Dear Russell:

I've heard that Pat Riley had a foot injury and Larry Conley had the flu during the 1966 Texas Western game. Were there any other players sick?

Danny Breeden,

Port Orange, Fla.

Dear Danny:

The Texas Western game just won't go away. Our most recent reminder is "Glory Road," which I haven't seen yet. The movie is about the Texas Western boys and their win over UK. Concerning your question, please understand that at the time neither Rupp nor any of his staff blamed the loss on UK's physical condition. Perhaps they were too stunned to consider that a factor. However Rupp had said he was taking a bunch of sick boys to the national championship game.

I usually carried a camera on those trips, but I had apparently left it behind; otherwise, I could have taken some priceless pictures of Larry Conley in the croup tent after the Duke game or the team doctor inspecting Pat Riley's big toe after the championship game.

The Baron later grudgingly admitted that Texas Western outplayed his Wildcats, although he questioned TW's big advantage at the free-throw line. Anyway, it was the right game, at the right time, at the right place for the Miners; perhaps under different circumstances, the Wildcats might have prevailed. Here's how I remembered the chain of events:

The flu bug made its appearance during the Mideast Regional in Iowa City. Larry Conley told Frank Fitzpatrick, "Iowa City is one of those really cold places and that weekend it was just freezing out there. The wind was blowing and out there there's nothing to keep that wind off you."

The Wildcats defeated Dayton and Michigan and advanced to the Final Four at College Park, Md., with Duke, Utah and Texas Western.

They spent the night in Iowa City and returned home to Lexington on Sunday night. "By then several of them had scratchy throats, the chills, and sniffles," Frank Fitzpatrick noted in his book, "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down."

"That Monday I felt just awful," Conley said. "I went to the doctor and I had a temperature. I knew something was wrong. That week I practiced maybe two times."

The Wildcats few to Baltimore on Thursday morning and bused to the Sheraton Motor Inn, in Silver Spring, Md. They worked that afternoon in Cole Field House. Some of the players thought the floor was extremely slippery. I agreed with them.

When they arrived at Cole on Friday, Tennessee coach Ray Mears was there to greet the bus and wish them luck. Rupp said they would need it since they were playing Duke that afternoon. Mears noted that the Wildcats looked a little peaked.

The Blue Devils were ranked No. 2 in the polls, second to the Wildcats. Like Kentucky, they were all-white. Texas Western, ranked No. 3, would play Utah in the second game. Don Haskins started five black players, and his first three subs were black. If TW beat Utah, the championship game would be a black vs. white contest, which didn't seem to concern anyone at the time.

First, no matter who won the first game, and if TW won the second game, the experts gave the Miners little chance against either Duke or Kentucky. Practically everyone except the Texas Western folks considered that the UK-Duke semifinal would produce the national champion for that year.

The flu bug had hit both the UK and Duke camps. The doctors wanted to hold Conley out, but he insisted on dressing for the game. Rupp agreed that he needed an ailing Conley, which was better than no team leader at all.

Meanwhile, Duke star Bob Verga had the bug so bad that Blue Devil coach Vic Bubas sent him back to the hotel during a walk-through earlier that day. He and Rupp both planned to rest the two players whenever the situation warranted.

When Kentucky led by nine early on, Rupp took Conley out of the game. As the game see-sawed, both Conley and Verga were sent in an out. Conley said he played about half the game. Kentucky finally came out on top, 83-79.

Conley scored 10 points and grabbed only one rebound. Verga scored four points and got three rebounds. Jaracz was credited with eight points and four rebounds. Each player's performance was below the season average.

In the other semifinal, Texas Western had little trouble subduing Utah, 85-78, despite 38 points by Jerry Chambers.

I visited Larry Conley's room on the eve of the championship. He really was under a croup tent. Trainer Joe Brown, Athletic Director Bernie Shively and assistant coach Harry Lancaster were taking turns watching over him. Conley's fever broke about 3:00 a.m. but he was still weak. The other ailing players had improved.

Rupp had spoken to the team doctor after Friday night's game and assumed his team was at last healthy. Nobody told him about Riley's sore toe.

"After I told the doctor they'd be stronger tomorrow," Rupp told Fitzpatrick, "He said, 'Adolph, I don't want to kill you but you're through. You shot your load. Your kids tomorrow are simply not going to be strong.'"

Those weren't exactly the doctor's words, but the meaning was the same.

I also saw Pat Riley's injured big toe immediately after the game. It was swollen and red; however, neither Conley nor Riley used their ailments as excuses.

"Rupp on the other hand would blame everything but UFOs for the defeat, insinuating that Texas Western recruited outlaws, that the referees favored the Miners, that the Wildcats would have won easily if not for their debilitating injuries," Fitzpatrick wrote.

The insinuations came from disgruntled UK fans, and not from Rupp. He later shouldered part of the blame when he said he often woke up in the middle of the night wondering what he could have done to help his boys win the game.

"The pressure got to us," Rupp told the media. "Riley was as tight as a drum. Jaracz didn't play much of a game. Kron wasn't feeling well and he gave out. We didn't shoot well and we didn't handle the ball well either."

Riley hit eight of 22 shots from the field and three of four from the line. He pulled down four rebounds. His 19 points tied Dampier (7-of-18, 5-of-5) for team scoring honors. Dampier had nine rebounds, which tied TW's David Lattin for game honors. Jaracz hit three of eight from the field and one of two from the line for five points. He got five rebounds and fouled out of the game. Kron made three of six and shot no free throws. He got seven rebounds. Conley scored 10 points (4-of-9, 2-of-2) and eight rebounds. He also fouled out.

Kentucky shot only 13 free throws and made 11. Texas Western made 24-of-33. Kentucky scored five more field goals.

Fitzpatrick said TW's Willie Worsley had developed a method for guarding bigger players and he used it successfully. "I would go up for my shot and he would tip the bottom of my elbow," Larry Conley said. "On one shot the ball went flying over the backboard. I looked at Honzo and said, 'Come on, Steve. I'm not that bad a shot.'

"I remember Honzo had this kind of glazed look on his face, like he wasn't really there. I went back to the bench and said, 'Coach, he's not in the game.'"

"We played a team that was really prepared to play us" Conley told Mark Heisler. "That's all that mattered. We were the pawns of the game. If the African-American community wants to use that as something to better their cause, I don't have a problem with that."

I have read your articles since the inception of The Cats' Pause and have enjoyed them very much. I began listening to the Cats when Cotton Nash played there and was hooked for life. One question that I have asked several people and all asked have been reluctant to answer is didn't TW get put on probation the next year after they beat our Runts and several of the key players involved were made ineligible due to recruiting violations? Please let me know if you have any information on this.

P. Freeman

Mr. Freeman:

We have no record of TW being put on probation or of some of their players being declared ineligible because of recruiting violations. Most of the vicious rumors that existed in and around Lexington after the loss were sour grapes. It's true that virtually anyone with a high school diploma could get into Texas Western and many other Texas schools in those days. Neville Shed, David Lattin, and Bobby Joe Hill had enrolled after they had dropped out of their previous schools. Willie Cager had to earn a high school diploma in El Paso before he could attend. However, they all maintained passing grades in a wide range of courses. The fact that some left without a degree when their athletic eligibility expired was hardly shocking in that era; in fact, it also happened at Kentucky.

Frank Fitzpatrick, in his book, "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down," wrote: "If the measuring stick of any basketball program is the lives of its participants after college, then Texas Western obviously did something right. Each of the players on that 1966 team, even the three blacks who stopped just short of their degrees, has been successful since."

Here is what Bobby Joe Hill said to Fitzgerald:

"Everyone got it wrong. That's the thing. The story is messed up. It was Kentucky that was different, not us, not Texas Western. We didn't make it white against black. We didn't even think about it that way. To us it was just a game. We always started five black players."

The "Runts" also have been quoted many times that the thought of playing an all-black starting unit never entered their minds. That was also the way I felt at the time.

Sincerely, R.R.

Russell Rice is the former sports information director for the University of Kentucky.