By Tom Mattingly
Over the years, traveling to various venues on the SEC basketball circuit was not for the faint of heart. In earlier years, it was a tough task, night-in and night-out, 18 games played home-and-home. Things haven’t changed very much today. Making the trek through conference venues is still a daunting task.
Take, for example, the 1968-69 University of Tennessee basketball season. The Vols finished 21-7 overall and 13-5 (SEC), with an appearance in the NIT. It featured yeoman-like work from Bill Justus, Billy Hann, Bobby Croft, Jim England, and Don Johnson.
But one night at Vanderbilt in 1969 defined that season and the ever-growing legend of head coach Ray Mears. The Vols swept the two-game series, but it wasn’t easy.
Before the 1972-73 season, before freshman eligibility, there were games earlier in the evening between each school’s rookies, just to whet the appetites of the early arrivals.
The games between the Vols and Commodores were (and still are) fiercely contested, and the rivalry, especially in Nashville, is not for the faint of heart.
Historically, it’s called the “Long Walk.” Knoxville Journal sportswriter Ben Byrd wrote that Mears’ stroll down the Memorial Gym sideline that season caused “one of the stormiest chapters” in SEC basketball lore.
For Mears, it was a stroke of genius, one of many in his heralded career. Ray always delighted in these little gimmicks, once going as far as wearing a brown suit at Kentucky, just to get under Adolph Rupp’s skin. However, Mears told Byrd, apparently with a straight face, that his walk at Nashville that night was not “premeditated.”
It was merely a matter of geography.
“Our dressing room at Vandy then was at the opposite end of the floor from where the team bench was,” said Ray. “During the freshman game, I went up in the last half to watch the final 10 minutes or so. I waited for a timeout to walk the length of the floor to our bench.”
The reaction was surprising, even to Mears, who said he really didn’t seem to expect to create such an uproar. “I knew they’d boo me — they had been doing that for years — but I didn’t expect anything as violent as I got.”
Byrd wrote that Mears, resplendent in his trademark orange blazer, was greeted by a “cacophony of boos, jeers, catcalls, and other derisive noises,” in an attempt to intimidate the Vols on the floor… and those still in the dressing room.
“The crowd got our freshmen so stirred up they went ahead and won the game,” said Mears.
The ruckus also helped the Vol varsity, 70-60 winners in a game many Vol fans had mentally chalked up as a loss.
John Ward once noted that there wasn’t an orange to be had in Davidson County the day of a Tennessee-Vanderbilt basketball game. That might have been an exaggeration, but those of us who saw many of the games played in Nashville will tell you it was quite a show.
In 1971, Tennessee point guard Dickie Johnston, all 5-8 of him, was hit with an orange, and the Vols won that night, too. He did earn a technical foul for his efforts, however, when he hurled the basketball into the Commodore student section.
Mears made his 1970 stroll at Vanderbilt with Vol track star Bill Skinner, all 6-7 and 250 pounds of him at his side. Marvin West called that move “part of the psychological warfare, the flag before the bull.”
Tennessee warmed up with an orange and white basketball in those days, and there was a time Vandy students grabbed hold of the spheroid and wouldn’t let go. Mears tried the normal routine of getting the ball back by sending a manager into the crowd. All that did was embolden the masses. Mears then dispatched Skinner, who made his way into the mass of humanity and requested the ball. Whoever had it, let it go… very quickly.
There was also a piece of intriguing irony in one of the last Tennessee-Vanderbilt games at Stokely Center. In the midst of a close finish, an orange came sailing onto the court. As the perpetrator was apprehended, leaving with police escort, the noise level in the old arena swelled, especially as fans got a glimpse of his black and gold jacket hidden under an orange one he was wearing as a disguise.
In his Tennessee career, Mears fashioned his own brand of “Memorial Magic.” Mears’ teams were 20-10 against the Commodores, 9-6 in Memorial Gym, along with an 11-4 mark in Knoxville.
As things have usually happened over the years, the SEC powers-that-be stepped in and put a halt to the “Long Walk,” citing safety concerns. Tennessee’s dressing room was moved closer to its bench area. Life became more peaceful in Memorial Gym… but that’s a relative term.
Ray Mears had made a statement.
“The art of one-upsmanship is a long way from being dead,” wrote Ben.
It’s December, with college football and basketball vying for attention from the viewing public. Conference play hasn’t yet started, but, come January, SEC excitement begins and the race is on.
The stories are legendary.
