Tuesday, May 17, 2016

A Great Loss


#5 Jim McMillian, is front row center 


I've been trying to avoid doing too many non-football stories lately, but the passing of Lion basketball great Jim McMillian is just too important a story to ignore.

The AP obituary has a little more info.

Here's a good short interview of McMillian talking about the 1972 Lakers.


McMillian brings up the ball in the old Columbia gym, (now known as the "blue gym")


And here's a good recap of McMillian's best game as a Lion, his 37-point performance on just 22 shots in the Ivy championship playoff victory vs. Princeton in 1968.

Oh, and here's a video of that entire Columbia-Princeton game from 1968 at St. John's Alumni Hall. The broadcaster was the legendary Marty Glickman. (SORRY the link for the game is now working!)

7 comments:

Mr. Gelegenheit! said...

He was a great player and indeed the whole team was great. I was in Coach Jack Rohan's basketball gym class and he was great too. It was all great.

alawicius said...

Jake, "Marty Glickman" link goes to a tribute to Glickman from N.Y. Times, no game there.

DOC said...

Jake, Ivy Hoops Online claims that no video exists for the game.
Where is the link ?

DOC said...

Ahh, OK ...found it on You Tube (link in McMillan obit in Gocolumbialions.com)

RLB said...

Pray, tell, where is the link to the video?

I remain, very truly yours, Richard Szathmary said...

I remember he put his address and home phone number in the "Class Notes" section of CCT for his class. And actually invited anyone in his area to look him up. So few others from any college would ever dare do that. Amazing player in his time, I was lucky to him twice in that Holiday Festival the Lions won.

oldlion said...

I can remember that Holiday Festival in the old Madison Square Garden on 50th and eight like yesterday; We blew out West Virginia in the first game. McMillian went off for around 40. In the second game, we were down by 11 to a Louisville team with Wes Unseld and Butch Beard and came back to win going away. In the final we played a very good St. John's team with Sonny Dove and won by 5; it was tight the entire game.