The quoted portions are paragraphs 2 and 4; sorry I forgot to Preview first.
Also worth noting is Wooden really wanted Westphal to come to Westwood, and the article says Layton wanted to come but decided not to when UCLA didn’t want to recruit his friend. (A bit different from Tim Floyd putting a non-gifted player on his squad so the rapper will bring along his talented one-and-done buddy.)

Thanks for posting this.

love reading about the history. Interesting coincidence about the score and SC’s scoring drought at the end of the game. Boyd was a good coach but he was no Wizard.

As I recall, justsc’s coach (I think it was Bob Boyd) decided to take Layton out for a short rest, and Coach Wooden responded by having us go into a monumental slowdown and we kept the ball for a long time and Layton didn’t get back in until it was too late. I may be totally wrong on this, but it’s in my memory for some reason.

But that’s not my favorite memory of justsc basketball. There was a year when justsc went 11-0 in non-conference play, and their AD made a big deal about it and what a great coach Boyd was and how he was going to make people forget all about that old-timer in Westwood. And then the AD said “Boyd should be coach of the year even if we never win another game.” Sure enough, justsc went 0-14 in the Pac 8. For some reason, Boyd was not named coach of the year.

I’m not sure at all about memory number 1, but memory number 2 is deeply imbedded.

enjoyed this post. a lot. it would be great to put together a regular feature during b-ball season with anecdotes like this.

He was the one who decided to stall against the UCLA teams that featured Kareem Abdul Jabbar (then Lew Alcindor). In those days there was no shot clock and so he would have his big, oafish center Ron Taylor stand at center court just holding the ball. Wooden insisted that Alcindor stand back by the basket and not come out, so the clock just ticked away. It was so bad that they ran commercials on the radio while play was going on! Unfortunately, the strategy was somewhat successful, as one game went into overtime with UCLA winning and SC won once at Pauley. I remember the signs saying “Stalls Are For Horses!” For this cowardly strategy, Boyd deserves no pity for any pain inflicted upon him by his numerous losses to UCLA!

My favorite Bob Boyd moment actually occurred in an NCAA western regional game at Pauley Pavilion in 1979. Boyd had announced his resignation as SC coach earlier in the year and his team managed to make the playoffs (more than one team from a conference could now participate). They were playing DePaul, featuring Mark Aguirre. It was like a DePaul home game at Pauley, with the crowd overwhelmingly in their favor! As DePaul pulled away near the end, the crowd started chanting “Boyd’s Last Game, Boyd’s Last Game!” He got so frustrated by his team’s play and the officiating that he wound up getting a technical foul, which just spurred on the crowd some more. I thought it was sweet justice for his antics as SC coach over the years!

As a geezer, to use the word above, I love going back to that era, especially those Wicks-Rowe teams that weren’t supposed to do anything. It was fun, too, having the rivalries, not only SC, because we always ended up beating them, but some good Long Beach State teams, whom we’d play in the tournament. If not for the champions-only rule, the Bruins would have probably made the tournament every year from 1962 to 1976, when it opened up. The 1963 and 1965 teams were both good enough to get in.

So thanks for the post. I think we geezers have a role to play in bringing back the Wooden era to those who weren’t fortunate enough to be a part of it, just as the youngsters will be telling tales of CBH teams and games thirty-five years from now.

I remember watching that game on TV. It was really hyped and was televised on TVS on a national broadcast …very rare in those days. The other starter for $C was forward Chris Schrobilgen (sp?) and Dana Padgett was their 6th man off the bench.

The Bruins looked dead in the water and the Sports Arena was rocking when the whip came down. When the Bruins got control of the game with less than five minutes to play, Coach Wooden uncharacteristically elected to run out the clock. He had Sidney Wicks stand out near midcourt with the ball. When the dumbfounded Trojies didn’t come out on him, Sidney began to flex his muscles with the arm that wasn’t holding the ball. His mugging for the crowd was the cherry on top.

SI had a feature article on the game. Maybe one of you can find it in SI’s archives and link it up. It really was a very memorable game. Come to think of it, that game may have been the genesis for Just SC.

I too was at the “stall” game at the Sports Arena. IIRC, the game went into OT and a key play in OT was a steal and break-away lay-in by Bruin guard Bill Sweek.

We shouldn’t be so hard on the lug. One of my favorite memories from my years at UCLA was the final 4 in 1968. $C was the host school, since the final 4 was at the Sports Arena. As the host school, $C supplied the support staff. So, there under one of the baskets as the ball boy was …Ron Taylor ! How sweet.
That was clearly a great final 4. The payback game against Houston was so one-sided that their live Cougar mascot fell asleep in his cage, and the championship game against UNC was the icing on the cake.
I have no sympathy for $C, or anybody who felt sorry for $C, because their 71 basketball season ended with the last regular season game with only 2 losses, both to UCLA. The same system held true in football (conf champ moves on, everybody else stays home). In football, we were the ones on the short end of the stick. My first UCLA-$C football game as a freshman was the 21-20 missed extra point game. We were clearly one of the top 2 teams in the country, and our season ended at the end of the regular season.
So sympathy for the devil? Never.

My memory has faded because I am a member of the Geezer Club. I was an undergrad at UCLA when Walton and Silky Wilkes blew away a Gus Williams led USC team 59 to 13 in the first half. I don’t even remember the final score or what year this happened—just that it was an unbelievably machine like performance by Coach Wooden’s boys that I have never seen in all my life. Can anybody help out with the details of that game?