Pitino Compared to Auerbach

October 26, 1997

Pitino is apparently ripping a page from the stylebook of the old master.

In 1953, the shrewd Auerbach drafted a triumvirate of Kentucky senior stars, Frank Ramsey, Cliff Hagan and Lou Tsioropoulos. That trio had played on Kentucky's 1951 NCAA championship team, winning months before a college basketball national scandal surfaced during a New York City investigation. Recall that another infamous Kentucky trio, Wah-Wah Jones, Alex Groza and Ralph Beard, led the Wildcats to NCAA crowns in 1948 and 1949 before being implicated in the widespread game-fixing scandal.

What made Auerbach drafting this trio so savvy is that all three seniors intended to stay at Kentucky and play a fifth year during the 1953-54 season. The NCAA had barred Adolph Rupp's Wildcats from playing the season before due to recruiting and payment violations. Idle as seniors, Ramsey, Hagan and Tsioropoulos led Kentucky to an unbeaten season as fifth-year-eligible post-grads. When tournament time came, however, the NCAA declared the trio ineligible and undefeated Kentucky declined to play in the 1954 NCAAs.

Ramsey joined the Celtics for the 1954-55 campaign. Hagan and Tsioropoulos entered the military, awaiting to join Boston. That military draft changed Celtic history. While Tsioropoulos did become a Celtic, Auerbach traded Easy Ed McCauley and the rights to Hagan to St. Louis for a skinny 6-foot-9 center named Bill Russell.

With Russell, his San Francisco teammate K.C. Jones, ex-Wildcats Ramsey and Tsioropoulos, Bob Cousy and rookie Tommy Heinsohn, both from Holy Cross, and others, the Celtics won their first world championship. They won 11 titles in 13 seasons, losing once in 1958 to St. Louis and Hagan as Russell sat out injured. Heinsohn, who commuted from Worcester to the Boston Garden with Cousy, was named 1957 Rookie of the Year only because Russell played in the 1956 Olympics that fall and played in only 48 Celtic regular-season games.

If M.L. (Mighty Loose) Carr ever made the same scatter-shot roster moves Pitino has, he would be working as a security guard at the old Boston Garden.