1921-22

Posted on: October 17, 2019 at 14:46:22 CT

MU had 2 First Team and 2 Second team selections. 4 of its 5 starters made All Conference. 2 Tigers were selected as 1st Team All American. MU was ranked #1 in the nation in the end of season Premo Power poll.


MU’s main threat to its superiority that season came from ku, coming off a 10-8 season in which they got 4th place in the Missouri Valley Conference. MU had beaten ku in 20 of the prior 24 contests between the two schools. The Jayhawk squad featured Paul Endacott who would later be named the National Player of the Year in 1923 and elected into the Hall of Fame. Phog Allen would call him the greatest guard he ever coached. Charlie Black was making his debut for Kansas, and would go on to be a two-time All American. Center John Wulf would be named KU’s all-time center by the Associated Press in 1949. When the two teams first met in Lawrence, the result was more of the same with MU claiming a 35-25 victory. The loss put Phog Allen’s record against MU at 0-9 after re-taking over coaching duties at KU. Kansas would lose an additional game to the KC Athletics Club, a vaunted AAU team that would eventually lose in the AAU National Title Game to the Lowe and Campbell squad featuring MU’s former star George Williams and four other Missourians. The Tigers would remain unbeaten until the two programs matched up again on Feb 21, 1922.

As Phog Allen wrote in his book Better Basketball in 1939 about that Feb 21st match up, “We were hoping and planning for breaks which might turn our misfortunes into a startling victorious upset…The Missourians had not lost a game, and this, their sixteenth was the final game for them. Kansas was not conceded a chance by well-informed dopesters. The Missouri Tigers were big and powerful. The Kansas Jayhawkers were shorter and lighter. They had a great outfit and really looked like much the better team.”

Kansas took a 10-6 lead into halftime, and pulled off a 26-16 upset. The 16 Tiger points was by far their lowest output of the season for a team that averaged 41 points per game over the other contests. Both teams won their remaining games and thus both finished 15-1 in conference and tied atop the Missouri Valley standings. It was to be KU’s first league title since 1915, and MU’s fourth in the prior five years. Missouri would challenge Kansas to a tie-breaking game after the season concluded at the neutral site of Kansas City in Convention Hall, but as noted in the Kansas City Star the Jayhawks declined the challenge using what the Star called an “alibi” and “asked readers to draw their own conclusion” by saying the season was long enough and they wanted to play no more games. “The basket ball season consisting of 18 games is closed. It has been long and arduous enough…We will play Missouri in basket ball next year,” stated Kansas Chancellor E. H. Hindley. Missouri would themselves be invited to Indianapolis to participate in a national college tournament as well as in the AAU Classic in Kansas City, and they declined both offers.

Missouri finished 16-1 overall, Kansas finished 16-2. The head to head two games were split by exactly 10 point margin of victories in both. The two squads played 14 games – 7 home and 7 away - against the same opponents. Missouri outscored the common opponents by 65 total points greater than Kansas, or in other words had an 18.1 margin of victory against KU’s 13.5. For the second consecutive season, MU would again be named retroactively as Premo-Poretta’s national champion.