Two old silver basketball trophies still are prominently encased for viewing in the foyer of Temple High School’s Wildcat Gym.
They are a little worse for the wear, accented with smudges, scratches and fading that come with age. They are surrounded by bigger, showier and more modern monuments to Wildcat athletic achievement.
But those old silver trophies are the only mementos to what could easily be forgotten in the rapid lockstep march of time and more recent Wildcat glories. They serve as the only tangible remnants of Temple’s boys basketball state championships from 1928 and 1932.
It might come as a surprise to some, or many, that Temple has as many state basketball championships as it does football titles. Basketball has had a long history at Temple, though it’s football that captures the imagination and is virtually unparalleled in tradition.
Nevertheless, 51 years before the 1979 Wildcat football team at long last captured the Class 4A state crown after coming so close so often for so long, the 1928 basketball team laid claim to its own state title.
Well, sort of.
Due to no fault of Temple’s, the Wildcats’ first title carries with it an implied, if not genuine, asterisk. In fact, 35 years passed before the title trophy made the 65-mile trek from Austin to Temple to take up permanent residence.
Bill Henderson had just completed his first season as head football coach in the fall of 1927 (an 8-2 campaign), replacing mentor Rusty Russell and then doing the same in basketball.
This was a time when, even in larger schools, one coach might head two or three sports. It was a matter of putting one playbook on the shelf and taking another one off.
Just as the 1927 football team had been one of Temple’s best, there was a hint of excitement about basketball, which had primarily served as a bridge between football to the baseball and track and field seasons.
Veteran players such as team captain Warren Weathers, Kenneth and Lawrence Lee, William Cooper, John “Cotton” Harrison, Claude Lewis and Oscar “Ox” Wickham, the big man in the middle, were providing enough buzz to draw uncomfortably large crowds into the recently built gym behind Woodson Field. Melton Koch, Glen McKenzie, Wayne Akridge, Lynn Zarr and Jack McFadden rounded out a solid corps.
Temple captured the county title by beating Belton and Oenaville in succession, then topped Gatesville and Wortham to win a district tournament. Wickham scored 19 points as the Wildcats beat Corsicana 29-19 in a playoff in Waco to earn their first invitation to the two-day, 14-team, single-elimination state tournament at the University of Texas that March. It was only the eighth year of existence for the event.
Temple came into the tournament with a 17-2 record, falling only to Austin in two of three meetings. That season the Wildcats outscored opponents by an average of 32-19 - a rather high-octane offense in a day when the two-handed set shot was the preferred form.
The Wildcats drew a first-round bye before facing El Paso, already a perennial powerhouse. Weathers and Wickham combined for 28 points in a 33-26 victory to advance to the semifinals the following morning against defending champion and tournament favorite Athens.
Oftentimes you hear of a semifinal game or conference finale as “the real championship.” This might qualify as one of those.
In a hard-fought struggle against the taller Athens team, the Wildcats pulled out a 26-23 upset win with major contributions from Harrison and Kenneth Lee as well as clutch baskets by Lewis.
As great as that victory was, the energy spent might have cost the Wildcats in the championship later that day against old nemesis Austin, which enjoyed a much easier road to the title game.
Temple led 4-3 after the first quarter but trailed 11-7 at halftime. The fatigue became apparent in the second half as the Maroons dominated the weary Wildcats en route to a 33-13 win - the most points Temple had allowed all season.
The Maroons received gold medals and the silver basketball trophy. The Wildcats were awarded silver medals and a “loving cup.”
A month passed before it was discovered that Austin’s star player, Melvin Vernon, was ineligible. Vernon had played a few varsity games as an eighth-grader in 1924, thus violating the University Interscholastic League’s four-year eligibility rule. Roy B. Henderson, the league’s athletic director, stated on the ruling, “League records will show: Austin state champions disqualified, Temple runner-up, 1928.”
Those weren’t words that inspired a return caravan to Austin to exchange silver medals for gold and a cup for a trophy. In reality, there wasn’t much bother about it again. Having not won on the court, Temple didn’t consider itself a state champion. When the Wildcats won it all four years later, the title was ballyhooed as the “first state championship in Temple history.” Even a 1963 Telegram article on 1932 coach Red Forehand called that Temple title its “first and only state championship.”
Maybe it was that article or other factors that motivated Temple native and school administrator William Valigura to retrieve that dusty, long-forgotten 1928 silver basketball trophy from the UIL offices and give it a proper display. The players from that Wildcat team never received gold medals and their names are not engraved on the trophy, which simply states: “University Co-op Trophy, University Interscholastic League, State Championship, Basketball, 1928.”
Current UIL public information officer Kim Rogers confirmed that on the occasions in which a title holder is determined to be ineligible, the runner-up is declared champion.
Whether it be deemed hollow, illegitimate or a mere technicality, the 1928 state basketball championship ultimately belongs to the Wildcats. Only the silver trophy remains as a lasting symbol.
