I remember
practicing on a stage, and people coming to watch.
They called us the Harlem Globetrotters, and they threw
pennies and quarters on the stage. A few of us got
really angry at this, but not Bill (Russell). Bill
just smiled and laughed at them and picked up the money,
and turned the situation around on them. He wanted
to prove that he was bigger than the taunting, and he
was basically mocking their actions. He wasn’t
going to let them get the best of him, and he handled
that situation appropriately, I thought.
These
incidents seemed to inspire you and your teammates.
USF thrashed Wichita 94-75, Oklahoma City University
75-51, and George Washington 73-57. Did you feel
that this was the start of something good?
There were eight teams in this tournament, and we
were seeded eighth. We knew we were better than
that, and we were motivated. We got out on Wichita
25-3 and never looked back.
