I’m still working my way through the boxes that came from the Cal and Virginia Hill estate sale a while ago and it really does look like an exceptionally rich and interesting collection. Something I’d never seen before is one of these single-sheet basketball programs. There’s a bunch of them but this one caught my attention right away and not just for the jaw-dropping instructions for getting rid of your cigarette butts in the gym:
What grabbed me was the Kansas team itself, which had won the national championship the year before in fairly spectacular style. At least two members of this ’52-’53 squad are worth noting. LaVannes Squires, a reserve guard, was the first African-American to play basketball at Kansas and Dean Smith, also a reserve guard, was Dean Smith! Smith went on to a legendary coaching career at North Carolina where he won two national championships and was named coach of the year four times.
We won, by the way, 54-51.
