Revisiting past Miner sectional successes
World-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking penned the 1998 New York Times "A Brief History of Time."
I'm no Stephen Hawking. And I'm certainly no genius - after all, I'm a sports writer. But I am qualified to offer our readers "A Brief History of Time" of another kind.
Linton-Stockton won its fourth consecutive sectional championship - unprecedented in school history - defeating South Knox 43-40 in five overtimes at North Knox.
Twice previously Miner teams had won three straight sectional titles - the 1945-47 and 1974-76 teams.
The 1945-47 teams were coached by Garland Ladson.
The 1944-45 squad had dreams of a deep run in the state tournament, but the Miners, who were ranked as high as ninth in state that season in single-class, were upended by Terre Haute Gerstmeyer 50-45 in the regional final.
That '45 team featured an all-senior starting line-up including Indiana All-Star Max Woolsey, "Tuney" Moehlman and Bill McNew.
With no returning starters, similar success wasn't expected for the 1945-46 edition. And the team struggled early, losing six of its first 10.
But the Miners regrouped, defeating Terre Haute Wiley and Bloomfield just before the Wabash Valley Tournament.
They won the Wabash Valley tournament, defeating Shelburn 40-39 in the championship. Shelburn had upset tournament favorite Robinson, Ill.
Linton steamrolled the rest of the way ending the regular season on a 12-game winning streak, including wins over Bloomington and Terre Haute Gerstmeyer.
The Miners would win the Worthington sectional. And the next week they would claim the Martinsville Regional championship, winning 36-34 in overtime over Bloomington University and beating Honey Creek 27-23 in the championship game.
It was Linton's first regional championship in basketball and the school's only regional title until the 2013 Miners won the Class 2A Southridge Regional
Evansville Central ended the Miners' dream season in the Bloomington Semistate, winning 39-28 at the old IU Fieldhouse.
The teams had played in the regular season with Central winning 44-32 in the second game of the season.
The 1946 team included John Sanders, Phil Russell, Bud Peterson, Bob Elkins, Charles "Hunk" Richardson, Bob Keller, Tommy Dudley, Marion Woolsey, Max Dye, and Willard Ham.
It was Sanders who turned the 1946 team around. Sanders was from Worthington but his father was hired to teach at Linton so Sanders was eligible to play for the Miners. Sanders was noted for his scoring and ball handling.
Linton won three sectionals in the fifties - 1951, 1954 and 1958. The Miners won back-to-back in the 1966 and 1967 seasons, and another in 1971.
But it was 31 years before Linton basketball would again win three sectionals in a row.
It wasn't until the arrival of Jim Callane as coach that Linton again enjoyed the sustained sectional success as the teams of the 1940's.
When Callane was hired as basketball coach at Linton for the 1971-72 season, the Miners had just won an unlikely sectional title after winning just three games in the 1970-17 regular season.
Callane's first team went 3-18
But signs of future success were forthcoming.
The next year Linton won 14 games. One of its losses was at sectional favorite Eastern by only two points. Callane was optimistic headed into the sectional. Then the Miners lost to Eastern in the sectional opener by 23 points.
In 1974, after another 14-6 regular season, the Miners again drew the sectional favorite - Bloomfield.
This time the Miners won, on a last-second shot by Bob "Monk" Myers that is still disputed in Bloomfield.
In the championship game, Switz City's Rusty Miller outscored the Miners by himself in the first half - Miller 31, Linton 28. But Miller finally wore out, then fouled out, and the Miners outlasted the Switz City Central Tigers 84-82 in double overtime.
He led the state in scoring the next year scoring 818 points, an average of 38.9 points per game.
Miller is the uncle of the four Graves brothers - Matthew, Mark, Andrew and A.J. Matt, Andrew and A.J. were standout players for the Butler University Bulldogs.
Matt is currently the head basketball coach at the University of South Alabama. Mark is the girls varsity basketball coach at White River Valley.
The 1974 edition featured a high-scoring guard of its own - Rick Crynes. Crynes was a 1,000-point career scorer who still holds the Linton single-season scoring record with 593 points in that 1973-74 season. He also owns the single-game high, 47 points against Clinton in February 1974.
"He might have had 70 if there was a 3-point line then. He had great range. Once he got in rhythm, he was awesome," Callane said in a 2009 interview with the Greene County Daily World.
"Rick lived in the gym. He was about as good a shooter as I have ever seen."
Crynes' supporting cast included juniors Randy Goodman and Mike Sparks and sophomore Tim Jones.
The 1975 team was the best of the three, with Goodman, Sparks and Jones as returning starters. Goodman was a heady, fundamentally-sound 6-4 point guard. Sparks was a tough-as-nails 6-3 center. Jones was an athletic, do-everything playmaking guard. He could score from outside or driving to the basket. Jones was a tough on-the-ball defender and an excellent rebounder for a 5-11 guard.
Jones was the mainstay of all three sectional championship teams of the mid-seventies.
He led a balanced scoring attack of five double-figure scorers.
Jones also shared a family connection with the Miner teams of the forties. John Sanders was his uncle.
The trio of returning starters were joined by junior Dwight Word and sophomore Larry Simmons. Word, a 6-6 sharpshooter, was deadly from 20 feet. He was a "stretch-four" long before the NBA coined the term to describe big men who could stretch a defense with dangerous outside shooting.
Simmons, a rugged 6-4 would go on to score 1,102 points in his high school career. Simmons was the school's career leading rebounder until a couple guys named Karazsia and Fougerousse came along 35 years later.
The 1975 Miners posted a 15-5 regular-season record. The team suffered three bad losses - 70-55 at North Daviess, a loss at home to West Vigo, and the worst of all, a 19-point loss at home to Bloomfield in early December.
A week earlier the Miners lost by one point at arch-rival Sullivan. Linton also lost to regional nemesis Clay City in a holiday tournament hosted by the Eels.
But come sectional time, the Miners avenged the regular-season loss to Bloomfield - and nearly reversed it, besting the Cardinals 48-30 in the sectional championship game at Switz City.
Bloomfield coach Guy Glover compared his 1975 team to his 1965 regional championship team, a team that had a semistate title in its grasp.
Linton came close in the Terre Haute Regional that year, losing 55-51 to the Clay City Eels and Bob Heaton at Hulman Center. Heaton of course went on to play with Larry Bird on Indiana State's 1979 NCAA runner-up team.
The 1976 team finished the regular season 16-4. Its first loss was by seven points to Bloomington North in the Edgewood Holiday Tournament. The Miners lost close road games at West Vigo and North Central under what may have been considered "questionable" officiating circumstances. For reference, one of Clay City's two regular-season losses that year was also at Farmersburg.
In between was another loss to - who else? - Clay City, 46-41 at the Switz City Gym.
The Clay City game was originally scheduled to be a Linton home game. It was moved to Switz City by mutual consent to accommodate a larger crowd and create a tournament atmosphere.
The 1976 Miners were nearly denied a chance for a sectional three-peat.
In the sectional semifinal, Linton trailed Eastern 48-38 early in the fourth quarter. Callane called a timeout and ordered a 1-2-1-1 full court press. The Miners promptly embarked on a 15-2 run and won going away, 64-55.
The next night, Worthington tried a full-court press of its own - and paid for it. The Miners ran away from the Ramblers, rolling to a 72-56 win and a third straight sectional title.
Callane said in a March 1976 interview with Phil Coffin of the Bloomington Herald-Telephone, "It starts with athletes. Don't kid yourself. It's kids with some ability and a little luck. There are not too many secrets."
It's a refrain current Miner coach Joey Hart has often expressed when discussing his recent teams.
Two more common threads running between the teams of the seventies and today's Miners are defense, and a team not beating itself.
Callane said in that same interview, "We play good defense. We make them beat us.
"We operate on the principle we don't try to beat ourselves. We probably put some people to sleep the way we played this year."
And much like Hart's teams today, Callane's teams relied on tough man-to-man defense with an occasional 1-3-1 half-court press.
Hart said after Saturday's sectional championship win over South Knox, "Defense. That's who we are. Our man defense is who this team is.
"We'll play some zone still. Everyone talks about our 1-3-1 and our 1-3-1 did get one steal. But our man defense was just rock solid."
The 1976 season - and Linton's three-year run - ended with yet another loss to Clay City at Hulman Center in the regional.
Callane left Linton to take the head coaching job at Kokomo Haworth after that season. He was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in the 2007 induction class.
Linton won its next sectional championship in 1982.
After finishing the regular season with a 14-10 mark the Miners knocked off reigning champ Bloomfield 75-62 in the semifinals. Then they outlasted the L&M Braves 64-62 in double overtime in the championship.
The 1982 Miners featured Scott Poe. Poe finished as Linton's all-time leading scorer with 1,284 career points. He currently ranks third, behind Fougerousse (1,491 points) and Karazsia (1,338).
J.P. Meurer, father of current Miner Tyler Meurer, also played for the 1982 squad.
But it would be another 31 years before Linton would win another sectional championship.
And the 2013 sectional championship served as a springboard for the Miners' magical run to the 2A State Finals.
Terry Schwinghammer is a sports writer for the Greene County Daily World. He can be reached by telephone at (812) 847-4487, ext. 27. He can also be reached via email at tschwing32@yahoo.com.
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