Kansas to honor coach Ted Owens’ 1971 Final Four team during Jayhawks’ game against OU
Kansas’ 1970-71 men’s basketball team will hold a reunion this weekend in Lawrence to commemorate a 27-3 season that culminated with a trip to the Final Four.
The team will be recognized during Saturday’s KU-Oklahoma game, set for a noon tipoff at Allen Fieldhouse.
Coach Ted Owens’ Jayhawks 51 years ago went undefeated in the Big Eight and, in fact, lost just one regular-season game — at Louisville.
KU edged Houston (78-77) and Drake (73-71) in Midwest Regional contests in Wichita that vaulted KU into the 1971 Final Four at the Houston Astrodome. The Jayhawks lost to UCLA in the national semifinals (68-60) and lost to Western Kentucky in the consolation game (77-75).
The 70-71 Jayhawks were led by Dave Robisch and Bud Stallworth, who averaged 19.2 and 16.9 points per game respectively. Roger Brown and Pierre Russell were also double-digit scorers at 11.2 and 10.3 points per game.
Other team members: Fred Bosilevac, Randy Canfield, Greg Douglas, Jerry House, Bob Kivisto, Neal Mask, Mark Mathews, Aubrey Nash and Mark Williams. Assistant coaches were Gale Catlett and Sam Miranda. The team trainer was Dean Nesmith and manager was Kim Blocher.
According to KU, those who will be on hand for the reunion weekend include coach Owens, plus Robisch, Brown, Kivisto, Bosilivac, Williams, Mask, Catlett, Blocher and Ralph Light (graduate assistant coach). Also, Polly Miranda, wife of the late Sam Miranda, will attend.
“I didn’t exactly see them play live,” current KU coach Bill Self said Friday. “I know of those players. I certainly have great respect for all of them. I know Coach Owens is coming back and there are all kinds of festivities going on. Coach Owens I believe is 92, 93 years old now (he is 92). He could still probably beat everybody in this room in golf. Any opportunity for those guys to get together I think is fantastic and we should honor them every opportunity we get.”
KU’s 1970-71 team played during a stormy time in United States history.
“In 1970-71, we were having trouble on the campus. It was a campus that had a lot of disruption. That team pulled that campus together,” Owens said in an interview conducted by Bob Weinstein in 2008.
The Jayhawks opened the season with double-digit victories over Long Beach State, Eastern Kentucky, Loyola Chicago, Saint Joseph’s and Houston. The Jayhawks fell to 5-1 after losing at Louisville, 87-75, on Dec. 21, 1970. KU would not lose again until the Final Four semis against UCLA.
The closest games that regular season were home victories over Kansas State (79-74), Oklahoma (54-52, OT) and Nebraska (59-54) and road wins over Missouri (71-69), Oklahoma (71-68) and Colorado (66-65).
“We were just very, very big, strong and tough and found a way to win tough games,” Robisch recalled in the Weinstein piece on YouTube.
In the Final Four, KU ran into a UCLA team that, after beating KU in the national semifinals, stopped Villanova, 68-62, in the national championship game for the Bruins’ fifth-straight NCAA title and coach John Wooden’s seventh title overall. Under the direction of Wooden, UCLA had a string of 10 titles in 12 seasons.
KU trailed the Bruins, 32-25, at halftime, but after a 12-7 run were down by just two points, 39-37, early in the final stanza.
Robisch hit a baseline jumper, but was called for traveling on a shot that would have tied the game at 39.
UCLA took advantage of the controversial call by building a 15-point advantage before another KU rally sliced the gap to eight.
Sidney Wicks scored 21 points, Henry Bibby 18 and Curtis Rowe 16 for the Bruins. Robisch had 17 points, six boards and four assists, while Stallworth and Russell had 12 points apiece for KU. Brown had nine rebounds to go with seven points.
This story was originally published February 11, 2022 at 4:24 PM with the headline "Kansas to honor coach Ted Owens’ 1971 Final Four team during Jayhawks’ game against OU."
