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Published
March 5, 2003 :: Home This story is part of "Tourney Titans," a special section profiling the top players and teams in the history of the Class 1A state basketball tournament. |
Bulldog Heaven in '77 High-voltage Cashmere had reason to be history's best By SCOTT SANDSBERRY YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC If you want a snapshot moment of the team believed by many to be -- and voted on by a select few as -- the greatest in Class 1A tournament history, this is it:  It's a few minutes after 9 p.m. on March 5, 1977, midway through the first
quarter of the championship game between Cashmere and Kalama at the
University of Puget Sound Fieldhouse, which was home to the tournament from
1958 through 1985. The Bulldogs have been playing the same full-court,
man-to-man pressure defense that helped win their previous 25 games and, as
usual, it has already been paying off. Keith Collins, one of the Bulldogs' complement of fiery, athletic 6-foot-1 forwards, comes up with a steal and takes off for the other end. A teammate, Dale Flick, streaks down the right side, with Kalama's Jerry Moses trying to stay in position to prevent the pass or to foul Collins before he can go in a layup. As Collins reaches the top of the key, he has a split-second decision: Pass off to Flick and risk Moses getting a hand on the ball, pull up for a shot or take the ball to the hole. Collins goes for a fourth option. He takes off ... into the air ... from somewhere around the foul line. "It could have been plain ignorance on my part as to where I was on the floor," Collins recalls. "I don't know where I was, but I've heard this story from several people, so I must have been close (to the foul line). I had somebody tell me I went off from the top of the key." He laughs heartily. "I don't think so." Collins soared toward the hoop, ball in hand. He was a young man on springs, an exceptional athlete who would go on to become an All-America decathlete at Washington State University, where he would high-jump nearly 6-foot-7 and long-jump nearly 24 feet. He soared the length of the lane, at the height of the rim. And laid the ball softly into the basket. A group of UPS ballplayers who had been sitting behind the basket "stood up and were high-fiving, jumping up and down, just going nuts, because they knew he could have just jammed it," recalls Bill Kelly, who was then in the fourth year of a Cashmere coaching career that would bring home four state championships. "It just broke Kalama's heart," Kelly says. "That one play alone." The play was only one moment in a huge first-quarter blitz by the Bulldogs, who would go on to win 99-55 in the biggest championship-game blowout in tournament history. But it said so much about the Bulldogs. They could play serious, in-your-face defense. Loved it. They could run you off the court. They were athletic. And, boy, did they ever know how to finish. Best team ever in Class 1A (or A, as it was known for 40 years) tournament history? Well, that was the consensus of the Yakima Herald-Republic's poll of 20 longtime tournament observers, including coaches, reporters and knowledgeable fans. But wait: Weren't the '77 Bulldogs too small? They only had one player taller than 6-1, Phil Barnhart, and he was all of 6-2. Wouldn't big teams -- like those Lynden teams of 1962 or 1986 or that Grandview juggernaut from 1989-90 -- have killed them on the boards? "We were never outrebounded," Collins says. "We were fundamentally extremely sound, and we had to be that way because we weren't tall. "We played teams that 6-6, 6-7 guys. Stop and think about it: This was before the 3-point line, and we're scoring 85 points a game. That ball was getting up and down the court a lot, pretty darn quick. For a big guy to stay at that pace ..." The Bulldogs averaged 82.5 points over their 26-game run, including three games of 104 points or more and a handful of games in which opponents tried slowdown tactics that simply didn't work. Teams simply couldn't hold onto the ball long enough against Cashmere's in-your-face defenders, who turned every mistake into a 2-on-1 fast break. "We weren't tall, but we had quickness and speed and skill," says Flick. "Bill (Kelly) formed our offense and defense around that. That's why we were constantly going full-court and half-court pressing, switching up our defenses from man-to-man and back to zone, confusing offenses." Kelly, meanwhile, was the essence of a championship coach. A my-way-or-the-highway disciplinarian, he was also a brilliant motivator who could extract maximum effort from every player ... at the same time keeping them loose with sarcastic one-liners. He was also an astute judge of talent. In senior Mark Johnson he found his glue guy, the defensive demon who lived for the chance at shutting down the opponents' best scorer. Flick was cut from that same cloth. Kelly had an inside presence with Barnhart, a feathery 6-2 forward who could outplay much larger posts with an arsenal of moves -- duck-under moves, fadeaways, quick jumpers banked off the glass from the left side, baby hooks from the right. "He had a lot of clever moves inside," Kelly says of Barnhart, who went on to star for George Fox College. "He knew who was defending him, and he'd back out if he had a couple of guys sagging on him or kick it to the free man. He made Dale and Mark and Keith look good from the perimeter." The Bulldogs' fifth starter was usually either 6-1 Joel Clark, a good rebounder and defender, or 6-foot wing Bruce Parkins, depending on the opposing matchups. The Bulldogs' toughest challenge in the state tournament came from Lynden. Though that game came in the quarterfinals, many considered it the de facto championship contest; the teams came into the tournament ranked 1-2 in the two media polls (Lynden No. 1 in one, Cashmere in the other). As usual, Cashmere was the smaller team; Lynden went 6-6, 6-4 inside. As always, the Bulldogs won anyway, needing an overtime before pulling out a 71-69 victory behind 24 points from Barnhart, 23 from Flick and 16 from Collins. Barnhart finished the tournament as the Bulldogs' leading scorer, but MVP honors went to Collins, who had 20 points, 14 rebounds and seven assists in the final -- not to mention that Julius Erving-like flight from the foul line. So who might have beaten that 1977 bunch? Collins wonders how his team would have fared against the Bulldogs' 1972 state champs, led by 6-8 Alan Smith. "Smith would have scored some points on us, I'll tell you that," Collins says. "He was big and he could get up and down the floor." Flick would have liked to have a shot at Brewster, which in 1977 was in the final year of its three-year run of Class B state championships. "That would be the team that, for me," Flick says, "will always go up as the mystery team." And it is a mystery, isn't it. Could Brewster had beaten Cashmere? Could another Class A team have beaten 1977 Cashmere? Maybe. But none did.
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