In “Back to the Future” Marty McFly and Doc Brown had to drive a Delorean 88 miles an hour to travel back in time. Coincidently, exactly eighty-eight years after the invention of basketball, two schools traveled back in time for an hour inside a Whittier, California gymnasium. To the dismay of many, the schools played their game in the old-fashioned way.
In 1891 when Dr. James Naismith first put-up peach baskets to toss a ball into, teams would play the new game of basketball until tiring from the activity or simply growing weary of delays incurred using a ladder to retrieve the ball captured inside the basket after each score. Among the earliest significant changes to the game were knocking the bottom out of the peach basket and timing the contests.
By 1979 the National Basketball Association was entering its 25th year using a 24-second clock to get off their shot or turn the ball over to their opponent.
However, the collegiate and high school games had no timed shot clock, enabling one team to spread out, simply pass and dribble, keeping the ball while running minutes off the clock with a single possession. This tactic was often utilized to get the last shot of a game or allow a team with a lead to hold the ball and run the game’s last precious minutes down. The ploy would force their opponent to either foul them and be rewarded with free throws or watch the game tick away. This stall, or “four corners” led to numerous upsets. Many an underdog won low-scoring games as a favored team would fall a few points behind and then become a victim of basketball’s version of “keep away”.
In 1979 San Clemente was a town on the southern California coastline, about fifty miles south of Los Angeles, then with a population of 17,000. The Tritons basketball team scrapped and reached the California Interscholastic Federation playoffs with a third-place finish in the South Coast League and a unique roster of players.
The only returning letterman from the previous year’s playoff team, which had included three senior starters over 6’6″, was now the tallest on the roster at 6’2′, senior Ross Sutton. Sutton was promptly moved to a forward and led the team in scoring. Sutton was in the circle for each quarter’s tip-off, a since forgotten opening jump. The remainder of the squad included only two players over or at 6 feet tall. With two starting guards 5’6″ tall, generously measured. The entire roster was made up of guards, and the taller ones were not good ball handlers.
Recognizing that rebounding was an obvious weakness for the team, coach Rich Skelton had to find another way. His options were to coach his team to become either superior jumpers who could outleap opponents or superior shooters who could not miss. Skelton needed to find a way to eliminate the rebounding disadvantage. He found a third way, limiting the number of available rebounds in a game.
Skelton chose the third way.
The “four corners” offense became a staple in San Clemente that season, they didn’t miss many shots, since they didn’t take many shots.
Need a poor man’s Toupee?
In doing so the coach got his tiny Tritons into the playoffs. Many of their regular-season scores could have been mistaken for football games. Including victories against Capistrano Valley 35-32 and 42-32, a loss to Dana Hills 21-16, and a non-league five-overtime 36-34 victory over Irvine.
San Clemente entered the playoffs with a wild card match-up and responded with a convincing victory over a taller but slower Lompoc High, earning them the right to face the mighty Sierra High Spartans two nights later.
The Spartans, coached by Todd James, had won their league, and were rewarded with the top seed in the playoffs. Their top seeding allowed them to host the playoff wild card winner on their home court in Whittier. Sierra forward Steve Egbert was named to the All-Southern California AA second team, leading a front line that far outsized San Clemente.
The team also began their season knowing that Sierra High was closing after the school year, they truly walked the edge knowing that a loss for them ended not just a season, but their school’s basketball history.
The evening of the game at Sierra high, Friday, February 23, 1979, the Spartans and coach James had prepared for how they would react to a slowed-down tempo, being aware of the upsets the Tritons had pulled using it during their season. While San Clemente’s coach Skelton also made some drastic adjustments to give his team a chance at victory.
Though taller, Sierra could not control the opening jump and San Clemente took the game’s first possession, and immediately began to spread out to their offensive “corners”. Without even a cursory attempt to drive the lane or set up a shot for five and a half minutes the Tritons dribbled and relayed the ball between themselves. Until Sutton, acting against instructions given, had an open look and made a jump shot from seventeen feet. Tritons up 2-0.
Sierra hurried back offensively and fed Jeff Masters inside for a hoop to tie the score at 2-2 less than 20 seconds later. San Clemente ran off the final two minutes and missed a shot as time expired in the opening quarter.
After again gaining possession of the tip San Clemente controlled the ball the entire second quarter, passing the ball and winding down the clock before using a time-out in the last 30 seconds to set up a shot, which was missed at the halftime buzzer. There was no scoring in the quarter and the game remained tied 2-2 at halftime.
The third quarter began with Sierra again giving up control of the jump and quickly falling back on defense against the “four corners” keep away for over 7 minutes, without using a time out, San Clemente missed a shot attempt and lost the ball to Sierra with 15 seconds to play in the quarter.
After a time-out, Sierra took advantage of their limited possession, quickly feeding Masters inside, his miss was followed by a Steve Egbert offensive rebound and basket to give Sierra a 4-2 lead with four seconds to go in the third quarter. The basket by Egbert was the first point for either team in over two quarters, a total of 18 minutes of playing time, San Clemente missed a hurried shot and the third quarter ended.
The first three-quarters of this game had been played through hoots and jeering from the shocked Sierra crowd, which had been vocal of their displeasure with the style of San Clemente from the onset of the game. The San Clemente followers who traveled to the game were acclimated to the pace. They had spent the season watching their team pull off several upsets of much better teams playing at this slowed-down tempo. They cheerfully responded by applauding their team as they passed the ball from one side of the key to the other.
But as this game progressed the crowd noise varied from eerie silence to moans of disbelief as the echoed sounds of sneakers squeaking and a basketball repeatedly striking the hardwood floor combined to draw the entire gymnasium into an almost hypnotic glassy gaze.
As the teams lined up to begin the final quarter, the Sierra crowd expelled much of their yet unused energy to spur on the action, and they were immediately rewarded. San Clemente had controlled the opening tip for each of the first three quarters, but Sierra controlled the ball to begin the fourth period. Now with their 4-2 lead, it was Sierra who spread out. With 8 minutes to play, not needing a shot, they went into “keep away” mode offensively.
For over seven and half minutes Sierra now passed, dribbled, and passed yet again. As those minutes wore on the home crowd began to awake from their trance, sensing a victory, their chatter slowly started to build, and as the final minute began to tick away the crowd noise built to a roar as the San Clemente team went into a trap defense in desperation.
Then with only 15 seconds to play the San Clemente press forced Egbert out of a corner and into losing his dribble at the top of the key, Triton freshman James Hill produced the steal and Sutton scored his second basket to tie the game at 4-4 with 8 seconds to play.
The again hushed crowd’s thoughts of how to survive overtime barely had time to set in when, without using a time out, Sierra immediately and instinctively inbounded and ran what coach Sierra Coach James called a “sideline break”. Racing up court in the once again roaring gymnasium, the ball ended up in Egbert’s hands in the right corner, where he sent a shot spinning through the air and the net. The crowd erupted, an entire evening consisting of mostly shocked silence had concluded with a buzzer-beating game-winning basket.
The final 15 seconds of this 6-4 game could rival any other, at any level, on any excitement calculating meter. It also could be truly noted, for those in attendance, watching the opening 31:45 of 32 minutes of playing time was like painting oneself into a corner and being stuck there waiting for the paint to dry.
Sierra’s head coach James said it was “probably the hardest game I ever coached,” coming from one of only two men who ever coached in a game like this, and what his Sierra squad was playing for, it was a reasonable statement.
San Clemente was eliminated from the playoffs, while Sierra moved on, with a newly acquired reputation as a team that played slow-down basketball, advancing to the CIF semi-finals before their season, their school’s last, ended. Rare if ever that a basketball game can be broken down into each scoring play, akin to football and baseball, this game had five baskets scored in four quarters. For those who coached, played, or witnessed the game, their reference to the contest is often, if not always, punctuated with, “yes a basketball game, yes 6-4.”
More information on the contest.
The games box score.
San Clemente 2 0 0 2- 4
Sierra High 2 0 2 2- 6
Scoring. Sierra- Egbert 4, Masters 2. San Clemente- Sutton 4.
First-quarter
5:30 SC – Ross Sutton field goal San Clemente 2, Sierra 0.
5:50 Si – Jeff Masters field goal. Sierra 2, San Clemente 2.
Third quarter
7:56 Si – Steve Egbert, offensive rebound, and a field goal. Sierra 4, San Clemente 2.
Fourth quarter
7:52 SC – Ross Sutton field goal. San Clemente 4, Sierra 4.
8:00 Si – Steve Egbert field goal. Sierra 6, San Clemente 4.
This game set one official CIF record, the fewest points scored by a winning team. Upon closer examination, numerous other marks were reached, most of which will never be broken.
Egbert finished as the game’s leading scorer, with 4 points, his basket following his offensive rebound at the end of the third quarter was the only scoring for both teams during the second and third quarters.
Between Sutton’s first-quarter basket and his last in the fourth, San Clemente went over 27 minutes without scoring during the 32-minute game.
Interestingly, in what will be a never to be repeated feat, three players in this basketball game did all the game’s scoring.
The lack of usual fouls, substitutions, possession changes, and time-outs streamlined the duration of this game, the playoff contest was over and the gymnasium was emptied within 60 minutes of the opening tip-off.
The CIF since then has adopted the 3-point shot, beginning in 1987-88, and the shot clock for the game in 1997-98, insuring that 6-4 would never happen again unless Marty and Doc get back into the Delorean and go back, one more time.
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