Free Wooden: A Coach's Life by Seth Davis Page A

court, but they learned of his equivalent talents in the classroom when the Courier and Journal published a story under the headline, “Johnny Wooden sets fast pace in class room.” Purdue’s registrar office had provided the newspaper with records indicating that Wooden had been on the school’s Distinguished Student honor roll. Stating that Wooden “is generally recognized as the greatest dribbler of modern day basketball, and his alertness on defense has no equal,” the article concluded: “Wooden is a senior in the school of physical condition, and intends to take up coaching as a profession after his graduation this June.”
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    Wooden’s final team at Purdue may have been long on experience, but it was short on stature. The Boilermakers were, in the words of their hometown newspaper, “a squad that depends more on speed and cleverness than physical power.” They demonstrated as much by blitzing out of the gate with wins over Washington, Notre Dame, and Pittsburgh by a combined 45 points. By going on to score 51 points against both Montana State and Monmouth in Memorial Gym, the Boilermakers not only remained undefeated but pulled off the unusual feat of averaging more than a point per minute through their first five games. That was unheard of in 1931.
    No matter how hard opposing coaches tried to collar the “Martinsville flash,” Wooden’s fully evolved skill and guile rendered their efforts useless. Notre Dame coach George Keogan went so far as to devise a “Wooden defense” specifically to contain his drives. Keogan assigned one player to guard Wooden up close while another shadowed him closer to the basket. “Finally John decided that going through our defense was playing it the hard way,” Keogan later recalled. “What does he do? He started popping from out around the center, way back of the key.”
    For once, Wooden did not sustain a major injury in late December. However, his tonsils did flare up, and he had to have them removed during the semester break. That gave Wooden a clean sweep: four years at Purdue, four Christmases spent in a hospital.
    On January 6, two days after the Boilermakers sprinted to a 49–30 win over Indiana, the Associated Press published a story describing the unique style with which Purdue was steamrolling its opponents. “Overwhelming offensive strength shown in pre-conference tilts and analysis of Coach Ward Lambert’s veteran personnel are responsible for great optimism among Boilermaker fans on the eve of the twelve-game conference schedule,” the story read. “[The players] are thoroughly fitted into the quick-breaking, free-shooting clever dribbling Lambert scheme. ‘Fire department basketball,’ they call it in Indiana, and the pellmell, headlong style of game seems to be coming back in vogue this season—with reservations—after giving way, for several seasons, to a slower, more methodical brand.”
    Wooden would not avoid the injury bug for long. A couple of days before the Big Ten opener against Illinois, he sliced the ring finger on his shooting hand while working in the Beta kitchen. Then, as he was riding to the game, the car driven by Lambert and carrying Wooden slid off the road and flipped. Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured, but Wooden suffered a badly bruised thigh. He still played against the Illini, but he had an obvious limp and was restricted by the heavy bandage on his shooting hand. He scored just 10 points as the Boilermakers lost, 28–21.
    As it turned out, that would be the team’s only hiccup. In its next outing, Purdue squeaked by Marquette, 26–23, after the final gun failed to go off when the scoreboard ticked down to zero. (Glen Harmeson, the freshman coach, had to rush onto the floor to inform the referee that the game was over.) Wooden was held in check for much of the following game against Ohio State, but when the contest went to overtime, he broke a 33–33 tie with a steal and quick assist to a