Darnell Valentine got a huge and memorable opportunity by playing for the 1980 U.S. Olympic basketball team. However, it wasn’t quite a once-in-a-lifetime chance since President Jimmy Carter boycotted the games in Moscow in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
Still, Valentine got invaluable experience playing against great competition and teaming with college stars Sam Bowie, Mark Aguirre, Isiah Thomas, Rolando Blackman, Michael Brooks, Al Wood, Danny Vranes, Rodney McCray, Buck Williams, Alton Lister and Bill Hanzlik. The squad, which was the youngest U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team in history, played five exhibition “Gold Medal Series” games against NBA All-Star teams while one game versus the gold-medal winning 1976 men’s basketball team in various USA cities.
Providence coach Dave Gavitt served as head coach while UCLA coach and future KU head man Larry Brown was one of the assistants.
The USA went 5-1 with its only loss a 78-76 setback to the NBA All-Stars.
Valentine, who served as Thomas’ backup at point guard, was the team’s eighth-leading scorer at 5.7 points per game while leading the squad with 14 steals and second in assists with 17. He shot 14-of-30 from the field (.467) and 6-of-8 at the free throw line, while also averaging 2.0 rebounds per game.
In KU coach Ted Owens’ 2013 book, At The Hang-up, he commented about Valentine’s experience at the Olympic workouts.
“Darnell was one of the hardest workers I’ve ever coached,” Owens wrote. “He brought effort to the court in every single practice. But if he had one weakness, it was that he penetrated with his dribble so deep into the lane that he wouldn’t have many passing angles available to him. I had pointed this out, with little success. When he returned from the Olympic workouts, I asked him if he had learned anything new, and he said the coaches had told him he was penetrating too deep and didn’t have any passing angles. It was as if he had never heard such advice before. The scriptures are right: ‘A prophet is accepted in every country but its own.’”
NBA scouts and teams, who were aware of Valentine ever since he was a high school phenom, were now paying even closer attention to his game after the Olympic “Gold Medal Series” and his senior year approaching.
One of those teams was the Portland Trail Blazers.
In legendary writer David Halberstam’s 1981 New York Times bestseller and one of the best sports books ever written, Breaks of the Game, Blazers’ astute director of player personnel Stu Inman talked about Valentine.
“What Portland needed above else was a guard,” Halberstam wrote. “Inman liked Kelvin Ransey of Ohio State. He went into scout-talk about Ransey. Good tough kid. Sturdy body. Probably won't get hurt. Played well under pressure in a good program. Excellent statistics in a top league. A Phil Ford type, but maybe a better shooter than Phil Ford. Then there was Darnell Valentine of Kansas: a kid you had to love. Very bright. Was thinking of going to law school. He had an outstanding freshman season and a good sophomore year, but had tailed off in his junior year. Inman did not know why. Perhaps personal problems. Well, Inman had a lot of friends in Wichita, Kansas, where Valentine came from, he would make a few phone calls. You had to love a kid like Darnell Valentine.”
With Valentine’s new penetration skills and the return of eight other lettermen, KU hoped to rebound from two disappointing seasons, including last year’s dismal 15-14 record. While Kansas lost malcontent Ricky Ross, who dropped out of school and transferred, Owens added big 6-10 center Victor Mitchell from a junior college in Amarillo, Texas.
“Victor was (a) strong center whom we hoped would give us a strong inside presence. The key, of course, was molding the players into a cohesive and effective unit,” Owens wrote in his book.
This was Valentine’s swan song, who dearly wanted redemption after KU failed to make the NCAA Tournament the last two years. KU started the season hot at 14-2 with its only defeats a home loss to Michigan and road setback against Kentucky. The Jayhawks notched quality wins against North Carolina (56-55) at Kemper Arena in Kansas City and at Memphis State (59-49) one game later.
Kansas, which had won 10 straight games, was now 4-0 in Big Eight play and ranked No. 18 in the AP poll. But the the Jayhawks next faced a big test with four of the next five road games.
KU lost its ranking by falling in all four road contests, including three straight to KSU, Nebraska and Oklahoma State, much to Owens' chagrin, although Mitchell was a bright spot in the 76-73 triple overtime loss to OSU with a career-high 26 points and 13 rebounds. I fell in “love” with Big Vic that night listening to my favorite announcer -- voice of the Jayhawks--Tom Hedrick call the game on the radio.`
“We didn’t do what championship teams have to do: win on the road,” Owens wrote.
Senior forward John Crawford, who started the first six games before having his minutes reduced, admits he was frustrated. He decided to have a “man-to-man” talk with Owens.
“I said, ‘Coach, I don’t want to start. I just want to play more," Crawford told me in 1999. "I think I can be more effective than Victor. He’s a good player coach, but we can only do one thing with him — play zone defense and walk the ball up the floor. If you give me the same minutes that you give Victor Mitchell, I’ll give you twice as many rebounds as I get now and twice as many points.’”
The season soon turned around. Owens respected Crawford so much that he not only gave the senior additional minutes, but started him the last eight games of the season, when KU won seven straight before a season-ending Sweet 16 loss to Wichita State.
After a loss at Missouri on Feb. 9, KU notched two straight wins against Iowa State and Colorado. The Jayhawks were beginning to catch fire down the home stretch of the Big Eight race.
“The rest of the season, the team really dug in and played tremendous basketball,” Owens wrote. “With Art (Housey) now starting and Victor coming off the bench, we hit our stride. Defeating Nebraska once and Oklahoma State twice, Art went 19-of-25 from the field in the three games.”
Housey led KU in rebounding four of five games from Jan. 25 to Feb. 7, which marked KU’s win over KSU in the Big Eight Tournament championship. He exploded for a career-high 21 points and 15 rebounds in the quarterfinals of the tournament on March 3 against the Cowboys.
Housey, a 6-10 chiseled specimen from the Bronx, N.Y., had greatly improved from the raw product he was when he first arrived at Kansas last year. He added great spark to KU as a starter. Housey, who became a third-round NBA Draft pick by the Dallas Mavericks, was a very good shooter from 15 feet and a quality rebounder as well, while giving the Jayhawks an imposing presence in the middle.
KU finished the regular season strong by winning four of five games and finished Big Eight play at 9-5.
And then the joy ride was just beginning.
Owens’ starters were Crawford and David Magley at forward, Housey at center, and Valentine and Tony Guy at guard. Kansas knew it had to win the Big Eight Tournament to likely earn an NCAA Tournament bid.
After whipping Oklahoma State in the quarterfinals, 96-69, in Lawrence during Valentine’s home finale, KU then had a very impressive 75-70 victory over Missouri in Kemper Arena in Kansas City before another great win against K-State, 80-68, and winning the tournament and clinching an NCAA Tournament bid, KU’s first since 1978. Valentine led Kansas with 20 points against Missouri and 23 versus KSU.
Longtime Kansas City star reporter Blair Kerkhoff included KU’s win over KSU in his 1997 book, A Century of Jayhawk Triumphs: the 100 Greatest Victories in the History of Kansas Basketball.
All five KU starters played the full game.
“They were playing so well I saw no reason to change,” Owens said. “They were so motivated they didn’t become fatigued.”
KU shot a scorching 55.6 percent from the field, had only three turnovers and outrebounded K-State, 31-22.
Owens was completely elated over his team, which won the Big Eight Tournament for the first time in the last five years.
“I don’t know if we’ve ever had a better performance, at least in my time at Kansas, against as fine a basketball team as this Kansas State team,” Owens gushed.
Kansas, which was 22-7, earned a No. 7 seed and a trip to Wichita for the Midwest Regional, the same site of 1971 regionals, where KU won and advanced to the Final Four. Maybe karma was on KU’s side.
While KU was hoping to create some March magic, Owens still faced criticism for his coaching. Mark Hersey wrote in “Shocked” for KUhistory.edu that “the March 1981 issue of Inside Sports ... had listed Owens as one of the most overrated coaches in college basketball. The editors of the magazine claimed that he was consistently out-coached by his conference peers, and for some inexplicable reason his Jayhawks ‘regularly lost to teams with less talent.’ To add further insult the magazine quoted NBA scouts who claimed that Owens’s system handicapped his players’ chances of being selected early in the draft. The magazine ultimately concluded that the ‘noose hangs high for Owens.’”
Owens didn’t pay too much attention to the naysayers; he was only focused on the Big Dance. The NCAA Tournament would also be a homecoming for Valentine, playing in native Wichita for the first time in his college career. The Jayhawks played Mississippi in the first round, which only went 16-13 (worst record in the field of 48) but won the SEC Tournament and gained an NCAA bid.
In a hard-fought game, KU prevailed 69-66. Ole Miss rallied from a 12-point deficit to cut KU’s lead to just 67-66. But the clutch and composed Guy made two free throws with two seconds left as KU advanced to the second round. Valentine led KU with 15 points.
It would not be easy two days later against No. 3 ranked Arizona State, who boasted four starters (Lafayette Lever, Byron Scott, Kurt Nimphius and Sam Williams who would play a combined 35 years in the NBA). KU was the heavy underdog despite playing close to home in Wichita. With the loss of No. 1 DePaul and No. 2 Oregon State, ASU was now the highest ranked team left in tournament.
But even the Sun Devils were no match for Kansas this day. Tony Guy was too great, much too great. The Towson, Maryland, native and former McDonald’s All-American exploded for a career-high 36 points on 13-of-15 shooting and 10-of-12 from the free throw line as KU crushed ASU, 88-71.
“This is the greatest moment of my life,” Guy said after his heroic game that sent KU to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1974.
He scored KU’s first points on a 12-foot jumper off the break and kept rolling from there.
“It’s kind of neat the first couple of shots you shoot, they go in, which give your teammates a little confidence,” Guy told me in 1999. “At some point, Darnell was like, ‘Hey Tone, whenever you’re open, it’s going to be there.’ And it was. I guess that’s a zone. Everything I did, I felt at ease with it. I felt comfortable with it. I felt like, ‘Yeah, this was the right decision.’
“I only took 15 shots. I didn’t take an exorbitant amount of shots, but I made most of the ones I took so that was important. For me, the highlight was it couldn’t have come at a better time. We were in the NCAA, we’re playing against the No. 3 ranked team in the country. That’s what I was about. I was about wanting to perform well against the better teams.”
Owens told the Kansas City Star after the game that Guy “saw that we weren’t doing much in the beginning and he made a response to it.”
The KU coach added in his book that Guy “played like a man possessed.”
“He was incredible,” Valentine added. “I’ve never seen him play the way he did today. All I had to do was sit back and watch.”
Guy, who wasn’t known for his vertical leap, relived one magical moment in the game to me.
“I’ll never forget, this is the funniest thing that happened to me in four years at the University of Kansas,” Guy said. “Arizona State had just scored and they were just kind of running down the court at three-quarters speed. We inbounds the ball and I’m running down the left side of the court and Darnell gets me the ball up ahead. I start dribbling and I think, ‘Hey, I can beat these guys back.’ Well, a couple of the big guys get back and I’m dribbling and I take off about a step inside the free throw line.
“I’m not kidding you, I’m in the air and I thought to myself, ‘Tony, you’re on national TV, you’re about to fall flat on your face in front of millions of people. You took off from the free throw line, what were you thinking about?’ I’m in the air thinking all of this stuff and I just keep going and going, and thinking I’m going to get to the bucket. And I get to the bucket, and I dunk it and the place just goes off.
“My best friend, David Magley, he says, ‘Man, what were you thinking about? Hey Tone, you’re the only brother I’ve ever met in my life that can’t dunk,’” Guy added with a smile. “Physically, it was my proudest accomplishment on the basketball court for me to have dunked the basketball like that. I didn’t have a whole lot of dunks in the four years that I played. ... At the banquet at the end of the year when they showed that highlight, everybody still went off. Everybody still couldn’t believe it. It was a lot of fun.”
Valentine complemented Guy by adding 18 points, seven assists and three steals.
And Valentine, Guy and KU were sure having a lot of fun being in the Sweet 16 with a battle with in-state Wichita State in New Orleans. WSU was especially hyped since KU had refused to play the Shockers for so many years with the last game during the 1955-56 season, Phog Allen’s last year as KU coach.
This 1981 colossal game was called the “Battle of New Orleans” in the Louisiana Superdome in front of 34,060 fans. Wichita State, the No. 6 seed, boasted one of the best frontcourts in America in Antoine Carr (Valentine’s high school teammate) and Cliff Levingston.
“We knew we would have difficulty defending the twin towers,” Owens wrote, “so I decided to stick with our 2-3 match-up zone. While we weren’t as sharp on offense as we had been in recent games, we managed to hold a three-point lead with (56) seconds left.”
Then disaster happened.
Valentine, one of the best clutch players in the game, missed the front end of a one-on-one, opening the door for WSU. Seldom-used backup Shockers’ guard Mike Jones then hit a bomb to cut KU’s lead to one point. On the next play, Valentine again blew KU’s chances to win the game, missing a layup.
Jones was the hero again, burying another 25-footer with four seconds remaining to give WSU a 66-65 lead. Owens then went into his bag of tricks and called a play called “Touchdown.”
“If the defense jumped the player taking the ball out of bounds (Booty Neal), the player inbounding the ball would run along the baseline and blindside the defender with a pick,” Owens wrote. “It worked to perfection as a Wichita player knocked Darnell to the ground, but the official didn’t call a foul and we lost a heartbreaker, 66-65.”
Hersey wrote that “Owens claimed that ‘30,000 people knew it was a foul except the three who didn’t call it, and Valentine asserted, ‘it was kind of obvious [that he had been fouled], but all [he] got was a stare [from the official]. Wichita State fans were quick to point out that the game was not decided solely by the “phantom foul” (as the no-call was dubbed), but by the Shockers capitalizing on their chances while KU repeatedly blew its opportunities to put the game away. Both teams had shot less than 50 percent for the game, but Wichita State had out rebounded the Kansas team 37-24.”
While KU was devastated, the Jayhawks could hold their heads high by putting Kansas basketball back on the national map. Owens couldn’t have been prouder of his team, a squad that remains one of my all-time favorite Jayhawk teams.
“I was awfully proud of a team that came so far, although I was disappointed because I thought we were playing well enough to advance far into the tourney,” Owens wrote. “Still, I never was more proud of a group of young men, and I knew that our seniors had finished their careers with honor.”
Valentine ended his remarkable career with a team-high 21 points. He was named All-Big Eight for the fourth straight year, the only Big 8 player in history to accomplish that feat. He also became a more selfless player, tying Guy with 350 field goal attempts. Guy led KU in scoring (15.8 ppg), followed by Valentine (15.6), Magley (9.5), and Crawford and Mitchell each with 8.1 points per game. Housey averaged 7.5 points and 6.5 rebounds per game while shooting 51.7 percent from the field.
KU shot an impressive 50.3 percent from the field this season with Guy shooting a career-high 53.7 percent, an outstanding percentage for a shooting guard.
Valentine also shot a career-high 50.3 percent from the field, although his free throw percentage dropped from 77.7 percent his junior year to just 68.2 percent this season. The second-team AP All-American averaged 5.3 assists and 2.9 steals in a career-best 37.1 minutes per game, finishing his career in splendid fashion as one of KU’s all-time greets.
He just wished the ride could have lasted longer. He laments his career-ending loss to Wichita State.
“It’s a game I think we really felt we should have won,” Valentine said in 2005 before his jersey retirement in Allen Fieldhouse. “There was a gentleman (Jones) that just got red hot, came out of nowhere, just shot over us. (He) made all the difference in the game. That was the game that I kind of remember.”
Valentine added to the Lawrence Journal-World at the time of the WSU loss:
“It was painful,” he said. “It’s a game I thought we were capable of winning and moving farther in the tournament.”
But for Kansas fans, they will always remember the great achievements of Darnell Valentine. For the crimson and blue faithful, every day was Valentine’s Day when D.V. took the hardwood.
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