Billy Tubbs... RIP (for once!)
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He was just one of those guys you hated or loved, nothing in between. In Lawrence, it was the former.
I always figured that somehow he would end up at Mizzou. I’m sure the Tigs would have hired him just to piss off KU.
Surely there are some of you that have stories around this “legend.”
Guess he deserves a mention and a few minutes of our time to reflect, laugh, and maybe snarl a bit.
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I remember watching the 1988 national championship game. Oklahoma was supposed to kill us. At halftime the score was 50-50 and Brent Musburger said there was no way we could keep up with Oklahoma in the 2nd half. Danny Manning and the miracles had different thoughts. They out played the Sooners and the Sooners were the ones with their tongues hanging out. We won 83-79. Larry Brown was a great coach and really out coached Tubbs that day. We also beat K State and Duke in that tournament.
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I believe I’m remembering this right, but I think we also lost to KSU, Duke and Oklahoma during the regular season that year, which made wins over those three in the tourney even more sweet. Beating Duke is always a highlight for me. My least favorite team by far and it’s not close.
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@tis4tim You are remembering correctly, and in fact, we lost to KState, the first time I’d seen KU lose in AFH as they had a long win streak at home. Then they lost to OU, the next game and a few weeks later they lost to Duke at home. Now I’d seen them lose three times in the space of a month. Sweet revenge a month or two later.
In the dance, we were seeded 6th despite our poor record, and got Xavier, ranked 18th, but seeded 11th! Murray St. upset 3rd seeded NCS, so we got them in the 2nd round, they nearly beat us, then we played Vandy which upset 2nd seeded Pitt so we got Vandy. Then KState upset 1 seed Pitt so we got the easier draw the entire tournament until the FF!
@Hawk69 your line about OU is slightly untrue. We gave OU everything they could handle twice during the regular season. Maybe the general public assumed this 11 loss team is gonna get walloped but people who followed knew it was no gimme for Oklahoma.
As for Billy Tubbs he used a sub for all of 5 minutes in that game. THEY were gassed, not us and Brett can go to Hades as well as Billy P who messed up that telecast too with his constant blathering about KU playing it wrong. Meanwhile, KU was rolling out football players, farm boys and other don’t belong types in a national championship game and entertaining the heck out of us. I was an about to graduate senior. What a year!
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@wissox Well, in fairness, OU averaged over 100 pts a game and it was by no mean just Billy Packer who turned out wrong–nobody expected KU to run with OU in the first half (both teams slowed up in the 2nd). And Brown himself didn’t expect it. Letting the team loose was a response to the fact that KU shot the lights out in the first half while playing fast, missing only about 3 FGs. He would have reined them in otherwise.
Trashing Billy P makes it sound like the KU victory was somewhat expected, as if he was some aberrant pessimist about KU. KU had Manning, but no one expected the Miracles to play their heads off.
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@mayjay I always heard that brown had told them to play “slow”. When he broke the huddle, Danny said something like, screw that!
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@mayjay said in Billy Tubbs... RIP (for once!):
@wissox Well, in fairness, OU averaged over 100 pts a game and it was by no mean just Billy Packer who turned out wrong–nobody expected KU to run with OU in the first half (both teams slowed up in the 2nd). And Brown himself didn’t expect it. Letting the team loose was a response to the fact that KU shot the lights out in the first half while playing fast, missing only about 3 FGs. He would have reined them in otherwise.
Trashing Billy P makes it sound like the KU victory was somewhat expected, as if he was some aberrant pessimist about KU. KU had Manning, but no one expected the Miracles to play their heads off.
YA I remember that game for sure. - - Seems like I remember Billy saying that KU didn’t want to get into a running game with Oklahoma or up and down - -something to that effect I think, I had a hard time watching that myself and just thinking point blank - - - DAM what a game in that 1st half 50-50 right ? some role players making big plays, remember Clint Normore hitting a huge shot from the top of the key late if I remember right, everybody play some really important parts in that game - - what a game.
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@mayjay I looked it up. We lost by 8 twice to OU during the regular season, the 2nd time was a higher scoring game than he NC game. It was an upset but I was among many not expecting to get blown out by OU.
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Danny took over that game. He controlled the pace almost by himself… rebounding and then driving it right down the court, sometimes finishing at the rim. I never saw a big man dominate a NCAA playoff game like that.
