[soft bright music]
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[dramatic music]
- [Lucas] They call it March Madness for a reason.
[spectators cheering]
And every tournament is better with an underdog, right?
[spectators cheering]
- [Reporter] The hottest thing in Chicago sports right now
isn't the Cubs, the Sox, the Bulls, or the Blackhawks.
- [Announcer] Here comes the player of the year
of the MVC, he rises, oh!
- [Reporter] It's the Loyola Ramblers.
- [Announcer] And the dream is alive!
[players cheering]
- [Lucas] But our journey was more important
than the buzzer beaters.
- [Announcer] Townes for three, yes!
- [Lucas] With every round we advanced,
we were reminded of our past.
[gentle upbeat music]
- [Announcer] Away we go,
Loyola Chicago controls the tip.
- [Red] Egan, Egan to Harkness, turnaround jumper's good.
Jerry made his first basket, he made it, he might do it.
- When you study the early days of basketball,
Loyola Chicago sticks out.
The youth of America, they need to know
what that generation went through,
and they need to carry the baton.
- Jerry Harkness was the captain
of that Loyola team and joins us now.
What a pleasure it is to meet you, sir.
- It's a pleasure to be here.
- [Announcer] Custer looking for help, gets it, Williamson.
[spectators cheering]
- [Lucas] My name is Lucas Williamson.
I was a freshman in 2018 when the Loyola Ramblers
made it to the Final Four,
for the first time in 55 years.
We were always told how the '63 team made history,
but it was in the forgotten details
that I found a deeper connection.
- [Ross] My absolute and unshakeable stance
for segregation of the races at all levels.
- [Man] Go home, nigger.
- This is not 200 years ago.
These are our fathers and our grandfathers
that have gone through this.
- This was more than a game, this was history.
- [Lucas] It's time the rest of the world
hears their whole story,
about those who changed the game,
by playing it their way.
[upbeat music]
[gentle dramatic music]
[gentle bright music]
The story of any great team begins with the coach.
And in this case, a day he would never forget.
- It is very hard for me to think back to that day in 1959.
I was in nursing school at Loyola.
And I came out of class the one day,
and it was just a regular kind of autumn day.
My dad was George Ireland.
He was the Loyola University basketball coach.
There was something different about Dad that day.
I don't know if something happened at practice, at school,
but I walked over towards Dad's office
and I looked up and I thought,
"Well, what on Earth can that be?"
And it was a hanging effigy of my father.
I thought, "How could someone do that to my dad?"
- [John] There were chants, "Get rid of Ireland."
"We need a new coach."
- Those students were totally unhappy.
They wanted him out.
His job was in jeopardy because he was losing.
- We played hard, but we didn't have a lot of talent.
He had to start bringing new players in.
- George Ireland had to confront all this stuff.
He knew if he kept going the way he was going,
he was done as a coach.
[bright upbeat music]
The one thing about basketball
is all you need is that backboard and hoop, and a ball.
In cities where there's a big population,
not much space, well, it's the perfect game.
- The best players in the country were from Harlem.
They were playing a style of basketball
that was up-tempo and fast-paced.
- [Michael] One of the best ways
that I've heard it described
is the old school basketball was played on the floor
and modern basketball was played in the air.
[bright upbeat music]
- It felt like the early style of basketball
was like some sort of exercise in calisthenics.
You know, people stretching
and there wasn't very much athleticism to it.
- [Rick] George Ireland was losing, teams weren't very good.
We're playing staid, feet-in-the-mud-in-concrete basketball.
And it's time to change.
These black players were changing the game
and they were making it so exciting.
- This was a time when superstars were heavily recruited.
[bright upbeat music continues]
Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson,
everybody knew who these guys were,
a lot of coaches wanted them.
But for the next tier of players down,
black guys who were merely excellent basketball players,
nobody wanted them.
- For the black athlete, the landscape
of these kids playing on university campuses
or in the NBA just wasn't there.
George Ireland was thinking about job security.
He just wanted to win and he didn't care who you were.
[bright upbeat music continues]
- My father, Jerry Harkness, was born in Harlem, New York.
And he lived in very harsh conditions in the projects.
He's ultra competitive, and I've always wondered
where did that competitive drive come from?
The resilience?
- [Lucas] As a child in the 1940s,
Jerry remembers his own father
returning home from the war a hero.
But the fanfare faded, and soon
he was just a young black man trying to build a life.
- He did everything to try to get work.
The more Italian and Irish come in,
the less work he would have.
He could not take that pressure and he left us.
My mom was a go-getter,
and she pretty much had to be when my dad left.
And I could see her really trying to keep it all together.
- [Lucas] The financial stress was overwhelming.
At one point, his mother had a mental breakdown
and admitted herself into Bellevue Hospital.
- When she got out, I looked her in the eyes.
I knew that we were gonna be all right.
She said, "I'm gonna get a job, we're gonna make it.
We're not gonna depend on anybody but the three of us."
To see her go through what she went through,
I said, "If she can do things like that, I can make it."
[solemn music]
- [Lucas] Young Jerry loved playing basketball
on the streets of Harlem, but he never figured
he was good enough to make his high school team.
To him, the game was an escape.
And when he'd save up a quarter,
he'd go practice alone at the Y.
[basketball thudding]
- I could still see myself bouncing back and forth,
and then going up for the shot,
saying "Good, we win."
All of a sudden, a guy hit me on my shoulder,
and he said, "Hey, you're pretty good."
My eyes got wide, my mouth jumped open.
It was my hero, [spectators cheering]
Jackie Robinson.
So when a guy like that tells me I'm not that bad,
maybe he's right.
I said, "I'm going out for the team."
My coach, he asked me, "Are you set for college?"
I said, "No, I don't have any offer."
He said, "We're gonna work on that."
George Ireland was coming up to Harlem
to watch the ball players.
My coach told him, "There's a guy here
that doesn't have the recognition
the other players have because he only played one year.
Why don't you give him a chance?"
So I was trying to impress this guy
like he was the man that had my future,
because this was pretty much my last chance.
If I don't get this, I'm finished.
- [John] And that was the beginning of Jerry Harkness.
- [Lucas] With Jerry joining the Ramblers,
Coach Ireland developed a whole new vision for his team.
- Jerry was a speedster.
- My father was a great track athlete
prior to becoming a basketball player.
- [John] We had to run two miles every day before practice
because of Harkness, because he loved running.
- I remember one coach said, "Put the ball on the floor.
Now pick it up. Jerry Harkness just scored a bucket."
- Jerry was kind of in command.
You could see the growth that was happening.
- [Ron] And that was the best season he had had
in about five or six years, that saved him.
And then we came along.
- Ireland took me to a St. Rita's game.
And I'm looking at the game and I said,
"I know why he got me here."
He didn't tell me who he was scouting,
but I was looking at these brothers,
the center and the forward.
They were 6-10, they were tough.
At the end of the game, he said,
"What did you think of the little guard?"
[upbeat music]
- I was from St. Rita's high school, born in Chicago.
I loved basketball because I was good at it.
- I said to myself, "This guy's not a ball player."
I was wrong about that.
- [Jerald] Don't let Jack Egan's size fool you.
He's incredibly athletic.
- Jack Egan is no nonsense.
He knows what he wants and he is going to get it.
- [Jack] And it's important
that you are not gonna be intimidated.
I needed some physical contact with the other team
even though it was basketball.
I think I was fouled more often than anybody else.
- Les Hunter and Vic Rouse
both came from Nashville, Tennessee.
I've heard Vic and Les be referred to as a package deal.
- Mr. Ireland did not recruit Les Hunter,
he recruited Vic Rouse.
Vic Rouse said to him, "If I come to your school,
can Les come with us?"
He said, "Of course."
He didn't realize he had a diamond.
- [Jack] Les Hunter may have been
the most talented player on the team.
- [Jerald] Vic and Les were the bigs.
They brought that menacing athletic height.
[upbeat music]
Ronnie Miller came from New York,
a very similar area that my father came from.
- When coach met my mother the first time,
he completely ignored me.
He promised that any kid that went to his school
for four years would graduate.
- George Ireland gave his sales pitch to the parents,
not to the kid.
The kid's looking to play big time basketball,
he probably wasn't gonna go to Loyola University.
- [Ron] I was probably the best defensive player
on the team, so I could guard someone
that was bigger than me.
- [Rich] You had a group of extremely talented freshmen.
- [Jack] I had never played
with such talented players before in my life.
- [Rich] I knew we had something special.
- We lost one game as freshmen.
And the word kinda spread throughout college basketball
that Loyola had this excellent freshmen class.
Well, we move up to the varsity,
the reality of big-time basketball
kinda hit me in the face for the first time.
- [Gary] There was an unwritten rule
that racialized who played.
- How many black players can be played
on the court at one time?
One at home, two when you're away,
and three when you're in a pinch,
you need that little extra oomph.
And it's not written anywhere.
It's just kind of what the coaches knew.
- [Michael] The coaches, if they didn't
wanna put black players on the floor,
they wouldn't have recruited them to begin with.
But American higher education was overwhelmingly segregated.
Your student body is 98% white,
the faculty is 99% white,
the alumni are 99 1/2% white.
How many black guys can you put on the floor
to represent this lily white institution
before you're gonna run into blowback?
How far could they go?
- I value my job, I value my reputation,
so I'm not going to push the system.
I wonder how many coaches
were just simply complying with the status quo.
- [Lucas] Coach Ireland was careful.
He'd bend the rule, but never break it.
He consistently played three black starters at a time,
but fearing the reaction of fans and university donors,
he never played a fourth.
- [Ron] How George Ireland played us was when Jerry
or Les Hunter would be in foul trouble,
or needed a break, I would go in for one of them.
So I played, but I was not allowed to start.
And he'd follow that the whole year.
- These athletes were marginalized
and they didn't have the same privileges
as their white teammates did.
And it was openly practiced.
It was openly practiced, and we didn't have any laws
to protect individuals from this kind of behavior.
In the North, Jim Crow segregation was practiced,
it was an unspoken rule, but not the law.
But Jim Crow was the law in the South.
- My absolute and unshakeable stance
for segregation of the races at all levels.
[audience clapping]
- [Michael] Ross Barnett was the governor of Mississippi
at the time, rabid segregationist.
- You gotta understand, Mississippi
was incredibly racially volatile.
If you even suggested something
that included integration, it could be life-threatening.
It was that bad.
- [Lucas] In his fight to preserve segregation
in the early 1960s, Governor Barnett
made a special target out of state sports,
denouncing any competition between white and black athletes.
One team falling under his rule
were the Mississippi State Bulldogs,
led by Coach Babe McCarthy.
For three of the previous four seasons,
Mississippi State won the SEC Championship,
earning a spot in the NCAA tournament.
And each time, Coach McCarthy did as he was told
by the Governor and turned it down.
- We grew up doing what we were told to do.
To not be able to go to the tournament,
the attitude of some of the guys was, why do we even play?
We only wanted to go for one reason,
and that was to compete and be the best we could be.
- When you think about Mississippi,
you have to remember that the world was different.
The country was different.
And we had to deal with things differently.
Racism in sports was not a new thing,
it was a part of the life that we lived.
- In 2001, I was a grad student at Loyola
as a oral historian, and I started talking to the players,
and I started hearing about their experiences.
And I tied that into the context
of what was happening in Chicago,
because Chicago was then and is now,
quite a segregated city.
What was it like for these guys?
- One of the most surprising things that I have found out,
is things that were going on in the minds of my teammates
that I did not know was going on in their mind then.
In particular, someone who I'm very close to,
Jerry Harkness.
When I first met him, he was very standoffish.
For more than a year, we had no relationship
other than on the basketball court.
If he was in the locker room, I wouldn't acknowledge him.
- Jack Egan actually played my mother's high school
in basketball, which was a black team.
And the kids from St. Rita treated my mom's school terribly.
- [Jerry] She told me that St. Rita's was racist
and they would throw garbage cans at you.
I just drew a conclusion on him early on.
- [Jack] I grew up in a neighborhood that was all white.
It was mostly Irish, Polish and Italian.
- Marquette Park was known as the neighborhood
that most vehemently resisted the housing initiatives
that Martin Luther King came to Chicago to promote.
It was a place where blacks were not welcome.
You could be chased down and even beaten.
- [Martin] I've been in many demonstrations
all across the South, but I can say
that I have never seen,
even in Mississippi and Alabama,
mobs as hostile and as hate-filled
as I'm seeing in Chicago.
- When I would go home from Loyola University
to go back to my neighborhood on the Southside,
a lot of my friends had the same kind of notion
that the black players on the team needed me
because I was the brains of the outfit.
You know who is? Les Hunter.
- There's always been stereotypes about black athletes
that they are all athlete, very little smarts.
- African American players were described
as tremendous athletes, you know, a physical specimen.
Whereas a lot of the white players
were described as crafty, smart.
You didn't have to be that aware to know
what they were trying to say.
[solemn music]
- [Lucas] Of all the players at the center of this story,
I never had the chance to meet Les Hunter or Vic Rouse.
Vic died in 1999 and Les passed away
during the making of this film.
In many ways, Les and Vic embodied Loyola at their best.
Les was the team's top player and Vic was their top student.
And when Les missed a shot, Vic was there to tip it in.
For me, team chemistry is everything,
but you have to earn that trust.
That was true for Jack and Jerry, but in Les and Vic,
the Ramblers always had an example to follow.
- [Rich] The program had been under fire.
I saw an opportunity to be a part of the resurgence.
You have Loyola that no one
had ever paid attention to before.
If we're going to compete nationally,
what we have to do is get past race.
- We weren't ranked, we weren't a team
that people were looking at.
We were an independent school,
so we weren't the preseason pick for anything.
- [Lucas] In the 1961, '62 season,
Ireland no longer had to rely on Jerry's speed alone.
Now, his whole team could run.
- [Ron] Almost immediately we developed this style
of a rebound, a pass and a basket.
- Get down and score before the defense
had a chance to set up.
That's all it was.
And that's run-and-gun basketball.
[bright music]
- Ireland believed in playing his starters a long time.
- [Michael] In the '61, '62 season, the team consisted
of Egan, and a guy named Mike Gavin, Jerry Harkness,
Les Hunter and Vic Rouse.
Ireland's coaching style with that team
was just standing aside and letting them run.
His genius as a coach was to just let them play their game.
[upbeat music]
- [Ron] In the pros they call it a motion offense,
where someone is always moving.
If you didn't stay with us,
we would score an easy basket.
- The Ramblers had some games in the South
and they ran into some of the hard truths
of US race relations.
- [Ron] The famous trip to New Orleans
where George Ireland, at the last minute,
told us that we would not be able
to stay together as a team.
- [Rich] The black ball players stayed in Algiers
in private homes, while the white players
stayed in New Orleans in hotels.
- And he said he didn't know about it
until the last minute.
And I never believed that.
[somber music]
We land in New Orleans and the black guys,
all of us jump into a cab.
And Ireland gets in the cab with us.
And it was a black driver, and he said,
"Sir, you're gonna have to get out of my cab.
It's against the law for a white person
to drive in a cab with black people."
And Ireland said, "Well, I'll pay the fine
if you get stopped."
Driver said, "You don't understand.
It's not the fine, I will go to jail."
That's how bad it was in 1962.
- [Rich] When we played Loyola of New Orleans,
the shock hit us.
They had a roped-off section for coloreds.
- [Ron] You couldn't talk back, you couldn't fight back,
there was nothing you could do about it.
- [Rich] But you could express that anger
by taking it out on the other squad.
[upbeat music]
The court was an equalizer.
- After the game, the black players went off to Algiers.
And I can honestly say, that was by far
the best trip that we had.
We had no curfew, parties at night,
and the people in the community were so proud of us,
they treated us like kings.
- [Rich] They sent us two brand new Pontiacs to drive.
We had a great time, and we felt so sorry
for the white guys.
- [Ron] But in contrast,
what it took us to get to that point.
I felt offended by some of the things that occurred.
- [Lucas] After the game, Ireland made headlines
denouncing New Orleans' segregation laws,
vowing that the team would never return.
But just a day later, the truth came out.
Prior to Loyola's trip, another school in New Orleans,
Xavier University, offered to house the entire team.
This rare break from the Jim Crow laws governing the city
would have allowed all the white and black players
to stay together as usual.
But for reasons that were never made clear,
Ireland declined, and chose instead
to keep the team segregated.
When I heard this story from the players,
I couldn't believe it.
It's crazy to me that any coach would choose
to separate their team anywhere for any reason.
It's not just unsafe, it's bad strategy.
Your team is your family.
- We had to deal not only with the racism
of the South when we would travel down there,
we also had to deal with it
to some degree right here at our home court.
[solemn music]
- [Jerald] When you think about the Loyola story,
you inevitably come to a very complex topic.
- We all kinda knew our place.
It doesn't sound right when you say that,
it sounds terrible when you say that.
I just mean that as people, we kinda knew
what we had to do to survive.
- They wanted us to be available as tokens.
For example, if they had a party on campus,
they wanted us to stand on the walls,
you know, and be there.
But we weren't supposed to dance with the girls,
we weren't supposed to talk with the girls.
And if they come to us and ask us to dance,
we even had Jesuit priests who said,
"No, you don't do that."
[solemn music continues]
- The priests had a job and part of their job
was making sure the students were safe.
And unfortunately the black male body
has often been considered, just by existing, unsafe.
- [Lucas] I guess I expected to hear
the '63 guys faced discrimination when traveling south,
or maybe even on the court by opponents,
but to know that they were also disrespected at home
makes me furious.
And on a call between our two teams,
we got an opportunity to talk about it.
- Then I remember, and the other guys will remember this,
we could not go to the barber shop
right across Sheridan Road.
They would not cut black guys' hair.
- You couldn't get a haircut on campus?
Like, you had to go somewhere else to get a haircut?
- I guess again, I was blind to what they were experiencing.
Just assumed everything was great.
- In the '60s, we didn't express ourselves.
'Cause I really don't think we knew how to talk about it.
- You know, the average person might look at it and say,
"That's not, that's not racism."
But it is.
- They're going to have to swallow their discontent.
They're going to have to swallow their hurts.
Because the moment they start making waves,
the moment they start asking for things
that they know they should have, they're no longer
just these wonderfully respectable young men
that we would be so happy to have amongst us.
There was a mold that they needed to fit.
Not the angry team, not the frustrated,
they were classy, and oh look, how acceptable they are.
That might be why they're not loud and they're not vocal.
- It makes you feel completely isolated.
It is a very hard thing to face.
What you say is nothing, what you think is nothing.
That's what it feels like to be discriminated against.
You're invisible, you don't exist.
You don't exist.
- Toward the end of the season,
Ron Miller began playing
a more prominent role on the team.
He was scoring a lot, and at one point,
Ireland pulled him aside to tell him
why he wasn't starting.
And he didn't really tell him, he said,
"But you know, you understand what it is."
And Miller did understand.
Ireland didn't wanna have the fourth black guy on the court.
- It was so obvious to everyone around the team
and everyone at Loyola,
that we should have had four blacks starting.
You keep in mind, I'm coming off the bench
and I was averaging double figures.
So that tells you that maybe, I should have been starting.
- [Rich] The one white boy that he was starting
over Ron Miller had no business starting.
And he knew it and every boy knew it.
- [Lucas] In 1962, Loyola went 21 and 3,
earning a bid to the National Invitation Tournament
at Madison Square Garden in New York.
With two Harlem natives on his team,
Ireland saw an opportunity
to lure the next generation of local recruits.
- We had advanced to the semis playing Dayton.
And what really surprised me
was that Coach Ireland changed the lineup.
- [Ron] He wanted to start me
because he was recruiting heavy out of New York City.
Local papers made a big deal
that I was coming back to Madison Square Garden.
Two New York kids, me and Jerry Harkness.
- So he has to play Miller
and he has to play me because we're in New York.
So he takes out 6-8, 6-9 Hunter.
- [Michael] He brought Miller in for Les Hunter.
Best ball player on the team.
- [John] Dayton was a hell of a team.
And we were getting beat up pretty bad.
- Take out Les Hunter and we're smaller, much smaller.
It just put us in a bad situation.
- [Lucas] Ron Miller was the Ramblers' high scorer
in the game, but without Hunter in the lineup,
Loyola was just outmatched.
- [Ron] So we lost to them.
We had to play another game after that,
which was a consolation game.
And we played Duquesne University,
which was a very good basketball school in those days.
- [Rich] And you have to remember
that Mr. Ireland was in difficulty.
He could not afford to lose.
- Ireland was not trying to be an activist.
George Ireland was thinking about winning ball games.
- And that was the game where Ireland chose
not to play the senior, Mike Gavin,
and inserted Ron Miller as the other guard.
- [Jerry] He put the best team on the court.
- [Gary] He broke the code.
[dramatic music]
- When we won the consolation game, from there on,
he played four black guys.
- [Lucas] On that historic night, the Iron Five were born.
For the Loyola Ramblers,
there would be no turning back.
- [Interviewer] Let me ask you this,
do you ever get crank phone calls?
- [Gertrude] Well, they criticize who he's got on his team.
As you know he has a Negro ball club.
And we get letters on that.
- [Interviewer] Well, that's terrible.
The rest of the world could take a cue
from on integration is how well these kids get along
together on the basketball court.
- [Gertrude] That's right.
- [Lucas] With his new starting five set
for the 1962, '63 season, there was plenty of fallout
for George Ireland and his family.
But with his eyes on a national title,
the coach had come too far to turn back.
Meanwhile, there was another team down south
with their eyes on the title.
- I was always fascinated about the psychology
of the Mississippi State basketball team.
You're feeling a lot of pressure
if your programs aren't performing well, if you're losing.
The irony is that Mississippi State was winning.
And the more they won, the more pressure they faced.
- Our governor in particular just didn't think
we ought to be playing against black players.
We never imagined that we would get to go
to the NCAA tournament in '63.
- Young people are often a product
of a dysfunctional situation, taught things
that they shouldn't be taught.
And it's not until they actually experience
a different set of circumstances
that they can appreciate what should be.
- [Lucas] In Mississippi, if you opposed Governor Barnett
and the racism of Jim Crow laws,
you were all but guaranteed a prison sentence.
Or maybe even worse,
with the state's long history of lynchings.
But despite those very real threats,
just 100 miles from the Mississippi State campus,
there was someone still brave enough to fight back.
- [Reporter] The enrollment of James Meredith,
the first African American to attend
on the campus of Ole Miss.
That night a riot broke out, hundreds were injured.
Two people died
as protesters tried to stop a black man
from attending a tax-supported state school.
- James Meredith, who was a Mississippi native
and a veteran, applied to enter
the University of Mississippi, Ole Miss.
Ross Barnett said
that Meredith would enter Ole Miss over his dead body.
- His admission caused a riot of such magnitude,
the president called out National Guard troops
to come put the riot down.
- [Reporter] Immediately following the mass panic,
the college infirmary was besieged
with injured persons, officers and students.
- People died.
It's hard to believe that ever happened,
but it damn sure did.
- [Lucas] As the dust settled after the riots,
James Meredith successfully enrolled at Ole Miss.
Another small piece of progress
in the Civil Rights Movement.
And while figures like Babe McCarthy were left
to grapple with what it meant on his campus,
back in Chicago, they were listening too.
- [Rich] Things were starting to change,
but not rapidly enough.
We would sit up in my room around this radio,
listening and cheering for people
who were doing things to make a difference.
- We were in the middle
of the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. King.
The emphasis was put on them,
but we in the background were making changes too.
[upbeat music]
- We really started the season with,
not just a good team, but a great team.
We had seven guys who legitimately could start.
- They were the highest scoring team
in the country that year.
They knew exactly what the next step
of the other was going to be.
- There was something electric that happened to us.
We just knew that we were going to be very good.
- [Jerald] They were bulldozing teams.
No one could stop them.
- In retaliation to all of this resistance,
they ran up the scores.
Send a message, "We're good and we're good at what we do."
- [Mike] Is this the best team you've had
in your 12 years as Loyola coach?
- [George] Well, Mike, I think this is my best team.
- [Mike] Well, there's no question about it,
you certainly do have an excellent team.
In fact, you must be ranked second in the nation.
George Ireland, how do you think
that your Loyola club would make out against Cincinnati?
- [George] Well, that's a hard question.
We are an offensive team and Cincinnati
are a defensive team.
I would like to play Cincinnati
and possibly sometime we will.
- For such a long period of time we knew
that, somewhere along the way, we were going
to go up against Cincinnati.
They were the big dogs, we were the underdogs.
- Cincinnati had become a machine, a real machine,
under the leadership of Ed Jucker.
[gentle jaunty music]
- Cincinnati was the complete opposite of Loyola.
Cincinnati had won two championships
with a very deliberate, slow-down pace.
When you talk about a team
that wanted to make four passes before they took a shot,
Cincinnati probably wanted to make six passes.
Something that was not in our DNA at all.
- [Lucas] While Loyola was the fastest team
in college basketball, no one matched
the slow, tactical pace of Cincinnati.
At a time when more and more teams experimented
with running the ball, Ed Jucker found success
by doing just the opposite.
- [David] Don't shoot unless you have a good shot.
Hold the ball if you need to once in a while,
that was before the days of shot clock.
- [Michael] Everyone thought he was crazy
until he won his first NCAA Championship.
They thought he was lucky until he won his second.
[gentle upbeat music]
- When they got ahead of you by 10 points,
you were probably toast.
- [Lucas] Combined with the talents of Tom Thacker,
Ron Bonham and George Wilson,
Cincinnati was set to be the first-ever team
to win three consecutive titles.
- We had the best record.
I don't know what Loyola was,
but they didn't win as many games as we did.
- [Ron] I mean, Cincinnati was the monster.
Why would you think that this small,
Catholic school could beat Cincinnati?
- [Lucas] Out of everything I learned about this story,
I was most surprised by Cincinnati.
Because for all the praise given to Ireland
for breaking that unwritten rule,
I didn't know that Ed Jucker broke it first,
months before Ireland, winning a national championship
with four black starters in 1962.
[gentle music]
You might say it was easier for Cincinnati
since they were already defending national champs.
But I think it's more likely that four black starters
with a slow, controlled game were less threatening
than Loyola's aggressive, fast-break players.
Whatever the explanation is,
these two trailblazing teams seemed to be
on a clear path to the championship.
But the season was far from over,
and Loyola's future was suddenly uncertain.
- [Michael] Midway through the season,
Loyola lost three players.
One of them left for financial reasons.
The other two were New York playground guys.
They didn't make grades, and would have gotten
a lot of playing time had they stayed on the team.
- Everyone was understandably shocked
when all that happened at once.
We had nine players, that was it.
It was so awkward just to have scrimmages
and you have nine people.
- [Michael] Their absence is one of the reasons
that the five starters were playing virtually every minute.
- [Lucas] The Iron Five were used to playing nonstop.
But now, even when Loyola took big leads,
Ireland refused to give any of them a break.
- Some of the games were complete blowouts.
We would still be playing, I mean,
we'd be up by 15, 20 points,
and he would still have all of us in the game.
- We had a 30-point lead at halftime.
Man, I'm gonna be playing.
[blows raspberry] Never got in.
[solemn music]
- That starting five, I think he was nervous
when any one of them was off of the floor.
And it wasn't that we were incapable of contributing.
People don't realize how good we were
because they never saw us.
We'd be up 35, 40 points, let's give the first team a break.
- I was feeling badly because we had guys on the bench
that weren't getting in.
I said, "Coach, take me out, I'm tired."
He said, "Stay in."
- [Lucas] Trust me, I can tell you,
being on the court 40 minutes straight is no joke.
To play that fast-paced style every game without a sub?
That can break you.
And that season, as the exhaustion built on the court,
the pressure got to everyone.
- We were in New York playing St. John's,
Jerry Lyne came out and says, "George is on the table.
He's coughing up blood."
You know, he had a bleeding ulcer.
- You know, there were times
when guys out there on that floor were hurting.
They had been injured.
Vic Rouse had had a shoulder separation,
and they would have to put it back in
and tape it up.
When you run a team for 30 games,
you know, iron wears out.
We tried to figure out why certain things happened.
Why certain things didn't happen.
But, we loved each other.
Five guys were going to play,
and the other four
were going to be supportive of them.
- [Lucas] Worn down, Loyola suffered
their only two defeats of the season late in the schedule.
The struggle for the Iron Five was increasing.
But the worst was yet to come.
[gentle dramatic music]
- [Jack] The game was in Houston, Texas.
- To me, we were just going down to play another team.
That's how naive and ignorant I was back then.
It was a pretty small, confined gym.
It didn't take long to realize
that it was gonna be more than a basketball game.
- [Jerry] Things started to unravel.
- [Chuck] I believe everybody in the stadium was against us.
- The fans were out of control.
- [Jerry] Go back home, get out of here.
We're gonna get you.
- They used the N-word constantly.
Threw ice, threw things at us on the court.
- [Jack] The students throwing stuff,
I mean, they look like me.
Never having experienced that side of racism,
literally, they're spitting on us.
This is what you guys go through on a daily basis?
- I looked to the side, I didn't see police.
And I started to worry.
- [Rich] There were times during that game
that we feared for our lives, it was that bad.
- All of the sudden, we heard a loud bang.
[object bangs]
I swear to God, I thought they were shooting at us.
Somebody took a popcorn bag and popped it.
- That was one of the worst experiences on the court
that we experienced as a team.
This is when we talk about Coach George Ireland.
To me, he should have known that,
he should not have put us in those situations.
If he cared, he would not have put us in those situations.
- Coach Ireland had a lot of power.
And I'm not just talking about the power
to play the starters the entire game.
He had the power to say, "This is a segregated city,
and things might be a little scary for you,
but you're gonna play anyway."
And maybe they would have chosen to play anyway,
but we don't know that, because they didn't have a choice.
- [Lucas] Through all the highs and lows of that season,
the game at Houston
left the most lasting impression on the team.
But they won the game, and for the first time ever
Loyola accepted their invitation to the NCAA tournament.
The Iron Five were about to face
a whole new level of public scrutiny
and there was nowhere to hide from what was coming.
[somber music]
- We get the mail.
On the outside it was KKK.
"You don't belong on the same floor as white players.
We're gonna kill you."
And I'ma tell you, I was scared to death.
They know where I live.
They're gonna come to the dorm and get me.
I called Ireland, I said,
"Ireland, you gotta get over here."
And he went to the front desk of the dorm.
"Any mail that comes in for the ballplayers, give it to me."
- My dad would keep the mail from them.
He did not want them to read
some of the things that were sent.
Dad would show it to us at home.
I just could not believe any human beings
would send stuff like this to 19, 20-year-old kids.
- I've heard stories of the letters that he received.
But I personally never seen any of the letters.
I believe that he did receive letters.
- I was never able to get to the letters.
In my mind, I had to put the letters out of my book
because I couldn't prove them.
- There's three like this that are all closed up.
And up in the corner it says, "Loyola HM," for hate mail.
The way they were signed,
"Uncle Tom," and "KKK," the N-word.
He said he wanted me to have it
because he knew I would protect it.
And he said, "Someday, this history will be alive again.
And maybe then you can show it."
[somber music]
He knew it was the wrong thing to do,
but he could not let this keep coming to his ball players.
I thought, "If I can just protect them,
who needs to know about this stuff?"
It happened, it's here and I promised Dad
that I would protect it.
- [Lucas] It's tempting to hide
the worst parts of our histories, to lock them away,
pretend they don't exist.
Maybe for Ireland, these letters were seen
as a burden on the players, a distraction
at the height of their season.
Maybe it was easiest to just move past them.
But the problem is, Ireland didn't.
Among those letters were threats so severe,
he hired security for his daughters,
a protection he never offered his players.
- [Ron] I don't think he thought at all
about race relations.
I don't think he was interested in race relations.
I think George Ireland was thinking about himself,
his family, and winning basketball games.
I always accepted that as a part of the times.
I never held that part against him.
It was important to him that he was successful.
And by being good to us, it made him successful.
- [Lucas] Even through the death threats,
the Loyola players found a way to stay focused.
The NCAA tournament was fast approaching
and Cincinnati was still expected to win it all.
Though it looked like the bracket
would have one glaring omission.
[gentle upbeat music]
- Mississippi State defeated Ole Miss
to clinch the Southeastern Conference Championship,
which gave them the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
The next day, Governor Barnett issued a statement
that Mississippi State will not be playing
in the NCAA tournament.
- Personally, I feel it is not for the best interest
of Mississippi State University, or either of the races.
- [Jerald] The governor had issued an injunction.
- We will do all we can, to the point of arresting you,
when you get ready to leave the state of Mississippi.
- The NCAA had no idea where to put State in their seeding
'cause they didn't know if State was gonna be able
to make it, even though they had verbally committed.
- [Lucas] Mississippi State was given a first-round bye.
Their first opponent would be the winner
of Loyola versus Tennessee Tech.
- [Rich] People don't realize the amount of pressure
that we were under.
Not only from the KKK and the White Knights,
but from our own people.
Blacks across the country,
who were putting their hopes on us.
That we had to win because the black community
was counting on us.
- Jerry said that he had black people calling him saying,
"Hey, you better not lose to those white boys."
- Come on, you guys, we're rooting for you,
we're rooting for you.
We got so roused up that you're gonna be hard to beat.
You're gonna be very hard to beat.
The first game was against Tennessee Tech,
an all-white team.
[gentle bright music]
And that poor team.
We went up 30, 40, we beat 'em,
and it's still a record, 69 points.
- The final score of that game
is still the greatest disparity in NCAA history.
- I mean, it's just amazing the advantage you have
once you're motivated and roused up.
- [Lucas] The Ramblers were eager for their next match-up.
But with no word from Mississippi State,
Loyola had no idea if they'd show up.
- Their coaches said we're going,
their president says they're going,
but everybody else in power in the state says,
"No, you can't."
These are guys who were raised to honor authority,
to obey their elders.
- You know, we faced jail time
if we failed to obey the injunction.
- [Jackie] The night before the trip,
Coach McCarthy did have a team meeting.
We talked, he'd said,
"Here's what we're gonna do."
[suspenseful music]
We aimed to leave early the next morning,
as early as we could and we headed out.
- [Michael] The team was gonna split into two teams.
One was the decoy team.
- They sent our trainer and six of our players
that didn't play a whole lot out to the airport.
- [Robbie] They keep the five starters and the sixth man
back at the dorm room.
- [Jackie] There're two airports in Starkville.
As a decoy, one group was going to Bryan Field.
- [Doug] They went out there to see
if there was gonna be an officer to serve the injunction.
- In that case, the trainer with the decoys
was gonna phone back to campus, tell the starting team,
"Don't come to the airport."
They had another plane waiting for them
at another airport that they were gonna take if they had to.
- [Jackie] And should six be arrested,
six will end up in East Lansing, Michigan.
- It was like "Mission Impossible," man.
- We were kinda the guinea pigs, okay?
I was literally scared to death, but we were gonna go.
- The reserves made it through to the airport.
A call was made, and they said, "Coast is clear."
And the starters, Joe Dan and Red Straud
and Doug Hutton, they went.
And they all flew together.
[upbeat music]
- [Jackie] And as soon as the plane left the ground,
you could hear the guys all together
started clapping and cheering.
We're off, we're on our way.
- [Jerry] I didn't think they were gonna come.
And when we got to Michigan, they said
Mississippi State is gonna play you.
- To know that cops are chasing them
and that what they're doing is gonna create a stir.
And then just even getting psychologically ready
for an NCAA tournament game,
which they had never done before.
I'm sure they were probably tapped out.
- [Jackie] How many people are gonna support us being there?
We don't know.
- [Doug] Everything was very quiet.
We're all sitting there, you know,
about halfway wanting to cry.
[gentle triumphant music]
- And when we got on the floor that night,
and all of a sudden, the MSU fight song was played.
[spectators cheering]
[lively upbeat music]
Here we are, a bunch of white kids in opposition
to a movement against black athletes,
to play something as easy or simple as a basketball game?
To walk into a gym of 15, 18,000 people.
Wow.
Could it really be happening? That, um.
[solemn music]
- [Robbie] They had no clue
that they would be that welcomed.
- Doug] Joe Dan Gold was our captain
and he went out to shake hands before the tip-off.
- [Jerry] There was no cheering.
The place was quiet.
Everybody was watching us, you could feel it.
I didn't hear anything the referees were saying.
I was looking at Joe Dan and he was looking at me.
We both went to shake hands and the place lit up.
Pop, pop, pow!
- [Judy] The cameras just went crazy.
- [Jackie] Almost turned into daylight.
- [Rick C] I mean everyone understood
how important that moment was.
It was captured for the ages.
- [Jerry] I said, "This is more than a game.
This is history."
- For our two captains to shake hands
and acknowledge the fact that, "Hey, we're here."
[somber music]
- [Lucas] The night would forever be known
as the Game of Change.
When the final buzzer sounded,
Loyola had earned the win, sending them to the Elite Eight.
While Mississippi State faced the reality of returning home,
and the consequences that would be waiting.
- I don't know, we could have played a whole lot of games
and probably never beaten them.
Coach came in, and his first thing he says
when he popped in that door,
is "Boys, you get your head up."
He said, "Y'all have done something
that nobody in Mississippi's ever done, you know.
Y'all have nothing to be ashamed of."
- Well, obviously our flight home
was a disappointing flight home.
Yet, it wasn't disappointing
because we had accomplished what we set out to do.
- The Mississippi State team didn't know
what they would find when they got home.
That was the danger.
That was the element that they were dealing with,
it had to be in the back of their minds the whole time.
[soft solemn music]
They get back to Mississippi
and there's a crowd treating them like heroes.
[spectators cheering]
You know, the best thing is to win.
The second best thing is to lose.
That means you got a chance to compete.
Without the ability to compete, you got nothing.
- Differences of opinion that we have
and ill feelings that we have,
but basketball and sports can do an awful lot
to bring people together.
- [Lucas] As the NCAA tournament continued,
Loyola defeated Illinois and Duke
to advance to the championship game
for the first time in school history.
The most anticipated contest of the season,
Loyola versus Cincinnati, was set.
- The night we beat Duke, what I remember most vividly
is Vic Rouse jumping on the bed
at four o'clock in the morning
saying he's gonna be looking at his NCAA watch.
[laughing] I remember that vividly.
'Cause they didn't give out rings at that time.
They gave out watches.
I don't think any of the guys got to bed
til at least 4:00 in the morning.
And that might have been,
the guys might have been dragging a little bit.
- [Red] NCAA Championship ball game.
It's a ding-dong-dilly of a battle tonight
at Louisville as we will have the Bearcats,
coached by Ed Jucker, against the Ramblers,
coached by George Ireland of Loyola of Chicago.
- [Lucas] For the first time in NCAA history,
seven black starters across both teams took the floor.
And in a nationally televised game,
the entire country was watching.
On Chicago local radio, Loyola's very own announcer,
Red Rush was calling the game,
a voice no one would forget by the end of the night.
- [Red] We are hungry for a championship,
so please bring one home to us, won't you?
- It was bringing chills to me
to be honest with you, watching that.
- We had 150 young nuns there,
looking at this little black-and-white TV
so we could watch that game.
- Probably the audience at the time was pro-Cincinnati.
Nobody had won three titles in a row.
- I guess the excitement starts
when you're running out through the crowded area.
I could not see anybody that I knew there,
but I knew they were there.
Okay, there was that many people.
[spectators cheering]
It felt as though
I'd been looking forward to this all my life.
I would say more excited,
somewhat nervous, but more excited.
I just said, "We gotta get to a good start."
- At tip-off, I had this little habit
where I always reached down and touched my sock.
And that night, I didn't touch my sock,
which said to me I must have been nervous.
- [Red] The ball's in the air
and controlled by Cincinnati's Tony Yates.
So the Bearcats have got the ball on the move.
He brings the ball over the 10-second timeline.
The Bearcats control down here to Bonham,
fires from the baseline, jumps, shoots, off,
no good, and Wilson stuffs it through.
George Wilson went high in the sky and stuffed it through.
- We were the best team, without a doubt.
Deliberate game, set picks,
take our time with the ball.
- [Lucas] Right at tip-off,
Cincinnati had momentum on their side.
Both teams studied their opponent,
their styles, tactics, and their biggest threat.
- [Red] Harkness out to Ron Miller,
they're going to try to set the pattern,
they're not going in that full-court-press incidentally.
- Tom Thacker, the best defensive player
in college basketball at the time.
At the beginning of the game I said, "I'ma get in his head."
- [Michael] He was going in
for what he thought was an easy layup.
He thought he had Tom Thacker beat.
- Instead of going left,
where I know they had scouted me
and I go left 90% of the time,
I said, "I'ma go right on him."
- [Red] They're going to try to set the pattern.
There goes Harkness driving the baseline,
and the ball knocked out of bounds
by Tom Thacker who is on Harkness.
- He slapped the ball away.
I could not believe what he had just done.
Nobody would think of it as being awesome except me.
He knocked me out of my game.
- [Michael] From that moment on, he was afraid of Thacker.
Thacker was in his head.
- [Red] Being guarded by Thacker, Harkness goes up
off the left side, jumps, an 8-footer, off, no good,
and Wilson clears the backboard backing up underneath.
- When I got around him, there's George Wilson.
They had a double where they had me boxed in.
- [Red] Down to Harkness.
Harkness has yet to score,
we're going to see what happens.
He backs up, he always shoots when he does, let's wait.
He turns around, jumps, shoots, off, no good,
and the ball knocked into the hands of Wilson.
- They had all of the things to stop me.
They just scouted us very, very well.
- [Red] Off to Miller to the right-hand side,
goes to the baseline, jumps, an 8-footer, off, no good.
So Ron Miller has got a foul.
- We'd had slow starts before.
But this night, something is wrong.
[dramatic music]
- [Lucas] With the threat of Jerry Harkness neutralized,
Ed Jucker turned his attack
on what Loyola relied on most, their speed.
- [Red] Passing over to Bonham behind the free-throw line,
it is off the iron, no good
and Miller controls it off of there.
They slow down that fast break.
9:56 left to go in the first half.
- They took away our fast breaks.
- We wanted to cut loose all the time.
We wanted to get the ball and go,
and get the ball and go.
They didn't take enough shots for us to get going.
They were never in a hurry to take a shot.
- [Red] Thacker way over, hands it back to Larry Shingleton.
They have a seven point lead
and when Cincinnati's got that kind of a lead,
it's pretty tough.
- So they didn't miss a lot of shots.
So there was not an opportunity for us to get rebounds.
And for some reason, we could not ever adjust to that style.
I don't remember having a fast-break in the first half.
- We just never could get started.
And we weren't shooting well.
Shooting percentage was terrible.
- [Red] The Ramblers with a 13-footer, up, off, no good.
Over to Miller, jumping from behind the free-throw lane,
it is up, and short, no good, and Thacker clears it.
- How could we miss that many shots?
I mean they were easy shots, they were wide open shots,
and we were missing shots.
- I knew that we were much better
than we were playing.
A lot of people were probably watching at home.
And we come there and flop.
- Everyone on that team was nervous.
We were out of sync, largely because our leader
was not having a good half.
- [Michael] Jerry did not feel confident.
If Jerry was not confident, the rest of the team
had to wonder, "What's to become of us?"
- [Red] Miller over to Harkness.
He goes down near the baseline.
Bonham's on him, dribbles under, fakes, shoots,
and he is knocked down.
But getting the ball.
Egan sets, he shoots, it is rolling off, no good.
Over to Ron Miller, he jumps, he shoots, a 6-footer,
rolls off, no good, and the ball is knocked out of bounds,
last touched by Vic Rouse.
At halftime the score is 29 to 21.
- The assumption by everybody is that this is a gimme.
Cincinnati's got it, it's in the bag.
[gentle bright music]
- The first half of the championship game
is kind of a blur.
I remember Jerry had a very bad game,
but so did everyone else.
We played the worst game of the year.
Of the four years that I was around Ireland,
I've often thought
that George Ireland's greatest achievement as a coach
was what he said at halftime.
He walks into the locker room and said to us,
"You know, you just played the worst half of basketball
I think we've played all year."
And he says, "I'm not worried about it.
We're gonna go out there the second half,
and you're gonna play better, and we'll win the game."
There were other times when we would be winning
by 10, 12, 15 points,
and he would come into the locker room
and he would start throwing things around,
telling us how lousy we were playing.
But at this moment, that night,
he was the complete opposite of all of those.
He said, "We're better than that.
You're better than that."
He said, "We'll get 'em the second half."
I've often felt that was his finest hour.
[soft suspenseful music]
[spectators cheering]
- [Red] The ball is up and controlled
by Jerry Harkness over near the sideline.
Back to Miller the ball goes.
Back down to Harkness on the right side,
going inside the free-throw lane, shoots up,
and it goes off to Rouse,
he scores as he controls the board.
- I never heard anyone say they had lost their hope.
But if you're watching that game,
you had to think, "Things are not going our way
and I don't see how they're gonna change."
- [Lucas] Bolstered by their coach's confidence,
Loyola came out of the half ready to fight,
but Cincinnati looked just as strong as they started.
With Jerry still held at bay,
the Bearcats kept the pace slow,
making it even harder to catch up.
- [Red] Yates has got it over the far side
to Larry Shingleton.
Larry down the corner to Bonham,
he jumps, an 18-footer is up and good.
45 to 30, Cincinnati leading by 15 points,
you wouldn't believe it unless you were here.
- [Jack] I'm thinking to myself,
"How do we make this comeback?
How do we do it?"
- Cincinnati was about the best defensive team
in the United States,
so how do you overcome that deficit?
- [Michael] It's a long, hard hill to climb.
But maybe there's some life in them yet.
- [Red] Rouse clears the backboard for Loyola.
- [Rich] Take the deep breath
and you wait for your time to hit.
- [Red] 47-34, 13 point lead.
Here's Ron Miller going down to the baseline.
Jumps, shoots, scores.
Going in the lane, and back, and pass,
it goes to Harkness, the baseline,
jumps, off, no good,
he can't get it, Rouse gets the rebound.
- It was about five minutes to go in the game.
I hadn't scored a basket.
- [Red] Shoots, up, off, no good.
And Leslie Hunter clears it.
There they go, Harkness, and the ball is stolen,
as Harkness passes, it's stolen by Larry Shingleton.
Beautiful interception by Larry.
- [Lucas] Loyola was battling every possession.
But still down seven, every miss
made it painfully clear,
if Jerry Harkness couldn't score, Loyola was finished.
- Jerry had a big dream, had big ideas
about his friends at home watching him on TV.
How this was gonna be triumph of the poor,
be triumphant back in New York.
And he saw all that slipping away.
- I would not have been able to face myself,
in life, because I played so bad.
I would have felt bad for the rest of my life.
But God has always put me in a situation,
going on welfare, nothing to eat.
And I think of my mom getting us through,
coming out of the hospital, and telling us,
"We're going to make it."
I realized that all of that drive and determination
came from my mom.
Ireland put in a different play
that Cincinnati had not seen.
I felt finally, maybe this is it for me.
- [Red] Egan, Egan to Harkness, turn around, jumper's good.
Jerry made his first basket.
He made it, he might do it, 48 to 43, 48 to 43.
- [Jack] We can win this game.
At that point, we can win.
- [Red] Here's Thacker with that ball.
Passing down, intercepted by Harkness.
Here goes Jerry, lays it up, and he scores.
Harkness scores, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
48-45, 4:16 left to go.
Oh, is this a ball game now.
Out to Harkness on the left side, he's driving down,
he's under, lays it up, and scores, he scores, he scores.
- Jerry was the primary reason
that we were able to come back and get into the game.
Once he heated up, the rest of the team followed suit.
- [Ron] We just started playing harder, much harder.
- [Red] Look at Hunter get that ball.
Miller on the right side,
a bounce pass into Hunter, turn around, layup, and oh!
Goal tending, goal tending, they finally called it.
It's 51 to 50.
- The crowd started to come around,
'cause we started to close the gap.
- [Red] Here comes Harkness, he lays it up
and it is tipped in by Hunter, 19 seconds, 15 seconds, 16.
Shingleton's got it, and a foul.
Harkness fouled him purposefully, he had to do it.
- [Announcer] 12 seconds to play
and it's bedlam here in Louisville, Kentucky.
53 to 52, Cincinnati by one single point.
And going to the line will be Larry Shingleton.
- Larry Shingleton was one of
the best free-throw shooters in the nation.
So, you know, when he stepped to the line, my heart sank.
- [Announcer] With 12 seconds to go,
Shingleton will go to the line.
If he should miss, they would have time of course
to go down the court and perhaps take that one shot.
And Tom, anything can happen at this point.
- I am out there praying.
'Cause if he hits both, over.
No doubt about it, the game is over.
[spectators whistling]
[spectators cheering]
- [Announcer] Well, there's one of them, 54 to 52.
- I said, "Dear Lord, please, please just give us a chance."
- [Announcer] Larry Shingleton
with only his second point of the night.
And now, perhaps he can ice the ball game for them.
[soft suspenseful music]
It's short, and it comes off to Loyola.
- Les gets the rebound, perfect position.
And there's a guy from Cincinnati
who swipes at the ball as Les passes the ball to me.
And as I catch the ball, I take one dribble
and I see Jerry streaking toward the basket.
I saw him break, I knew he could get his shot,
because that's his spot.
- Jerry did what he does best.
He cocked that left hand behind his head.
- I didn't feel anything.
I didn't feel the ball leave my hand.
If I would have had an air ball,
I wouldn't have been surprised.
I just let it go.
- [Red] No good, and Leslie Hunter has got it.
To Ron Miller, they've got a fast break.
Down to Harkness, he jumps, he shoots, he scores.
He scores, he scores, he scores!
- Perfect fast break within seconds.
And that, to me, was who Loyola was.
That's how we played, just like that.
- [Announcer] One second to go,
and we're going into overtime.
And the score is all tied, 54 to 54.
[timer beeping]
The clock is running with nine seconds,
Harkness takes it, he makes it.
It's all tied up.
[film reel whirring]
- [John] There was some controversy
that Ronnie Miller might have gotten away
with a traveling call.
- That's true, I gotta say it.
- There's the Ronnie, he did an extra step.
- They know what they did, they know what happened.
- It was so close that nobody in their mind
as a referee is gonna call that.
- There was no question in my mind, he walked.
- Did he get away with something?
Yeah, they didn't blow a whistle.
- I didn't travel because the ref didn't call it.
- And the basket's made. We're into overtime.
[spectators cheering] [upbeat music]
- [Announcer] It is absolutely a madhouse here.
And it's all tied, 54-54.
Loyola getting 33 points in the second half,
Cincinnati getting 25.
And Jerry Harkness, who had had
perhaps his most miserable night in his college career,
came back to become the hero
to tie it up with three seconds to go.
- [Red] But when David comes up against Goliath,
what can you do?
There it goes down to Harkness, he's underneath,
he lays it up, he scores, he scores.
56 to 54, it's a dilly!
As the Ramblers are out in front
for the first time in this ball game.
- [Ron] What I remember most about the last five minutes
was that desperation.
Keep clawing until the bitter end
and something good will happen.
- [Announcer] Thacker trying to get one inside,
he goes to Wilson, and Wilson scores.
- Imagine playing an entire game
without any break, and an overtime.
Those guys had no time to rest.
They were constantly going. All five.
- [Announcer] They have gone all the way
without a substitute.
And I'm wondering, Tom Hamlin, if this isn't beginning
to wear on Loyola a little bit.
- As you get tired, you lose your legs,
you lose your shot, a lot of things go south.
- [Announcer] Les Hunter takes his shot,
it rolls around and goes off.
And George Wilson grabs it for the Bearcats.
- At one time, one of the guys came out and says,
"Chuck, I'm gassed."
Well, coach said go out there, keep playing.
- Somebody maybe needs a sub,
but you don't wanna tinker with that moment.
No substitutions, that's what it's gonna be.
- [Red] The lead pass intercepted by Ron Miller.
Ron Miller intercepted the pass
and now the Ramblers have got it.
Action? You better believe it.
Miller shoots a 20-footer, good.
Good by Ron Miller.
- [Lucas] The final minutes of overtime
felt like a tug-of-war.
Two teams desperate to win,
both on the verge of collapse.
They'd do anything to score.
Even if it meant taking a play from the other side.
- [Announcer] To Cincinnati, a long pass to Shingleton,
he's in the clear.
He ties it up, 58 to 58.
[lively upbeat music]
A minute and a half to go.
Egan almost loses it.
They'll have to jump for it.
Egan and Shingleton, the two smallest men on the court,
will jump for it.
- Jack has no quit in him.
The fact that Shingleton was a little taller
didn't make a difference.
- [Announcer] Shingleton is 5-10 and Egan is 5-9,
so Cincinnati with a slight height advantage.
Because believe me, this is a very important jump.
- [Ron] Jack would fight anybody.
I mean, he didn't care who you were.
If you had the ball, he was gonna fight you
to take the ball.
- I don't care if the guy was 6-8, that's the way Jack is.
- [Red] Ball is up and tipped back to Ron Miller.
He's got it, over to Jerry Harkness.
- I think it was a misfiring on Shingleton's part
because he was up too soon before the ball was,
could be reached.
And Jack timed it perfectly, luck of the Irish.
- [Red] Back to Egan, 1:15.
What would you do? 58-58.
Would you go for the one?
- I think everyone knew that the idea was
to get the ball to Jerry Harkness for the last shot.
- So we're gonna try to get the ball to Jerry.
And he should be taking his shot
with three, four seconds left,
so there's a chance for a tip in, a rebound,
but not an opportunity for them
to get a rebound and go all the way down the court.
How do we do it?
- [Red] They're gonna go for one,
I don't think there's any question about it.
50 seconds, 49, 48.
Harkness backing in, he may go,
now he goes back out to Egan.
Egan has got the ball, looking around, over to Harkness,
back to Egan, 38 seconds left to go.
To Rouse, back to Miller, they're gonna go for the one shot.
58-58. And this is a twist.
Cincinnati, the team that always holds the ball,
they're seeing what it feels like now.
- The team that normally held the ball
did not know what to do
when someone held the ball against them.
- [Red] Egan over To Harkness.
Harkness going inside the lane,
now he goes back out to Miller.
15 seconds, out to Egan.
I guarantee you one thing,
they'll give it Harkness when it's time.
- Everybody pretty much thought it would come to me.
- [Red] Miller's got it, out to Rouse.
Nine, eight, Harkness has got it, here he goes.
- And I got the ball.
And he knew I was going left, and I knew it.
But I didn't feel it.
In the corner of my eye, I saw Hunter open.
And he can hit that shot.
- [Jack] Threw it to Les.
Now we're talking probably three or four seconds.
- I got nervous.
Not because Les isn't a great shot,
but I heard the ball scratch as he took that shot.
He scratched it with his fingernails.
- It was a good shot to take.
- It went off the side of the rim
and then one of the second best,
third best moment of my life was seeing Vic
push that ball back through the basket.
- [Red] Off the rim, Rouse gets it,
scores, it's over, it's over!
We won, we won, we won the ballgame!
We won the ballgame!
Oh, we won, Loyola won the ballgame!
Oh, we won it, we won,
60 to 58, 60 to 58.
Rouse gets it, scores, it's over, it's over!
We won, we won, we won, we won the ballgame!
- We won, we won.
- And all of a sudden, we heard these voices,
marched out on Sheridan Road yelling,
"We won, we won, we won!"
I think they went all the way to Evanston,
like at midnight, oh, so joyous and so joyful.
[bright music]
- You just have no idea the pride
that I have for those guys.
- It was unbelievable.
It was good to see the starting five
get the reward reward that they had earned.
- [Interviewer] George, how does it feel
to be a national champion of the NCAA?
- It's the first time we brought a team
to the tournament and we just said,
"Look, we're having a poor first half.
I know you can beat 'em, let's go out and give it to 'em."
- [Announcer] And that is the championship for 1963
and one of the most unbelievable comebacks of all time.
- America was sitting witness to this evolution of the game
by seven out of 10 African Americans starting in that game.
- [Lucas] Loyola did what they set out to do.
But their win represented so much more.
The end of the tournament
marked the beginning of their legacy,
one that shaped the sport
and their lives for years to come.
[bright music]
[spectators cheering]
♪ We're Loyola, we're number one ♪
The Ramblers returned home to Chicago
as champions that March of 1963,
the first school in the state of Illinois
to ever win a division one national title.
- How do you feel after your four years at Loyola?
- Well, I feel tremendous.
This is a great thing.
We won the championship in basketball
and that's exactly what I wanted.
[gentle bright music]
- [Lucas] The win was celebrated not just by Loyola,
but the entire city of Chicago.
So Ireland proudly paraded their trophy around town,
including a barber shop across from campus
where four of the Iron Five weren't even allowed inside.
As for Jerry Harkness, after graduating,
he had a short-lived pro career in the ABA
before returning to Chicago
and finding work as a salesman on the Northside,
close to campus.
Now, he was just a young black man trying to build a life.
[gentle bright music continues]
- I could see all of those people out there
cheering as we won the national title.
Then when it got time to just move,
I could not get a place to stay.
And they came up with all kind of excuses.
I was being discriminated against,
there was no doubt about it.
- [Lucas] The story of the '63 Ramblers made me wonder,
"What was really different now?
Did their accomplishments change anything?"
The answer is complicated,
but their lasting effect on basketball is clear.
- [Rich] The '63 team changed the game,
made it faster, more interesting,
a lot more fun to watch, almost like a ballet.
[gentle bright music continues]
- It was the beginning of modern basketball.
- That changed the landscape of college sports.
We were able to work together
with all this diversity and come out a winner.
And then common sense would tell us,
"Well, can't we do that in society as well?"
[somber music]
[people yelling] [dogs barking]
- [Jerry] One part of America was making changes.
- [Reporter] Texas Western takes
the first major sports title the school has ever won.
- And the other part was not.
I got involved in the Civil Rights Movement after school.
We had an obligation to do something,
say something about how the situation was.
- [Lucas] Sports has a way of tearing down barriers
faster than the rest of society.
And when athletes use their platform to demand justice,
they can often turn their victories
into something much bigger.
But they can't do it alone.
[gentle bright music]
[somber music]
- [Reporter] The world of college basketball
has lost a pioneer.
Jerry Harkness was best known
for the history he made as a Loyola Rambler.
Harkness would go on to work
for the United Way of Central Indiana.
He helped start the Indiana Black Expo
and he was the first black sportscaster
on Indianapolis television.
Jerry Harkness was 81 years old.
[solemn music]
- During the 1963 season,
we see numerous stories being told.
And the obvious one is a story about a team,
a team with four black players.
And they play well and they win.
And the story doesn't stop.
Because the story's not just about basketball.
This story is about the worth of an athlete,
the worth of a black man,
their place in society and what they can demand.
- It's just a tremendous honor
for all the team members to be recognized.
It's a chance to see the effect that you've had
on some of the people that played,
some of the black players that we opened some doors for.
- We are extremely proud of you.
You represent the university
and yourselves extremely well.
- We try to do our best to just imitate you guys
and like what you guys have done.
- The best we can do is say this is to be continued.
It is a work in progress.
It is a project that's not yet ended.
To make our country one
that's worthy of what these men went through.
- The most important thing
is that we keep telling the story.
Looking back you have a better understanding
of why we are in the situation that we are in today.
[solemn music]
- [Lucas] One day, hopefully long from now,
my time playing basketball will come to an end.
But there will always be more work to do,
more unwritten rules to break,
more ways to make the world better
for the next generation.
To me, that's the inspiration I think
we can all carry forward.
That's the legacy of the '63 Ramblers.
[gentle music]
[gentle bright music]
[gentle bright music continues]