Two games in one night
By Tom Mattingly
Ray Mears did not come up with all the gimmicks surrounding Tennessee basketball by himself. Ray did his share, but one of the more interesting ways to try to get people in the seats at the Armory-Fieldhouse came in the season-opening game of the 1960-61 season.
While Ray was still at Wittenberg College on his way to a 25-4 record and the NCAA Small Division national championship, head basketball coach John Sines actually outdid Mears. That was before Tennessee had Ray on its coaching radar.
All Sines did was schedule two games for one night. History seems silent on the matter, but he did.
It happened Dec. 1, 1960. There it was in the Vol basketball media guide, “Thursday, December 1 — E. Tenn. & Chattanooga, Knoxville.” It was presented as if the Vols had opened with two opponents every year.
The game with Chattanooga started at 7 p.m., with the nightcap against the Bucs set for 9, “after a few whiffs of oxygen,” wrote Knoxville Journal sportswriter Ben Byrd. Byrd had termed the twinbill a “daring gamble.”
Whatever it was, it allowed the Vols to be 2-0 the morning after their season opener.
Sines did not seem fazed by the twinbill, taking it all in stride. There was no fanfare, no hoopla, nothing like Mears would have done given the opportunity. Nothing in the brochure indicated that anything special was being planned, something different, something unusual.
“John Sines will know tonight whether he bit off more than he could chew when he scheduled two opponents instead of the orthodox one as a basketball opener for his Tennessee Vols,” wrote Byrd. “A moderately large and curious crowd is expected to invade the UT Fieldhouse for the unusual occasion.”
Sines said he had “no apprehension” playing two games in a four-hour period. “None at all,” he had said, “although I did wake up in the middle of the night once and started to call Chattanooga coach Tommy Bartlett and ETSU’s Madison Brooks to see if they wanted to call it off.”
He didn’t, apparently going back to sleep, and the games went on as scheduled.
The crowd was estimated at 2,500 in a 7,500-seat arena. Lyle Varnell and Charles Bloodworth officiated both games. Sid Hankins was the timekeeper and Sam Venable, Sr., the official scorer.
The Vols of that season included: Seniors – Glenn “Skimp” Campbell (Fall Rock, Ky.), Bobby Carter (Bristol, Va.), Ron Carmichael (Dayton, Ohio), Dick Fisher (Jackson, Tn.), Bill Gilley (Carlisle, Ky.), Bob Perigo, (Lebanon, Ind.); Juniors – David Anderton and John Houston (Knoxville), John Martin (Watseka, Ill.), Howie Moss, (Oak Ridge, Tn.), Eddie Test (Chattanooga, Tn.); and Sophomores – Phil Britnall (Bryson City, N.C.), Bill Booth (Pikeville, Ky.), Orbie Lee Bowling, who would become one of the school’s most popular players ever two years later, (Sandy Hook, Ky.), Fred Collins (Des Moines, Iowa), Steve Van Antwerp, (Franklin, Ind.), Tommy Wilson (Springfield, Ohio), and Roy Wright (Lenoir City, Tn.).
The Vols dispatched Bartlett’s Chattanooga squad 81-51 and edged Brooks’ ETSU team 71-68.
Against the Mocs, the Vols led 37-22 at halftime and won handily, enjoying a 61-38 edge on the backboards. Fifteen players got in the game. The Vols were led in scoring by Test (13), Campbell (12), and Fisher (11). Fisher, whose son, John, would play for the football Vols from 1988-91, also had 11 rebounds.
The second game was a battle all the way. A considerable number of State fans made the trip to Knoxville down Highway 11E, and both sets of fans really got into it as the game wound down to a wild finish.
The Vols couldn’t stop Buc forward Tom Chilton, who worked his magic for 29 points. Tennessee did hold on for the win, thanks to some outstanding play from Carter and Campbell.
Carter had 19 points, Campbell 16, including four of six free throws in the waning moments, and Martin had 15 off the bench.
“I’m proud of all of them,” said Sines after the second game was in the record books. “I don’t see how Carter and Campbell and some of the others did it. I thought John Martin played his best game since he came to Tennessee.”
Byrd wrote perceptively about the game’s finish. “The lead was kicked around from one side to the other like an unwelcome relative, but in the end it was the class and poise of the two great senior guards that enabled the Vols to pull it off.”
The Vols finished 10-15 overall, 4-10 in the SEC, but will be remembered as the last Tennessee team to play two games in one night.
