Re: Ron Teixeira -- CROSSPORTS: Holy Cross Crusaders Sports Message Board

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Date Posted: 13:37:34 07/01/04 Thu
Author: sader1970
Subject: Re: Ron Teixeira
In reply to: Interested Worcester HC BB Fan 's message, "Ron Teixeira" on 11:31:55 07/01/04 Thu

Ron was a year ahead of me and, my recollection was he was 6' 9" and was the #2 rated high school center behind Lew Alcindor. Coach Donovan played Ron as a forward instead of the natural center that he was. In the center position was Keith Hochstein who was much shorter (at most 6' 5") but who the previous year was the #3 rebounder in the country and more experienced. "Easy Ed" Siudet played the other forward position. The HC freshman team of Ron and Ed's year were "ranked" the second best college freshman BB team to UCLA.

The year that HC was to play UCLA at Madison Square Garden and to be a "reunion" of Lew Alcindor with his high school BB coach (Jack Donovan) and what most folks saw on campus as might have been a battle of big men (i.e. Alcindor vs. Texiera) never came to be because Donovan continued to keep Keith at center.

It was never clear exactly why Ron quit the team before the season started. The purported reason was that he felt that his basketball commitment was adversely impacting his grades (he was an excellent student as I recall). However, the word on campus was two conflicting stories. 1)Ron was ticked off at Donovan for not budging about letting him play center and moving the shorter Hochstein to forward or 2) that Ron knew of the impending battle with Alcindor and that Donovan WOULD have moved him to center and he was petrified that he would look terrible against the bigger Alcindor.

Whatever the true story was, I went to the HC-UCLA game which was scheduled a few days after and the next game after UCLA had an unbelievably long winning streak broken by a loss to Houston and Alcindor being outplayed by Elvin Hayes. The line was that HC would lose by a minimum of 50 points and some thought we'd lose by 100 points as UCLA was very upset and had something to prove to the country.

In addition to Alcindor, UCLA had two All-American guards and they would press the entire game. Jack Donovan, in preparation for the UCLA press practiced at the fieldhouse and had our starting 5 bring the ball up against 7 defenders. In the actual game, our 4 "other" players outplayed the UCLA 4. But Hochstein was just too short and Alcindor was all over him and the difference in a loss of about 26 or so points. My quote after the game was "it was the closest 26 point loss I've ever seen." HC absolutely demolished the vaunted UCLA press and I believe that UCLA guards had more turnovers than ours did but I don't believe they kept that stat in those days.

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[> [> Re: Ron Teixeira -- Sader98, 13:50:08 07/01/04 Thu

So I guess these "moral victories" against bigger schools are not a recent phenomenom. I was unaware of the close 26 point loss over 30 years ago.

Sorry, cynical side coming out again.

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