By John Katsilometes
I take a break today to speak not of Las Vegas (at least, not entirely of Las Vegas) but to remember an old friend who left us last weekend. His name was Jim Killingsworth. For years, he was a major-college basketball coach, at Idaho State, Oklahoma State and Texas Christian University. He was also one of the great men in my life. The old coach died over the weekend in his hometown of Owasso, Okla., of complications from a stroke he suffered earlier this month. He was to turn 84 next week.
I had not seen of spoken with the man I knew as Killer in many years, but I remember him vividly.
The Las Vegas angle in Killingsworth’s story is that he was a close friend of UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian. They faced off in one significant game, in March 1977, when the Runnin’ Rebels beat Killer’s Idaho State Bengals, 107-90, in Provo, Utah, in the West Region finals, known today as the Elite Eight. To reach that game, ISU knocked off UCLA 76-75 in one of the more underappreciated upsets in the history of the tournament.
At the time, UCLA was ranked No. 2 in the nation (behind only the Runnin’ Rebels) and had reached the Final Four for 11 straight years. In 10 of those seasons the Bruins won the national championship.
By comparison, Idaho State was the champion of the Big Sky Conference.
My family lived in Pocatello, Idaho, in those days and we were passionate about ISU sports. Dad was the president of the ISU Booster Foundation. My brother, Bill, and I were ball boys for the basketball team. When I heard the news of Killer’s passing, I remembered how engaging his players were to the Pocatellans who supported the team (it seemed every weekend we had a couple of players at our house for dinner), and how he resonated a certain measured charm to everyone he met. Killer had a winning smile, but he was also a maniacal competitor who could be a torrent on the sidelines.
In one famous episode, during a conference game at the University of Idaho in Moscow, a fan threw a live chicken onto the court. An infuriated Killingsworth demanded the officials issue a technical foul against the home team. When the ref told him he could not be sure the chicken was thrown by a fan of Idaho or Idaho State, Killer shot back, “The only fan I have in the stands is the president of our university! You want to check him for chicken feathers?”
A technical was then issued – to Killingsworth.
The Big Sky was a rough conference in those days, to put it mildly. Montana State’s home court was placed on the dirt floor of its events center, which doubled as a rodeo arena. Potatoes cascaded from the bleachers at the University of Montana. In those days most Big Sky teams played in old gymnasiums that seated about 3,500 vociferous, chicken-throwing, spud-tossing fans. But ISU’s home arena was the Minidome, which for its time was a 12,000-seat, state-of-the-art facility for which the Syracuse Carrier Dome was modeled. The class of the conference, ISU ascended from a brutal Big Sky schedule to win the conference and reach the NCAA tournament. In the opening round the Bengals beat Long Beach State 83-72 at the Minidome, which was followed by UCLA’s impressive 87-79 victory over Louisville. That pitched ISU into the West Region finals against the Bruins.
I have not seen that game since it was played (this being before the advent of the VCR; I think there is a reel-to-reel film of it somewhere). But what I remember most is, as the heavily favored Bruins desperately fought back in the final moments, a freshman guard named Ernie Wheeler made a series of crucial free throws to put the victory away. Wheeler was a guy who complained about having to shoot free throws after running wind sprints after every practice.
I will never forget the bedlam that game set off in that little railroad town. After ISU lost to UNLV (Killer would later say that the difference in that game was that the Runnin’ Rebels had eight great players and ISU had four) the team returned to a noise parade -- where a long line of cars rolls through town while honking their horns. It seemed everyone in town who owned a vehicle turned out to snake through the streets and blare their horns. That’s how we celebrated in Pocatello.
I recall something Killer said during one of his Bengal basketball camps. I wanted to be a great basketball player back then, and he said that if I really loved basketball I should have a basketball with me all the time. “Even take it to bed with you,” he said. So I did. But it kept rolling out. It was so impractical. I asked Killer’s assistant coach, a gangling, affable man named Charlie Fenske, about taking the ball to bed. Charlie laughed and said, “Coach was speaking euphemistically,” which did nothing but send me to the nearest dictionary.
But today, I have a basketball that I’ve kept for 30 years. It was signed by every member of the 1976-77 ISU basketball team. Amid all others, the signature that stands out in bold, black letters, is that of Jim Killingsworth.
Fabulous Las Vegas appears daily (well, almost) at this Web site. John Katsilometes can be reached at 990-7720, 812-9812 or at [email protected]