Pembrook burrows biography channel
Jacksonville’s got a team: 50 years later, the Dolphins’ improbable NCAA Tournament run still celebrated
EDITOR’S NOTE:This story has been updated to correct the details of Dan Hawkins’ death in
Most of them scattered after becoming Jacksonville’s team 50 years ago.
They became doctors, lawyers and businessmen.
There was one highly successful coach and one decorated police officer.
They moved to Oregon, Colorado, Ohio, Illinois and New York, and within Florida, from Pensacola to the Keys.
Yet, they’ve always found the time every few years to return, if not for each other, then to keep alive the memory of the historic Jacksonville University basketball team that shocked the college basketball world and captured the imagination of a city with its march to the NCAA championship game against UCLA at Maryland's Cole Field House and a record that remains the best season for any college team, at any level, in Jacksonville.
They played offense unlike anyone had ever seen in the college game at the time, becoming the first team to average points per game.
The Dolphins were led by 7-footers Artis Gilmore and Pembrook Burrows, forward Rod McIntyre, guards Rex Morgan, Vaughn Wedeking and Chip Dublin and a bench that went 10 deep.
They were coached by Joe Williams, who was assisted by Tom Wasdin, two veterans of the Duval County public school system who believed basketball should be equal doses of hard work and fun.
The numbers that team put up would lead the NCAA this season in points, rebounds, assists, shooting percentage, scoring margin, rebounding margin and point games -- except unlike the modern college game, there was no 3-point shot, dunking was against the rules and there was no shot clock.
The Dolphins also did it in style.
Before there was Showtime, the Fab Five, Phi Slamma Jamma and the Runnin’ Rebels, JU had the Mod Squad, players with long hair and Afros, wearing dashikis and bell bottoms, with facial hair, a dose of attitude and the pure joy of playing basketball -- and doing it with each other.
"We got along so well," said Mike Blevins, a junior guard on that team.
"We enjoyed each other, and everybody had fun together."
"I honestly don't remember any problems with anyone not getting along," added Rusty Baldwin, a Bishop Kenny graduate who was a sophomore guard that season.
The Dolphins' flash and dash might not have gone over so well in many Southern cities. After all, Dublin had only become the first African-American athlete at JU three years before.
It had been only one year since Duval County public schools desegregated -- the same year Martin Luther King was assassinated -- only five years since King led protests in St. Augustine and nine years since the infamous “Ax Handle Saturday,” in which gangs of whites beat blacks in downtown Jacksonville who were staging non-violent protests against segregated lunch counters.
None of that seemed to matter to the ' Dolphins and once they showed that, the city embraced them.
The team was black and white, from urban and rural areas in the North and South, with personalities ranging from the reserved Gilmore to the outgoing, magnetic Morgan.
"The guys coming together at that particular year was something unique, considering the times and what was happening in the country," Gilmore said.
"That team was magical."
JU president Tim Cost said the Dolphins were more than just a very good basketball team. They set an example of harmony that should still serve as an inspiration.
"That team decided to come together because of their love of the university and their love of basketball," he said. "It wasn't about where you were from or what your mom and dad did, or your ethnicity.
We can still learn a lot from them."
The Mod Squad unites a city
Inspired by Dublin, the hip New Yorker on the team, the Dolphins practiced to rhythm and blues, switched to “Sweet Georgia Brown” before games and wowed early-arriving fans with dunking contests -- at least until the referees walked into the court, because dunking at the time was prohibited in warmups and games.
They also had a rooster -- not literally.
The free-spirited approach to basketball, at a time when college coaches such as John Wooden, Adolph Rupp and Henry Iba favored regimentation and conformity, rankled the establishment fans and media.
But Williams, a nifty dresser himself (he favored a white leisure-suit jacket and red shirts), had few rules: go to class, be on time and play hard.
There were no curfews or bans on drinking.
“Basketball is supposed to be fun,” Williams often said.
"We practiced so hard we were too tired to stay out late," Baldwin said.
Jacksonville responded. It was a generation before the Jaguars, and not every sports fan in the area embraced Florida-Georgia, or the two teams that would wind up in the Gator Bowl.
The University of North Florida had yet to be established, and it was difficult to get invested in the Jacksonville Suns, when players moved up the major league ladder if they were good.
Consider that 10 of the games that season were played in the Memorial Coliseum, which could squeeze up to 12, people in the seats and rafters.
The JU enrollment at the time was 2, Since it had been a junior college until , there wasn't a deep alumni base.
That meant a lot of avid Dolphins fans never went to JU. But they embraced them as their own.
"It was wild, incredible wild," said Frank Pace, a JU student at the time who went on to produce one of two documentaries on the team.
"Everybody bought in, the two newspapers, the TV stations, people who had never been on the JU campus. It really united the city."
Outsiders hardly shared those feelings, aside from Sports Illustrated college basketball writer Curry Kirkpatrick, who fell in love with the team after a chance meeting with players on the beach in Hawaii when JU was playing in a holiday tournament and Kirkpatrick was on vacation.
Kirkpatrick was one of the few in the national media who saw the Dolphins for who they really were: free-spirited kids who loved each other and the game.
Indeed, just as in later years when the University of Miami’s football team became the poster children for a style that rubbed the purists the wrong way, so did the Dolphins for basketball.
As one writer put it, fast-break, high-scoring basketball “was for playgrounds and Jacksonville University.”
The Dolphins laughed all the way to their next point game.
Williams, Wasdin build their team
When Williams got the JU job in , the Dolphins were still an NAIA program.
The first four seasons he coached the team were unspectacular: a record, with only two winning seasons.
But he and Wasdin began to put the pieces together for the season three years before.
They started by recruiting locally, first signing McIntyre and Dan Hawkins (Forrest), then adding Baldwin and a legacy, Curtis Kruer (Ribault), whose older brother, Wayne, played at JU.
Wasdin then stumbled across Dublin while recruiting another player in New York.
Dublin had been All-City and signed with Loyola of Chicago but left after a few months. He was working at a bank when Wasdin convinced him to resume his college career.
The two coaches also established a foothold in the Midwest. They found Morgan, who had gone to Evansville for one season, left to attend Lake Land Junior College near his hometown of Charleston, Ill., and was set to transfer to Illinois.
For good measure, they put Morgan's high school buddy Frank Casey, on scholarship.
Casey served as the basketball sports information director, manager and traveling secretary of sorts.
"Rex could have gone almost anywhere," Casey said. "But it was Florida, and we knew that meant, sun, fun and girls."
Williams also made a promise to Morgan: It would be his team. And for two seasons, Morgan was the heart and soul, averaging points, rebounds and assists in
The relationships they built in Indiana, Illinois and Ohio in recruiting Morgan helped the coaching staff get Wedeking and forwards Greg Nelson and Ken Selke.
Blevins was a steal.
He was playing for Dayton when his parents divorced and his mother moved to Jacksonville to work for Vandroff Insurance.
One of his mother’s bosses was a huge JU fan, and when Blevins came to visit during the summer of , he was introduced to Williams. Blevins decided to transfer to JU shortly after.
Nelson and Wedeking both played for Harrison High School in Indiana and made recruiting trips together to Georgia Tech and Tennessee.
"JU was our last stop and we fell in love with the place," Nelson said.
"It was a small school, but we realized we could make an impact."
The Dolphins improved from in to the following seasons, with Morgan, Dublin, McIntyre, Nelson and Wedeking leading the way.
Biography channel ghost kit Williams also made a promise to Morgan: It would be his team. Frank Barker. Schayes , J. Tim Tyler.Among the victories were Florida, Florida State and Georgia Tech.
Into that mix came the final pieces of the puzzle: not one, but two 7-footers.
Once again, Wasdin worked his connections and relationships. He had coached at Brevard Junior College and began hearing about Burrows, who couldn't keep from tripping over his own feet at Roosevelt High School in West Palm Beach (he was cut every year until he was a senior) to a polished JUCO center who made nearly 70 percent of his shots as a sophomore.
Wasdin was in on Burrows early and got rewarded when he picked JU from nearly offers.
“Somehow, he came to every one of my games at Brevard,” Burrows said of Wasdin.
“He talked to me after every game. It was clear they wanted me.”
Naturally, accusations flew that Williams was skirting NCAA rules.
Pembrook burrows biography channel Ernie Carr. For good measure, they put Morgan's high school buddy Frank Casey, on scholarship. The two coaches also established a foothold in the Midwest. Chamberlain , D.Players laugh to this day.
“Joe didn’t have enough money to cheat,” Casey said. “The school didn’t even give him a credit card.”
Then came the real prize.
Gilmore's family was so poor in Chipley, an obscure Florida Panhandle town, that he once went months without shoes because he was growing out of them so fast. George Raveling recruited Gilmore for Lefty Driesell at Maryland, but Gilmore couldn't qualify academically.
He went to Gardner-Webb in North Carolina, at the time a junior college.
One of Gilmore's teammates, Ernie Fleming, had heard about JU and wrote the now-famous letter to Williams, asking if he could transfer to play for the Dolphins.
As an aside, Fleming wrote that he had a friend -- who was
JU signed both players.
Fleming was redshirted in , but he went on to star for the Dolphins for two years after that, averaging points per game and setting the school record with 59 points in one game.
And the throw-in on the deal?
Gilmore, known as “The A-Train,” became the greatest JU player ever.
The A-Train leaves the station
McIntyre said "The A-Train" did things that left him speechless -- such as the practice game against Davidson before the regular season.
Mike Maloy, an All-American candidate, drove the baseline and put up a short jumper.
Gilmore didn’t block the shot: He leaped and caught it while it was at the apex of its trajectory.
“Everybody just stood there,” said McIntyre. “No one knew what to do. No one had ever seen a big guy do that before.”
The Dolphins then went to Durham, N.C., the next week to play a practice game at Duke.
Blue Devils coach Bucky Waters had just taken over for Vic Bubas and had high hopes for his team, building it around center Randy Denton -- who would go on to average points and rebounds per game that year.
Statistics for the game have been lost in some dusty filing cabinet, but suffice to say that Gilmore was dominating Denton, so much so that Waters screamed at Denton from the sidelines, “Stop letting him do that to you!
Be a man!”
McIntye was the starting center the year before. He faced up to Gilmore in their first summer pickup game “with a lot of p and vinegar.”
“I wasn’t going to give up my job that easily,” he said. “The first time Artis joined us, he came out on the baseline and blocked my shot. Our team recovered the ball and got it to the other side of the court.
Someone shot from there, and Artis ran over to block that one, too. I had never seen someone that big move that fast. I knew my days as a starter were numbered, but I also knew we were going to win a lot of games with this guy.”
Nelson said he got frisky during one of the pickup games. When Gilmore went up for a dunk, he went up to try and block it.
“He pulled the ball back and stopped,” Nelson said.
“He told me, in all sincerity, ‘Don’t do that … I’ll hurt you.’”
Gilmore led the nation in rebounding with per game that season and still holds the national record for career rebounding at per game.
The NCAA didn’t start keeping blocked shots on an official basis until David Robinson of Navy is credited for the single-season record with JU started counting blocked shots in Gilmore’s senior year, and he had
“There’s no telling how many he had the previous year,” said Casey.
“We had him for 15 in one game.”
Dolphins roll to the Big Dance
JU won its first 13 games, by an average score of , not counting a forfeit over Georgetown, when a fight between Blevins and Art White of the Hoyas started a brawl near halftime with the Dolphins leading Georgetown coach John Magee refused to continue the game.
The Dolphins beat Florida State, Miami, Arizona and Georgia Tech during the regular season, only to hear critics dismiss them because they had “beaten a bunch of teams like St.
Peter’s.”
Well, yes, they did … JU also hung a hundred on Iowa, Kentucky, Arizona and Western Kentucky, Miami twice and 11 other teams that season.
The only regular-season loss was at Florida State. In the return match, in front of the largest crowd to see a basketball game at the old Memorial Coliseum, JU won
“Then, everything went crazy,” Blevins said.
The Dolphins scored an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament and beat four top teams on the way to the national championship game against UCLA.
After JU returned from beating Iowa and Kentucky to reach the Final Four, thousands of fans greeted them at the airport and lined I to wave at their bus.
The Dolphins topped St.
Bonaventure in the national semifinal game. But it was then, and only then, that someone figured out how to stop them. It took legendary coach John Wooden, in the middle of guiding the Bruins to seven national championships in a row, to do it.
Wooden was an ardent admirer of JU and of Williams, and frequently invited him to coaching clinics with him.
Nelson came away with a lifetime personal memory of that loss.
"When we were shaking hands, coach Wooden told me, 'Greg I know everyone in Evansville is proud of you,' " he said.
"That just floored me. I didn't think John Wooden knew me at all, and he knew where I went to high school."
When the Dolphins came back to Jacksonville, they discovered a rally in their honor had been organized, win or lose, in the Gator Bowl. Two days after the loss to UCLA, an estimated 40, fans gathered to express their gratitude for a season unlike any other.
"We were rejoicing," Pace said.
"There's no other way to put it."
But it didn’t last long.
Williams left suddenly after that season, and went to Furman, where he won five Southern Conference titles and went to the NCAA Tournament five times. He then coached at Florida State for eight seasons.
Wasdin took over and guided the Dolphins to a record in three seasons, with two NCAA Tournament appearances.
They lost in the first round each time.
JU has been to two NCAA Tournaments since then. But the Dolphins have never won a tournament game since beating St. Bonaventure in the national semifinals.
“It was a perfect storm of 12 of the right guys, in the right place, at the right time, coached by the right guy,” Pace said.
But like so many Jacksonville weather systems, this storm quickly passed.
How many more gatherings?
There were JU reunions marking 10, 20 and 40 years, to celebrate Hall of Fame inductions, or to participate in Pace's documentary, "Jacksonville Who?”
The Dolphins gathered again last week, players, coaches and support staff, for the 50th anniversary of the best team that ever took a court, field or diamond on the First Coast.
They appeared at a private party on Wednesday, then in pregame ceremonies the next night before the current JU team played Lipscomb, wearing throwback uniforms with the big numbers and “Jacksonville” in an arc under the number.
As in all previous reunions, they back-slapped and hugged, laughed and toasted, then spun familiar yarns that fading memories might tend to embellish.
The Dolphins also toast the ones they’ve lost: Hawkeye, Chip, Rexie, Dr.
Ken and Vaughn.
The most recent milestone, perhaps more than any other, has the surviving players pondering their mortality and openly wondering how many more reunions time will allow?
“Maybe this will be the last time,” said McIntyre. “We can’t all keep getting together. You never know.”
Williams and Wasdin are in their 80s.
The oldest of the players have cracked 70 and the rest are in their last 60s.
Some are as healthy as age will allow. Others have battled challenges.
Seven are still living. Six made the latest reunion, with only Kruer, now living in Montana, unable to attend because his teen-aged sons are still playing their high school seasons.
“We’ve been able to see each other often,” said Burrows.
“It’s been nice.
Pembrook burrows biography channel 6 Ann Morton. Players , Teams , Seasons , Leaders , Awards He lived in Deltona. Rich Katz.We do it so often because we really liked each other in school. That has never changed.”
Pace prefers to be optimistic.
"Hopefully, there will be many more," he said. "You can't fake the love they have for each other. It was genuine then, and it's genuine now."
Casey made a promise.
"This team will never lose touch," he said.
Chip Dublin: The lost Dolphin
Dan “Hawkeye” Hawkins was the first among the ‘ Dolphins to pass away, in He lived in Deltona.
The most recent was Selke in A senior forward during the Final Four season who played the fewest minutes of any player (he took only 12 shots and scored 12 points) had become a cardiologist and an avid private pilot.
In between were Wedeking (), Morgan and Fleming (both passed away in ).
There is one other deceased player who has become the biggest mystery: Dublin, the first African-American athlete at JU, a fun-loving, likeable guard from Queens, N.Y., who started the team’s tradition of practicing and warming up before games to music when he would lug a reel-to-reel tape recorder to the gym.
“All we know about Chip is that he’s gone … We don’t even know when,” Casey said.
Dublin taught physical education in the Duval County school system for a time, went back to New York, and then, according to anyone’s best memory, landed in South Carolina.
Burrows, with databases available to him at the FHP, tried to find what happened to Dublin.
He turned up nothing.
What makes it all the more tragic is that on a team that was as harmonious as it was talented, Dublin might have been the most well-liked.
“A very nice guy … loved to play basketball,” Burrows said.
“Everyone liked Chip,” Blevins said. “Just a real nice guy.”
Jacksonville has a rooster
During long running sessions in the oppressive early fall heat and humidity of Jacksonville, in the non-air conditioned Swisher Gym, Pembrook Burrows would sing softly to himself, almost at a whisper.
Other JU players took notice and asked him to say the words a little louder.
Burrows explained that it was a little ditty that he and his teammates at Roosevelt High in West Palm Beach would sing when they ran.
Very soon, on a hip team that loved to warm up and practice to James Brown or the Temptations, "The Rooster Song," became a part of their identity.
“It has significance for us because we sang it only when we were running laps and tired and sweaty,” Burrows said.
Burrows would take the lead, singing each line, to be followed by the rest of the team repeating it.
The Dolphins still sing it to this day when they’re together, 50 years later and counting:
Jacksonville has a rooster
Jacksonville has a rooster
And they put him on a fence
And they put him on a fence
And he crowed for the Dolphins
And he crowed for the Dolphins
‘Cause he's got good sense
‘Cause he's got good sense
Hidy, hidy, hidy ho
Hidy, hidy, hidy ho
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh what a team
Oh what a team
Jacksonville’s got a team
Jacksonville’s got a team
Did it ever.
JU Dolphins statistics
Player;G;FG;FGA;Pct;FT;FTA;Pct;RB;Avg.;Pts;Avg.
Artis Gilmore;28;;;;;;;;;;
Rex Morgan;28;;;;;;;;;;
Vaughn Wedeking;28;;;;39;53;;52;;;
Pembrook Burrows;27;;;;44;77;;;;;
Greg Nelson;28;;;;80;;;;;;
Chip Dublin;28;78;;;76;98;;90;;;
Rod McIntyre;22;59;;;26;42;;87;;;
Mike Blevins;26;32;90;;24;43;;34;;88;
Rusty Baldwin;26;23;46;;15;23;;9;;61;
Curtis Kruer;13;8;17;;4;6;;5;;20;
Ken Selke;12;5;12;;2;4;;15;;12;
Totals;1,;2,;;;;;1,;;2,;
Game results
Dec.
1;East Tennessee State;W
Dec. 2;Morehead State;W
Dec. 9;Mercer;W
Dec.
Pembrook burrows biography channel 7 Dee Brown. He lives in Jacksonville. Stine Kloster. Ernie Fleming.13;St. Thomas (Fla.);W
Dec. 18;Georgetown;W forfeit
Dec. 22;Harvard;W
Dec. 26;Arizona (Evansville, Ind.); W
Dec. 27;at Evansville;W
Jan.
Pembrook burrows biography channel youtube: Curry , K. Alexander Brest. Ayron Hardy. None of that seemed to matter to the ' Dolphins and once they showed that, the city embraced them.
2;at Hawaii;W
Jan. 5;at Hawaii;W
Jan. 9;Richmond;W
Jan. 10;Miami;W
Jan. 16;Virgin Islands;W
Jan. 27;at Florida State;L
Jan. 30;St. Peters (Fla.); W
Feb. 2;Iona;W
Feb. 5;at East Carolina;W
Feb. 6;at Richmond;W
Feb. 13;at Oklahoma City;W
Feb.
14;at Loyola (La.); W ;
Feb. 18;Florida State;W
Feb. 24;Oklahoma City;W
Feb. 26;at Georgia Tech;W
March 2;at Miami;W
NCAA Tournament
March 7; Western Kentucky;W
March 12;Iowa;W
March 14;Kentucky;W
March 19; St. Bonaventure;W
March 21;UCLA;L
How the Dolphins matched up
Key statistics posted by the JU Dolphins compared to the current NCAA leaders (through Feb.
20):
Category;JU;NCAA leader
Points per game;;Gonzaga,
Scoring margin;; Gonzaga,
Rebounds per game;; North Carolina
Rebounding margin;+; Houston, +
Field-goal percentage;;Dayton,
Assists per game;;Belmont,
point games;18; Alabama, Gonzaga, 4
No.
10, Vaughn Wedeking, Harrison, Ind., junior guard: Wedeking, JU’s starting point guard, died in at his home in Portland, Ore. He was a dentist.
No. 11, Rusty Baldwin, Jacksonville, sophomore guard: Baldwin played for his father at Bishop Kenny and went on to become one of two dentists off the JU team.
He now lives in St. Petersburg.
No. 12, Curtis Kruer, Jacksonville, sophomore guard: Kruer, a Ribault graduate who followed his brother Wayne to JU, became a marine biologist and worked in the Keys for more than 20 years on non-profit wetlands restoration projects. He lives in Sheridan, Mont.
No. 20, Dan Hawkins, Jacksonville, senior forward: Hawkins, who graduated from what was then Forrest High, was a manager at Truly Nolen in Orlando and lived in Deltona when he passed away in
No.
21, Mike Blevins, Dayton, Ohio, junior guard: Blevins is in the commercial real estate and banking business and currently works for Southern Capital Funding. He lives in Jacksonville.
No. 23, Ernie Fleming, Fall River, Mass., junior forward: Fleming was redshirted during the season but went on to average points per game in the next two years for JU, fifth on the school’s all-time list.
He still holds the Dolphins record for points in a single game with 59 vs. St. Peters. He became a successful businessman and passed away in Dallas in
No. 24, Rex Morgan, Charleston, Ill., senior guard: Morgan played two years with the Boston Celtics, coached on the Florida State staff, then returned to Jacksonville and made Arlington Country Day a powerhouse, winning five consecutive state titles and going He died in
No.
25, Ken Selke, senior forward: Selke was a cardiologist and a pilot. He died in in St. Louis.
No. 33, Chip Dublin, New York, junior guard: Dublin was a physical education teacher in Jacksonville, New York and South Carolina but mostly disappeared from sight after playing at JU. He has passed away and none of his former teammates know the circumstances.
No.
42, Pembrook Burrows III, West Palm Beach, junior center: Burrows became a lieutenant in the Florida Highway Patrol and served for 31 years. He finished his FHP career as a public information officer in a six-county area of south Florida.
No. 50, Rod McIntye, Jacksonville, senior center: McIntyre, who played high school sports at Lee, became a lawyer and lives in Jacksonville.
No.
53, Artis Gilmore, Chipley, junior center: After an year ABA and NBA career in which he averaged points and rebounds per game, Gilmore was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in and is a special assistant to the president at JU.
No. 55, Greg Nelson, Evansville, Ind., junior forward: Nelson is a developer who lives in Dayton, Ohio.
Coach, Joe Williams, Oklahoma City, Okla.: Williams coached at Furman and Florida State after leaving JU following the season.
He retired in with a record. He won five Southern Conference titles in Furman and is one of 25 coaches to take three teams to the NCAA Tournament. Williams lives with his wife in Mississippi.
Assistant, Tom Wasdin, Waldo: Wasdin took over for the Williams in and had three win seasons, going He is retired and living in Cocoa Beach.
Team doctor, Duane Bork, Jacksonville: Bork is retired and still living in Jacksonville.
Trainer, Bill Coulthart: Retired and living in Boone, N.C.
Sports information/manager, Frank Casey: Retired and living in Orlando.