Before Barnes, Pearl and Mears, Tennessee basketball excelled under this coach

Posted by Admin January 14, 2025 Basketball

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John Shearer
| Shopper News

With the University of Tennessee Vols men’s basketball team having another outstanding season under coach Rick Barnes, it is easy to assume fans’ passion for the program has reached a new level.

Some, however, might say it started with the energetic Bruce Pearl’s arrival in 2005, while older fans remember the new interest and success that came after Ray Mears became the coach in 1962.

But a glance at some newspaper archives shows that Tennessee also had quite a bit of interest in the men’s basketball program as far back as the mid-1930s. That was in part due to a new hotshot – and maybe hot-tempered – coach named Blair Gullion. Also contributing was the fact that UT got to host the SEC men’s basketball tournament four times in that era in what is now the Alumni Memorial Building next to Neyland Stadium.

Since then, the SEC men’s tournament – which was paused from 1953 to 1978 – has returned to Knoxville only once, in 1989, when it was held at the relatively new Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center.

In connection with UT’s recent men’s basketball success, the Shopper News is taking a two-part look at that era nearly 90 years ago. A historical glance at the Lady Vols prior to coach Pat Summitt’s arrival in 1974 is also planned.

Fans tend to laugh at the old days, remembering the set shot before the jump shot took over, the wooden backboards like you’d find in someone’s driveway, and the funny uniforms. A look at the rules also shows that one could foul out of a game with only four fouls instead of five in the 1930s, and UT games usually had only one official instead of the three now used.

But the passion for the program then should be familiar to today’s fans, even though UT at that time was obviously a football-first school (as many might say it still is).

Alumni Memorial Gymnasium and a new coach

Helping this growing interest in collegiate basketball in Knoxville were both the construction of what was then the Alumni Memorial Gymnasium and the arrival of coach Gullion. According to historian Betsey Creekmore’s entry in the UT online encyclopedia, Volopedia, Alumni Memorial Gymnasium had opened in 1932 and was designed by Barber and McMurry architects.

Considered almost castle-like with all its offices and corridors, it featured a main gym and auditorium with a stage, five other small gyms, handball courts and rooms for hitting tennis balls against walls, a swimming pool with modern filtration system, a solarium for sunbathing, and water fountains dispensing ice-cold water.

Also possessing apparently multiple positives to aid the basketball program was coach Gullion, who had arrived in 1935 as both the basketball and track coach at UT from the small Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. A former star player at Purdue under longtime coach Ward “Piggy” Lambert, who later also coached noted UCLA coach John Wooden, he replaced football assistant Bill Britton.

While Gullion was considered the first UT basketball coach who really emphasized the sport on the Hill, some comments about him at the time of his death in 1959 after he had left Tennessee make him sound a little like the fiery but successful former Indiana coach Bob Knight. According to a column by former News Sentinel sports editor Tom Siler, Gullion was known for emphasizing swift passing, ball control, faking, and playing strong defense on the court.

Off the court, the man described as gangly also believed in intensity and focus. He was said to be tough and demanding but fair, was known for arguing with officials and throwing barbs at rival coaches in quotes, and he wanted his players to be focused only on basketball on road trips. One former player remembered going to New York for a game and the team members getting lectured for taking a break to buy gifts for their girlfriends and others.

Hosting and winning 1936 SEC tournament

But his style seemed to work. During his first year at UT in 1935-36, after a 12-6 regular season that included an easy win at then-SEC member Sewanee, the team enjoyed an 8-4 SEC record that put them just behind top finisher Vanderbilt’s 9-3 mark. They also enjoyed another reward – getting to host the 1936 SEC tournament, perhaps due to UT athletic director Paul Parker being on the tournament committee and the nice and relatively new facility.

With only the top eight or nine teams in the conference making the tournament and guest teams staying at the Farragut and Andrew Johnson hotels, Tennessee faced Auburn the evening of Feb. 28. That came about after the Tigers, with player and future Auburn coach Joel Eaves, beat Georgia that afternoon in a preliminary game. Tennessee – led by captain Harry Anderson, Biggy Marshall, Gene Johnson, Everett Martin and Alvin Rice – won by a 43-25 score in those lower-scoring days long before the three-point shot era.

Then came the Leap Day encounter in the semifinals for the Vols against Kentucky, which was coached by the legendary Adolph Rupp and was already a powerhouse. The two teams had also evidently already been bitter basketball rivals dating at least to when a fight broke out in a game at the old YMCA on Commerce Avenue and State Street two decades earlier.

Tennessee had its own leap forward basketball-wise that night, as it enjoyed a 39-28 win and rare victory over the Wildcats in what was described as its best game of the year in front of 3,500 fans packing the home facility.

Then in the finals on March 2, Tennessee beat Alabama and star center and future Georgia baseball coach Jim Whatley, 29-25, for its first-ever tournament championship.

On hand was noted Converse marketing representative Chuck Taylor, who said the two teams were as good as those found in the basketball hotbed of the North at the time. And much credit was being given coach Gullion.

As News Sentinel sports columnist Bob Wilson wrote, “Coach Gullion has wound up his first season at UT with his cap full of feathers.”