The Bob Brannum Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Wednesday, April 7th, 2004
You returned to UK following military stay, only to find
Rupp’s roster overcrowded. What led you to select
Michigan State as the place to finish your collegiate
career?
Michigan State had a graduate who was a doc in the
military. He got passes for us to play ball and to get
off the base, things like that – he could get around the
military brass where we couldn’t. While I was still in
the service he asked if I wanted to go to MSU. I turned
him down at the time, but he said that the invitation
was open if I ever changed my mind.
I went back to UK after being discharged. There were plenty of players on the roster, but there was more to it than that. Adolph Rupp was a great basketball coach, a Vince Lombardi-type, but he wasn’t a nice man – at least not in the gymnasium. Outside of basketball he was pleasant enough. When it came to coaching he was going to win at all costs, and before the SEC tournament he decided to remove me and Jim Jordan from the traveling squad. Looking back we should have known what was going on. Rupp didn’t like us, for whatever reason, and he wasn’t too subtle about showing it. That year he had the entire team rooming on the same floor, except for me and Jim. Our rooms were two floors above the rest of the team. We were treated like outcasts and then left off the traveling squad, so I decided to transfer to Michigan State.
Saturday, January 10th, 1948: UK traveled to
East Lansing, pitting your new team against your old
one. Though heavily favored, the Wildcats only won by
two, 47-45. You thoroughly outplayed Mr. Groza in that
contest, outscoring him 23 to 10 and accounting for more
than half of your team’s points. Please take me back to
that game, held in Jenison Fieldhouse, and what it meant
for you to play so well against your former team.
I tried to play well against everyone, regardless of the
competition. I was hard-nosed and didn’t like to get
beat, so anytime we lost was very disappointing. That
game was bigger than most. It was the biggest crowd to
ever watch a basketball game in Jenison Fieldhouse,
mostly because Rupp brought the Fabulous Five with him
and everyone wanted to see an upset.
Kentucky appeared to have that game well in hand when
Rupp ordered his troops to freeze the ball. You scored
two quick baskets to tie the game at 43. What was the
atmosphere like when you hit those shots?
The crowd was loud all game long. It was a noisy
atmosphere to begin with, but even more so after we tied
the score.
Mr. Groza won back-to-back national championships while
at UK, as well as an Olympic gold medal. His
achievements were forever tarnished because of his
involvement in a point-shaving scandal during the 1949
NIT tournament (then the premiere collegiate basketball
tournament, and determiner of the national
championship), and the NBA banned Mr. Groza for life.
What did you feel when you first heard the news of the
scandal, and do you think it cost Mr. Groza a place in
the basketball hall-of-fame?
I was in a car, driving with Red Auerbach, when he
turned to me and said, ‘They picked up Groza and [Ralph]
Beard last night.’ My first thought was that [Celtics
owner] Walter Brown had pulled off some kind of deal to
sign those guys, and that I was going to be out of a
job. Then Red explained that they had accepted $2,000
apiece to shave points in a game against Loyola
University. Kentucky was the favorite in that game, but
they ended up losing by seven or eight points [67-56].
But they hadn’t planned on losing. They just wanted to
keep the score close enough to cover the spread. Dale
Barnstable was the third player caught up in the
scandal.
Alex liked money. He liked pulling a couple of hundred dollars from his wallet and showing it around. His brother, Lou, was a place-kicker for the Cleveland Browns. He always kept Alex flush with money, so I can see where he would have been tempted to shave points. It was still a shock, and it made me mad to know that he’d been involved in something like that.
