The Clyde Lovellette Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Thursday, September 15th,
2005
You were born on September 7th, 1929 in Petersburg, Indiana, the son of a
locomotive engineer. Your birthday was a little more than a month before
the Black Monday stock market crash. Please take me back to your childhood
– what was it like, and in what ways was it shaped by the Great Depression?
Dad
always had a job – as you've just said, he was an engineer who worked on the
railroad – which was one thing that our family had to be thankful about as
far as the Great Depression was concerned. We were fortunate in that we had
everything that we needed. He had a good job, and he brought home a good
paycheck. I had two brothers, one of whom also worked on the railroad, and
I had two sisters. And as far as I can remember, we had everything that we
ever needed. There were other families around our neighborhood and in other
surrounding areas that weren't as fortunate. I remember that Mom tried to
help as many of them as possible by giving them the things we had in excess
– produce, clothing, whatever the case may be. At that time there were a
lot of homeless people – we called the hobos back then – and Mom would
always give them a sandwich whenever they came by. These folks knew that
they had a place to come, a place where they could have a cold drink and a
sandwich. Mom never turned any of them down. But as far as our household,
I thought we came through the Depression in pretty good shape.
You were a four-year letter winner at Garfield High School, earning
All-State honors as a junior and senior and leading your team to the finals
of the 1947 state tournament. Please tell me a little about your high
school basketball career.
High
school basketball back in those days was a lot different that it is today.
You just played the game from year-to-year, and you didn't think too much
about going on to play in college. Your high school years were your glory
years – you just played the game and had a lot of fun, and you didn't think
about going off somewhere to play college basketball. As you entered your
senior year, you thought about getting a job, usually following in your
father's footsteps – in my case, a railroad engineer – or some other
occupation that didn't require college. And you usually stayed close to the
area or the town that you grew up in, because all of your friends, family
and acquaintances were there. You just had no reason to go any further. In
my case, I could have gone on to work on the railroad – I could have started
as a brakemen, or a fireman, and then moved on up become an engineer like my
Dad. But he never wanted me to work on the railroad, even though that's
where my brother ended up working. I think he saw the athletic potential
that I had, and that perhaps there was a chance that I could do something
with it.
So, high school basketball was a lot of fun. It developed a gangly, awkward
kid such as myself, turning him into someone who could dance, skip rope, and
play a pretty decent game of basketball. I was also able to win a lot of
honors and awards, so several colleges came calling by the time my senior
year came around, wanting me to play basketball for them.
Following
a stellar high school career in Terra Haute, you accepted a scholarship to
play for Kansas University and the legendary Phog Allen. Please tell me
what it was like to play for one of the greatest coaches the game has ever
known.
You
have to remember that there wasn't a lot of television back in '47 and '48.
There wasn't any at all for awhile, and then it was all just regional
coverage. It was all in black-and-white, and on a 9-inch screen. You got
very little news on basketball outside of Indiana. And with Indiana being
the hotbed of basketball, you had coverage from Bloomington, where Branch
McCracken was the coach at Indiana University, and you had coverage of
Johnny Wooden's team at Indiana State. Notre Dame had Moose Kraus. Purdue
had Ward "Piggy" Lambert. Those were the big programs, and the ones who
received the most coverage. So you figured that all the talent coming out
of high school would go to one of those four schools, or to another school
in Indiana – be it a Division I, II or III school – so that you could be
close to home, and so that the family could come and see you play.
I went to Bloomington to visit the IU campus, which is where all three of my
high school coaches had graduated from. Back then you didn't give letters
of intent to the college. You gave a verbal commitment. Well, I went down
to Bloomington after giving a verbal commitment to play for Indiana
University. But after getting down there and visiting the school, I learned
quickly that it was a huge campus with a very large student body
population. Honestly, I was a little bit intimidated by it all. Ultimately
I decided that I was going to honor my commitment, except that an assistant
coach from Kansas had come into the state to talk to me – this was prior to
me meeting Phog, and prior to my visit to Bloomington. So I knew that
Kansas was wanting me. I just thought that that was a far piece to travel
at the time, and I didn't really give it a lot of serious thought.
Kansas didn't give up. Phog was going to make a speech in St. Louis, and I
agreed to meet him there to discuss what his school had to offer. I
chickened out, and sent my brother-in-law to meet with Phog and tell him
that I was going to Indiana, and that there was no use in coming to Terra
Haute to try and convince me to change my mind. Phog came anyway; after the
speech he came to Indiana instead of going back to Lawrence [Kansas], and I
really didn't want to meet with him. But I finally decided to meet him and
that's when we had a long talk, and that's also when he made the one
statement that no other coach had ever made – he said that if I came to KU
and played the pivot, then the team would be good enough to win a national
championship. All of the other pieces were in place. He also predicted
that we would go to the Olympics together, and that we would win a gold
medal in Helsinki, Finland. That had a huge impact on me.
Being from Indiana, with very little television, you just didn't get much in
the way of Olympic coverage. You didn't hear a lot about basketball and
some of the other sports; what you heard about was track, because back then
that was the big thing in the Olympics. That was what you saw on TV, or
heard on the radio, or read about in the newspaper. Jesse Owens was a
national sensation – his exploits made you dream about representing your
country. So when Phog talked about the Olympics, that was the thing that
made me the most excited. I changed my mind because of that talk, and I
spent three years playing ball at KU – and we did the things that he said that we were
going to do: We won the national championship, and we won the gold medal in
Helsinki, Finland.
Your
transition from high school to college was nothing short of incredible – you
finished your first collegiate basketball season by leading the Big Seven in
scoring (21.8 ppg), by being named All-Big Seven, and by being honored as an
All-American. Please tell me about your first season in a Jayhawk uniform -
did you expect success and national recognition to come so quickly?
You
have to remember that the first year was my freshman year, and back then
freshmen couldn't play varsity sports. But that first year was really my
springboard, because we played against other freshmen at the Big Seven
schools, as well as against our own varsity on a nightly basis. It made us
realize that we weren't playing high school competition anymore, and that we
were going to be playing against young men who were big, strong and
athletic. We worked very hard during our freshman year, and then we stayed
there during the summer and worked on various skills that would help us when
we played varsity ball the following fall. So once we took to the court
during our sophomore year, we felt that we were ready to play college
basketball.
High school players today are eligible to play four years, but I still
believe that they could benefit from the adjustment of sitting out of
varsity ball that first year. There is so much they could do in the way of
settling into campus life, such as developing good study habits and learning
to live away from home.
