Until this team makes Final Four, Houbregs' Huskies best

No one is enjoying Washington's race to prominence in college basketball more than Bob Houbregs.

He drove to Los Angeles to watch the Pac-10 tournament.

"I love watching them play, and I hope they break our records and accomplish what we did and more," the 73-year-old former UW star said from his home in Olympia.

But that will take some doing.

While I'm as ready to usher in a great new era of Washington basketball as anyone, and have really grown fond of watching this team and these players mature, let's not be so quick to call them the greatest UW team ever.

Even though in 11 days, in St. Louis, they could be.

But on the eve of today's make-or-break game with Louisville, take a trip back to the 1950s — when the NCAA championships were held in Seattle in 1952, when Houbregs and his UW team made it to the Final Four in Kansas City in 1953, when Houbregs was the college player of the year in 1953 and Elgin Baylor of Seattle University won the same honor five years later.

It was a time when the city was split in its loyalties between Washington and Seattle U. — and a time when many of the area's best players decided to stay amateurs and play for the Buchan Bakers, who won the national AAU championship and played in the Olympic Trials in 1956.

In Boise, after Washington's win over Pacific, the debate began. How could this team be better than the 1984 team that had two first-round NBA picks — Detlef Schrempf and Chris Welp — or the 1976 team with long-time NBA center James Edwards, 6-foot-10 Lars Hansen, assist leader Chester Dorsey and Clarence Ramsey, the best shooter this side of Tre Simmons?

In the end, after all the arguments have been made, the deciding factor is accomplishment. Until this team gets to the Final Four, the best team is still Houbregs' team.

I know the NCAA tournament involved only 16 teams. I know basketball has come a long way.

But consider that, under the old rules, this year's team wouldn't have even made it to the NCAA. You had to win your league championship.

For the 1953 Huskies, that meant defeating California in a two-out-of-three series for the Pacific Coast Conference title.

The year before, the Huskies had won the Northern Division but lost to UCLA in a similar playoff. The question is: Was beating a good Cal team twice in 1953 any easier than beating Montana and Pacific this year?

Then it was on to the West Regionals, in Corvallis, where the Huskies finally were forced to square off with Seattle U. and the O'Brien twins.

The Huskies won 92-70 as Houbregs scored 45 points. And the next night they beat Santa Clara 74-62, overcoming the play of Kenny Sears, who would be a long-time NBA star.

"From Corvallis," said Houbregs, "we took the train to Portland and flew on Sunday to Kansas City for the NCAA finals. The first game was played on Tuesday."

The Huskies lost to Kansas 79-53 in the semifinal game.

"We picked a bad night to play our worst game in three years," Houbregs said. "I had four fouls in the first half, and I hadn't fouled out in a game that year."

Three minutes into the second half, Houbregs was on the bench with his fifth.

The next night, in the third-place game, Houbregs scored 42 points as the Huskies beat LSU and Bob Pettite, a future NBA legend who scored 36 points.

Houbregs averaged 25.6 points a game that season. And while his team shot 31 percent from the floor, he shot 53.9 percent.

"I shot a lot of hooks," he said. "And then I'd fake the hook shot and drive to the basket for layins."

He took the hook shot from so far out that when he had finished he was often standing beyond what today is the three-point arc.

"It was kind of a silly shot to take," he said. "But they went in."

Washington wasn't a one-man team, however.

Bruce Kitts, a local basketball historian who has co-authored a book called "Longshot: the story of the Buchan Bakers," compared the play of the guards on that team, Joe Cipriano and Charlie Koon, to Nate Robinson and Will Conroy.

"Joe was an exciting player to watch, like Nate," Kitts said. "Like Will Conroy, Charlie was the playmaker who got the ball in the hands of the right people."

The starting five on the 1953 team, which had a record of 28-3, were all from Washington — not unlike this year's team (only Bobby Jones isn't).

Mike McCutcheon, Doug McClary, Houbregs and Cipriano were part of the school's greatest recruiting class in 1949. Koon came in from a junior college.

They would all sign later to play with the Buchan Bakers, except for Houbregs who was a top-five pick in the NBA draft for the Milwaukee Hawks. He played seven years, most of them in Boston, before a back injury ended his career.

Houbregs said he wanted to play for the Bakers, but he was offered too much to stay home.

"$10,000," he laughed.

"We would have had a dynasty if we'd have gotten Bob Houbregs," said Kitts, who is also the grandson of George Buchan, the Bakers' owner.

The current players know Bob Houbregs. They see the banner hanging at Edmundson Pavilion that celebrates the retirement of his No. 25, the only number the school has ever set aside for a basketball player.

"Having my number retired means more than anything else to me," said the 6-7 Houbregs, who was good enough then that he would have played now.

Blaine Newnham: 206-464-2364 or bnewnham@seattletimes.com