Legendary Matchup Revisited

Tom Workman remembers it as just an ordinary basketball play.

That it eventually led to an unexpected, attention-grabbing result—one that was written about, talked about and even earned its own bit of screen time as part of an award-winning film—elevates it to the level of extraordinary.

“We ran a diagonal and I took a jump shot from the foul line,” recalled Workman. It was a jump shot that became winning basket as Seattle University beat the previously undefeated Texas Western Miners inside the Seattle Center Coliseum, 74-72. “It was a drawn-up play, one of our normal set plays.”

Just moments after that drawn-up, normal set play on March 5, 1966, the final horn—the loud, jarring one that actually sounded like a car horn±—went off to the end the game. Texas Western, which came to Seattle with a No. 2 national ranking and a perfect 23-0 record, was hit with its first and only loss of the season, just two weeks before going on to win a history-making NCAA men’s basketball tournament championship.

“It was a tough, close game all the way, with lead changes (19 altogether) back and forth,” said Workman, whose winning basket was the last of his 23 points. “It was just very competitive.”

All of that was nearly 60 years ago and the two teams will meet again—for the third straight year in non-conference action—on December 7 in a home match for the Redhawks. Tip-off is at 5 p.m.

So much has changed in these past six decades.

Texas Western is now known as the University of Texas El Paso, or UTEP, and Seattle University’s moniker has switched from Chieftains to Redhawks.

And while Sunday night’s game between the two schools will be played under the same iconic roof on the grounds of the Seattle Center as that 1966 thriller, the building is now known as Climate Pledge Arena, having gone through two major renovations since its days as the Coliseum.

“That is amazing, it’s hard to believe,” said forward Lenny Beil in speaking about the passing of six decades. “It still lives in my memory.”

Prior to its current three years of play against UTEP, the two teams hadn’t met in 26 years, stretching back to 1997. The Miners have a 7-6 edge all-time, but are 0-4 in visits to Seattle, including that historic night in 1966.

Redhawks head coach Chris Victor comes into Sunday’s contest from an entirely different perspective. That 1966 game was played 16 years before Victor, now 43, was even born.

Even so, he is able to appreciate the magnitude of what happened that night and is looking forward to connecting with former players Workman, Beil and Mike Acres, and team manager Joe Champeaux. All of them are planning to be in attendance on Sunday.

“When I first got to Seattle nine years ago, just understanding and learning about the rich history (of SU basketball) is something that I dove into right away,” Coach Victor said. “I’ve been fortunate to spend some time with Tom Workman over the years, I’m a big fan of Glory Road (the film about that ’66 Texas Western squad) and that movie having a Seattle connection. Looking back on that game is fun.”

So is looking ahead to Sunday’s game.

“It’s an honor to be part of this game, and be part of SU basketball,” Victor said. “It’ll be the first game (of the season) in Climate Pledge Arena. This is a good opponent, and we lost to them in El Paso last year. It should be a great challenge for us.”

A FULL HOUSE—BUT NOT AN UPSET

When the horn sounded on that long-ago March evening, it was the end of the line for SU, capping a 16-10 season. That wasn’t good enough to earn an invitation to the NCAA Tournament, which at that time included just 22 teams—a far cry from today’s 68-team bracket.

“We were very disappointed that we didn’t get an NCAA bid,” Champeaux said. “We thought we should have and the players thought we should have.”

That being the case, some might have considered the outcome against No. 2-ranked Texas Western to be an upset.

The players, the coaches and others directly connected to the team didn’t think it was an upset at all.

“We got off to a (quick) start and toward the end, it was like, ‘We’re going to beat them,’” Champeaux said. “With five minutes left, we felt we were going to beat them. The first half was back and forth, back and forth. It was nerve-biting, I remember that. I sat next to coach Lionel Purcell. It was a great time.”

And it was shared by a full house of fans, not all of whom had a seat.

“The maximum capacity was like 11,900 and there was probably another 1,000 or 1,500 standing-room only,” Workman said. “They had standing room around the entire mezzanine section.”

Today, an outcome like SU pulled off that night likely would lead to a wild celebration on the court or in the locker room. But Acres said it wasn’t the case on that night in the Coliseum.

“We kind of expected the win,” Acres said. “It’s not one where we went nuts (after the game).”

Even so, the players did enjoy the moment and the accomplishment when they headed to their favorite post-game hangout spot.

“There was a restaurant just east of Seattle U that would give players free hamburgers after the game. I remember going to that and celebrating,” Beil said.

LIFE BEYOND BASKETBALL

As much as they regarded the Texas Western players as a group of “good guys,” the SU players felt the same way about their own group. The 14-member roster was dominated by juniors (seven, including Acres, Beil and Workman) and sophomores (five), with just two seniors. Lionel Purcell was in the first of his two seasons as head coach.

“We were pretty serious. Purcell was a no-nonsense guy and our practices were pretty tough,” Acres said. “We were really a pretty close-knit team.”

Beil agreed with the close-knit part, but added, “We had some characters, too.”

Workman believed the team was better than its 16-10 record.

“We had some very good athletes,” he said. “We lost some games that we shouldn’t have lost."

Workman, now 81, went on to play in both the NBA with the St. Louis (now Atlanta) Hawks, Baltimore Bullets (now the Washington Wizards) and Detroit Pistons, and in the ABA with the Los Angeles/Utah Stars and Denver Rockets, before retiring after the 1970-71 season.

He spent his post-basketball career with various companies in the food industry and has owned the Happy Landing Tavern in Southeast Portland for the past 40 years.

Beil, who is 80, earned his bachelor’s in business and his doctorate in educational leadership from SU and his MBA from the University of Oregon. He worked for various telephone companies. Among his post-hoops accomplishments was a year-long, 14,000-mile bike ride around the globe that took him to 40 countries from Europe to Africa to Japan to China.

Acres, also 80, coached at SU with Bucky Buckwalter for two years, then was at the University of Puget Sound for four—he was on staff for that team’s 1976 NCAA Division II championship. He then went into high school coaching and eventually became the athletic director at Central Kitsap High School in Silverdale, Wash.

The 80-year-old Champeaux served with the U.S. military in Vietnam, then came back and worked on his father’s hop farm in Yakima for 41 years. Today, he lives in Grayland on the Washington coast and sometimes goes fishing with Workman.

“I’m very proud of being associated with Seattle U,” he said.

Come Sunday night, all of those current and past pursuits will take a back seat to being together again under the same arena roof where they made a little history—and a lot of memories—almost 60 years ago, on a shot that was just an ordinary basketball play.

This is excerpted from a story that originally appeared on the SU Athletics website.