McGill Drops 60 on the Y.

I often wonder what could have been for the 1961-62 season. We were coming off a Final Four appearance the year before and the great Billy McGill was coming back for his senior year. We were clearly poised for another deep tournament run.

Twenty-four games into the season we stood at 12-2. Billy McGill was scoring 30 points on a regular basis and we had some outstanding wins against UCLA, West Virginia, Cal and Arizona State. But then we got the devastating news: the NCAA had imposed a one-year post-season ban on us.

Its reasons were absolutely ridiculous. The NCAA found a former Utah football player had earned $26.30 more from his employment than NCAA rules allowed. It also found a former basketball player had failed to pay back a personal loan he received from a private lender -- I still can't figure how that was an NCAA rules violation. In short, the post-season ban was a complete joke. I can only speculate as to why we were singled out.

So that's where we stood in mid-January 1962. Of course, we played on and won eight of our next nine games. But there would not be another tournament run. This fact would have ruined other teams, but I'm proud to say we didn't let it affect our play. Which brings me to that historic night of February 24, 1962.

We traveled to Provo to play BYU in the Smith Fieldhouse. The Cougars threw everything they had at us that night. Bob Skousen and Bruce Burton led the Cougars with 27 points a-piece. The outcome was in doubt all the way until the final whistle.

But Billy McGill played like a man possessed. He outscored Skousen and Burton -- combined. He had 35 points by halftime, shot 71% on the night and pulled down eleven rebounds to boot. No matter what BYU tried to do, they simply could not stop him. So they tried to outscore him -- which they very nearly did. But when the dust had settled, we were the victor's behind McGill's sixty points!

The single-game scoring record stands to this day in the Utah record books. Amazingly, McGill put up 50 points against Wyoming a week later. We finished the season ranked #7 in the nation with a 23-3, 13-1 record, a 34-game home win streak and the Skyline championship. McGill scored 1,009 points that year (38.8ppg) and led the team with 15.0rpg. There would be no post-season play for our boys, but we hoisted McGill's jersey into the rafters as soon as we possibly could when the season ended.

But, oh, to think of what could have been!