Sports

Lewis deserves Hall recognition

Former UH basketball coach Guy V. Lewis (right) was instrumental in getting UCLA head coach John Wooden (left) to agree to a battle between the two best teams in the country. After 52,000 fans came to the Astrodome to view the first nationally televised regular season game, the contest became known as The Game of The Century.  |  Courtesy of UH Athletics

Former UH basketball coach Guy V. Lewis (right) was instrumental in getting UCLA head coach John Wooden (left) to agree to a battle between the two best teams in the country. After 52,000 fans came to the Astrodome to view the first nationally televised regular season game, the contest became known as The Game of The Century. | Courtesy of UH Athletics

Before the season began, sophomore guard Joseph Young stressed being an everyday guy on the basketball court — a player who worked out before practice, competed hard during each session and put up extra shots in the gym after practice.

Young’s mentality was instilled, in part, by his dad, Michael Young, who competed at UH from 1980 to 1984 and was an integral part of the Phi Slama Jama teams that reached the Final Four three consecutive times.

Michael learned the same lesson from legendary coach Guy V. Lewis.

“He taught me how to be an everyday person. He taught me about consistency and playing hard in practice everyday,” Michael said. “We came to practice everyday and learned how to work hard in practice. I think that’s made me successful.”

Now, Lewis has a chance to be recognized for his accomplishments with players like Michael.

Lewis, who won 592 games while head basketball coach at UH, was selected as a finalist for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame during All Star Weekend. Lewis must receive 75 percent — 18 of 24 votes — from the Honors Committee for election into the Hall of Fame. This year’s class will be revealed at the NCAA Final Four in Atlanta in April.

Lewis made 14 NCAA Tournament appearances, including five Final Four appearances, finishing as national runner-up in 1983 and 1984, and he developed three Hall of Famers who are all members of the NBA’s Top 50 players — but his stats are only a small portion of his case to be included.

Under Lewis’ tutelage, UH was the first athletics department in Texas to integrate when he signed Don Chaney and Elvin Hayes in 1964.

“There were no schools in the South, basically, recruiting black athletes,” Hayes said in an Associated Press article. “He paved the way in basketball. You watch LSU, Kentucky, Alabama now, they have all these great black athletes. These schools weren’t even looking at them back then.”

Lewis pushed bounds that lifted college basketball to new levels after he approached UCLA head coach John Wooden about a game between the top two teams in the nation. In front of 52,000 fans in the Astrodome, UH and Elvin Hayes defeated Kareem Abdul-Jabar’s UCLA squad 71-69. It was the first nationally televised regular-season college basketball game.

Athletics Director Mack Rhoades said Lewis’ contributions are worthy of hall of fame recognition.

“You think about the criteria in terms of getting into the hall of fame. Certainly, it’s winning a lot of games, but he had an impact on the game itself, whether it was the first (in Texas) in terms of integration and recruiting African-American players, his style of play to TV and the game against UCLA,” Rhoades said.

Lewis also helped change the way college basketball was played.

The Fab Five, a nickname given to five highly recruited freshman who all went to Michigan, were a mirror image of the Phi Slama Jama teams of the 1980s. Both schools played a consortium of talented freshmen, which led the team to national-title appearances. Michigan played a similar up-tempo style that most teams couldn’t compete with.

Most similar is that both schools didn’t win a national title.

Hall of fame coach Larry Brown doesn’t believe Lewis’ failure to win a title should keep him from being enshrined.

“I coached against him in 1983. That might have been my first college game at Kansas. It was against Phi Slama Jama. My mom said, ‘What are you scheduling that game for your first game.’ I’ve always admired him. He has always been a gentle, nice man that made our game better,” Brown said. “I’m old school, and those coaches were old school. They were real coaches. All the guys that played for that man just had such wonderful things to say about him and then you see their success. I’m pretty confident people will recognize that.”

Without Lewis, the history of basketball is incomplete: The Game of the Century, arguably the greatest game in college basketball history, never happens; Phi Slama Jama, one of the most compelling basketball stories ever, never occurs; and Elvin Hayes doesn’t get to play college basketball on its grandest stage.

If the Hall has space to enshrine coaches from the WNBA, Yugoslavia, the Euroleague and high school, it certainly has space for Lewis.

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