Book Description

Longhorn Hoops documents the history of basketball at the University of Texas. For men's basketball, Richard Pennington goes season by season, describing every game the Longhorns have ever played from 1906 to 1998. He does the same for women's basketball, except for the first two chapters, which cover longer spans of time leading up to the establishment of basketball as a varsity sport for women in 1974. Pennington demonstrates that Texas basketball, while always secondary to King Football, actually has a long and colorful history. Beside stories of games won or lost, points scored, and rebounds collected, Pennington recalls the orange-and-white stars of yesteryear--from Clyde Littlefield to Reggie Freeman--and brings the greatest teams to life, including the unbeaten Steers of 1924, the Final Four team of 1947, Harold Bradley's 1963 team, Abe Lemons' 1978 NIT champions, and Tom Penders' 1990 Longhorns. Perhaps the most interesting story in Longhorn Hoops is how Anna Hiss, director of women's physical education at Texas from 1921 to 1957, helped lead a nationwide movement against intercollegiate competition for women, which shut down UT women's basketball for several decades and and made progress in the 1960s and 1970s much more difficult. Some determined co-eds got it going again, and, with the energy and direction of women's athletic director Donna Lopiano and coach Jody Conradt (whose teams have won more than 700 games), the Longhorns built a powerhouse program that reached its apex with an undefeated team in 1986, winning the NCAA championship with the heroics of freshman star Clarissa Davis. Basketball, as Pennington notes in his preface, is the most beautiful sport ofall, and its history at the University of Texas has now been told. This comprehensive book features a foreword by Dr. Denton Cooley, the world-famous heart surgeon who helped the Longhorns win an SWC title in 1939.