CP Time

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:20 AM -0500 11/5/04, James A. Landau wrote:
>
>PS to Dennis Preston, about guarding the Big O:  Back when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
>was in high school (and known as "Lew Alcindor"), an opposing coach said
>"there's no such thing as a one-man basketball team" and ordered his
>team to let
>Alcindor do whatever he pleased, just guard the other four players.
>Alcindor's
>team lost 63-60, with Alcindor scoring 57 of the 60.

Are you sure that's true?  I thought his high school, Power Memorial,
went undefeated during Alcindor's years there.  But maybe they lost
one game.

Let's see what I can find.  Ah, under the aptly yet ineptly titled
SportsCentury web bio at espn.com, "A Dominate Force" (eggcorn
alert!), it is noted that Alcindor's teams during his high school and
first two college years went 126-1: "The only defeat came when
DeMatha snapped Power Memorial's 71-game winning streak in January
1965."  So that must have been the game to which Jim alludes. Another
site confirms the result but not the details, which are slightly less
impressive:  the final score was 65-62 and Alcindor scored 38, not 57.

--Larry, who never tried guarding Lew Alcindor (or Lewis, as Coach
Wooden used to call him) at UCLA but did sit behind him in class once.