While KU coach Dick Harp wanted his white players to “walk the extra mile” for their black teammates, he also hoped the black players like Maurice King would integrate with the whites and appreciate who they were as human beings.
That happened one night when African-American player Butch Ellison “got on my knees to pray” as his roommate and white teammate Jerry Gardner looked on curiously.
“Jerry goes, ‘What are you doing?' Ellison recalled in 2007. “I said, 'I’m praying.’ He said, ‘We pray lying down in the bed.’ Since that time, I’ve been lying down in the bed praying. You do pick some little things up.”
Nolen Ellison, Butch’s younger brother, said that was one case where Harp would have rejoiced.
“Dick wanted these players to appreciate each other and to appreciate each other’s culture and to truly become brothers,” Nolen said.
Harp’s dilemma was even more difficult when the team was referred to in such ways as “four blacks and a brave (Dee Ketchum was a Native American).”
Nolen laughs at that reference now and said he didn’t hear that mentioned back when he played in the early 1960s. But the white players who belonged to fraternities such as Sigma Nu, whose chapter was known, Nolen said, as having the “most white right-wing conservatives in the country (and) notorious for racial attitudes, (they) “would hear that stuff.”
“(The white players were) getting mixed messages,” Butch added. “That never showed up on the floor, but they go back (to their frats) and hear that stuff.”
While Harp was doing his best to integrate his team off the court, he was also focused on making the 1960-61 squad one to remember. After starting just 3-3, KU won 12 of its next 14 games, including six-straight victories. The fifth-straight win was a convincing 88-73 victory over MU in Lawrence, where Wayne Hightower dominated with 36 points and 21 boards.
KU was now 7-1 in the league and tied with KSU for first place. The Jayhawks then took a one-game lead in the standings as Colorado beat K-State before KU blew out the Buffaloes, 90-62, in Boulder. K-State, though, crept back in a tie with KU after beating the Jayhawks, 81-63, in Manhattan.
With four regular-season games remaining, Kansas needed a strong push for its second-straight conference championship and third overall in the Harp era.
It didn’t happen. KU lost two of its last four, stumbling to a 10-4 record in the Big Eight (17-8 overall) and tie for second place as the Wildcats won the league.
The Jayhawks lost all life when they learned late in the season that they were put on probation and a one-year postseason ban after recruiting violations surrounding Wilt Chamberlain.
Assistant coach Ted Owens remembers the team’s sadness when they learned the news.
“The problem is we had a great team,” Owens told John Hendel in “Kansas Jayhawks: History-making basketball.” “We had Bill Bridges and Wayne Hightower and Jerry Gardner, who was an excellent guard. And Nolen Ellison and Dee Ketchum and Al Correll. We had dynamite talent.
“And I’ll never forget the day that Dick walked on the court and told them. It was a morale and spirit killer because that was a team that could done very well in the NCAA playoffs.”
Nolen Ellison, a sophomore, was quite angry with Chamberlain.
“(There were) strong feelings that Wilt had betrayed us,” Ellison said. “You take the car and you know that’s going to put the team in trouble. He couldn’t afford a ‘57 oldsmobile, flaming red. (He was a) poor kid. Where are you going to get money (for that car)? That started my career with being under a cloud. Dick called us all together and said we’ve been placed on probation. It was confusing and difficult to accept. (We didn’t have a) chance to stand on our own.”
Owens elaborated on the affects of the probation in his book, “At the Hang-up.”
“Although we finished second in the league, the 1960-61 basketball season was a bit of a disappointment because the expectations were so high after reaching the NCAA regional finals the previous year,” Owens wrote. “Knowing that the team was barred from the NCAA tournament, the players’ spirits had evaporated.”
The Jayhawker Yearbook noted the inconsistency of the team which plagued KU that season.
“When Kansas was ‘on,’ nobody could stop them; when cold the Hawks were a pushover. Consequently, the Jays bowed to two considerably weaker teams, thereby killing any hopes for a conference championship.
“The lack of a team drive at times, as well as the brawl at Missouri, could be in part attributed to the ... NCAA ban clamped on the KU basketball team. The ban hurt the attitudes of those holdovers from last year’s conference champs, who had dreamed of another NCAA tournament berth. Moreover, Missouri Athletic Director Don Faurot has been accused by many of instigating the NCAA probe — an accusation which has only heightened animosity between the two schools.”
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