My earliest OU basketball memory is when

[tycat947]

That's about my time frame as well. I remember the game with LSU on TV in the NIT when they had Pete Maravich. He was an incredible talent, and they still only beat OU by three points.

My first live game wasn't until my senior year of high school. My folks were at OU when basketball was awful, so they didn't have much interest in going to the games at the Field House. I was 18 most of my senior year, and knew I was going to OU, so I drove up with a friend to see the 1976 Bedlam game at the LNC. That turned out to be the very first win for OU in the then-new arena. OU won, 57-42, and at the time it was the largest crowd to see a home game at OU.

That night was more famous originally for being the night that OU got its 1975 national championship trophies from AP and UPI. But I also think it woke up some people about basketball, since Bliss' young and undersized team was starting to play well. They beat heavily favored, nationally ranked Missouri fairly easily a week or two later, at the LNC, then won at Kansas by a point when that was considered an impossibility.

Although they won only nine games that year, they played decent ball in the league. Bliss signed the Curry-Stotts-Beal led class in the spring of '76, and those in my age group started thinking we could be pretty good in basketball for the first time in awhile.

+1

 

[usedtobe1]

My first OU basketball memory was while I was at OU - probably 1966. A sorority sister was dating one of the players - a guy from New Jersey - and she wanted to someone to go with her. More people go to volleyball games now than went to basketball game then, so you can imagine how sparse the crowd was. We sat in the upper deck, behind the south goal. I have a vivid memory of my friend screaming her boyfriends name while he was shooting free throws. I wished that I was invisible.

We're from the same era. I attended OU in the 60's and watched many games in the old fieldhouse and you could walk in and sit anywhere you wanted. I started going to games in John Macleod's era. Ironically I joined the Marine Reserves in Norman (Vietnam times) and was a radioman for Bob "Go Go" Steves (ex Sooner coach before Ramsey). That was back in the day when freshmen were ineligible, and they had freshman teams.

We used to have a poster on one of the OU basketball boards that was a former player in the 60's. He went by a username of OUhighjumper (was on the track team, too), but he has either quit posting or changed his username.

I watched Alvin Adams first games in the early 70's in that Fieldhouse. I've watched Alvin, Tisdale, and Blake all play live.

One of my favorite basketball stories was taking my oldest son to OKC for the All College tournament when Tisdale's OU team won the championship over Louisiana Tech. My son was about 10 and wanted Waymon's autograph, but the line was too deep to get it after the game. I remember telling my son to go get one of the Louisiana Tech player's autograph because he was pretty good and sitting by himself in the bleachers watching the festivities. It was Karl "The Mailman" Malone. Nice consolation prize......

After I graduated from OU in '69, I moved to Ponca City and had a roommate from Missouri. We used to go up to the Big 8 pre-season tournament in KC (he was from there). We went 3-4 years until they stopped it. We would go to the tournament and watch every team play 3 games. I remember sitting in the stands one Saturday morning talking with John McCullough and other players about the game the night before when the Sooners almost upset Kansas. There were probably only 100 people watching that 8th place game.

I've watched several coaches and their styles. Not just OU. I remember one of my greatest honors was talking to Hank Iba for about 30 minutes. One of my good friends played for him at OSU.

Like Ada and some others on this board, I eventually refereed HS ball for many years in Houston.

I'm retired now but I still love watching OU basketball as much as I ever did.

 

[SoonerMatt27]

Such an offseason thread :facepalm

Earliest memories are the final four team with Hollis Price and Ace McGhee(my first OU hero). Cried like a baby when they lost to frickin' Indiana.

Here's to new and happier memories this upcoming season.

edit: yes im in my early 20s and wasn't lucky enough to experience the great Wayman Tisdale.

 

[sybarite]

Nobody before !953? I had hoped that someone had some memories of the 47 team that played Holy Cross for the title.

 

[big-hOUnd]

My first memory of OU basketball I was in HS sometime around '69-'71. Lived in southern Ok and my neighbor had gone to osu, so he talks me in to going to a game in stillwater. Up to that point I was an OU football fan, but had never seen or heard anything about their b-ball team. Partly because I was busy playing HS b-ball. So I get introduced to OU b-ball at a Bedlam game. I didn't know any of our players, but I quickly became a fan watching Garfield Heard and Clifford Ray battle in a hard fought game in which OU lost a close one. I've been hooked ever since!

 

[NMSooner'80]

Back when I was growing up and trying to follow OU basketball some, it was harder than you'd think. In the 1970's, the OU basketball network was pretty sparse. We could get the day games in Ardmore on KTOK, albeit faintly, but you could forget it after dark.

BTW, my younger brother's eventual OU freshman year roommate was also from Ardmore and had to find the games on long-distance stations like KFAB out of Omaha and KMOX out of St. Louis. He was in 10th grade and listened to the epic OU-Mizzou game of '77 on KMOX. He told my brother that it was so loud on the radio at the end, that you could barely hear the Mizzou broadcasters over the din.