The Daily Oklahoman from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma • 141

Replacement for a Legend Sam Aubrey, in his first year as OSU's head basketball coach, has the unenviable task of filling Henry Iba's shoes something he is doing but in his own way. "It had about 5,000 students," he recalls. "At that time, it was probably bigger than even OSU (then Tall, thin and gawky, he was relegated to the church league his sophomore and junior years. Finally, out of sheer dogged persistence, he made the team as second string center and lettered his 1940 senior year. That spring he went to Stillwater for two days of basketball tryouts where be sweated along with 50 others under Iba's critical eye.

At 64 12 and a lean 180, he must have shown some promise because Iba invited him back tor seconds; then offered a partial scholarship. "Sam was a good jumper and he hustled like the devil," Iba recalled. "He wanted to be a basketball player. He had more desire than two or three average men." Aubrey rewarded Iba's confidence as starting center on the freshman team: the only sophomore letterman on the 1942 squad which won 20 of 26 and the Missouri Valley championship; and lettered again as guard on the '43 club. "He was a quiet leader," said Iba.

"He led some boys when they didn't even know they were being led." When the whole world turned to fisticuffs and many college men went off to fight, Aubrey tradeda basketball for an M-l rifle and enlisted in the Army. He married Dorothy, his wife of 27 years, during a 10-day delay en route. Awarded the Silver Star during the Arno-Po campaign in the mountains of Italy, his Purple Heart came the hard way when a German bullet hit him in the back about an inch from his spine. It came out near the front of his left hip; and though it didn't shatter the bone, it tore out a handful of muscle, producing a grisley, hollow scar. At the rehabilitation center in San Antonio, doctors told 1st Lt.

Aubrey, "You'll be in a wheel chair by the time you're 35." He hasn't seen one yet! "I played golf and went swimming nearly everyday down there," Aubrey recalls. "I think that did more for it than anything else." With a year of eligibility left, Aubrey was determined to return to basketball and play again at OSU. Bob Kurland, the three-time All-America and first of the sport's seven footers, was Aubrey's roommate as a freshman. In an interview last year, he recalled Sam's brave return. "I saw him come up on crutches to Gallagher Hall in 1945," Kurland remembered.

"I was sorry to see him in that condition. That big muscle on the hip was gone. You could lay your hand in it. But the amazing thing was his statement that he was back to play. "Later that spring he was on a cane.

And when he came to basketball practice that fall he was still limping. We went through a lot of calisthenics in those days, running sideways, crossing one foot over another. Sam would fall flat on his face." Aubrey started as a forward in everyone of their 33 games that season. The Aggies won 31 of them, the school's best record in history, and captured the NCAA title for the second year in a row. "The greatest single thrill in my life was looking down there, seeing Sam standing in Madison Square Garden when we got the national championship trophy," Kurland said.

"Of all the people I've known, he was the greatest inspiration." After graduation together, Kurland went into business and is now president of a Cincinnati plastics firm. Aubrey had decided mid-way through college that he wanted to be. a coach. "I started out thinking I wanted to be an electrical engineer, he recalled. "But I knew I couldn't sit behind a desk for eight hours at a time.

I talked to Mr. Iba when I was a sophomore, and he said 'Sam, I can't tell you what to be. But if when you get up in the morning and you look in the. mirror and you're anxious to get to work, then you've picked the right I've been that way ever since anxious to get to work. 1 love to coach." Aubrey's first job was at Pryor High School where his teams had three winning seasons.

Four years at Oklahoma Tech produced 67 victories, with 33 of the 52 losses coming from four-year colleges and university freshman teams. In 1953, Iba asked him to return to his alma mater as freshman coach and assistant. "I didn't even ask Mr. Iba what my salary would be," he said, smiling his peculiar wry smile. "When I got home The first lime I met Sam Aubrey was September, 1960, when he was freshman basketball coach at OSU.

I was an overgrown, underbraincd farmboy, and had been a highschool all-stater on a Chickasha parochial team. 1 thought I was pretty hot With all the innocent, naivete of the young, I figured the best way to become a BMAC (Big Man Among the Coeds) was to shoot baskets at Gallagher Hall. To make a very short story even shorter, I quit after only three practices. About the only time Coach Aubrey ever spoke to me was during a practice layup drill when I cleverly let a return pass roll up my leg. His immortal words were: "Bend over and pick it up, son.

This ain't the Harlem Globetrotters!" The famed Aggie brand of basketball demanded hard work, discipline and sacrifice, never my strongest suits. The pretty girls at the Student Union and cold beer at the iocal pubs were only two of a hundred logical reasons to seek an easier path. One the best rationalizations was: "Ten years from now. what will it matter?" Well, 10 years have passed since that oft-regretted cop out, and with the wisdom that came too little and late, I realize that an education under Sam Aubrey and Henry Iba indeed could have mattered a lot. It would have been as valuable as the classrooms and textbooks, even if the four years had been spent merely warming the bench.

After 17 years and 440 games as assistant and right hand to a legend, Sam Bert Aubrey, 48, has finally stepped from the shadows to the spotlight and is now head coach of the Stillwater team. Like sons of famous fathers, it's a helluva tough act to follow. In 36 years as OSU's landmark-in-residencc, Iba's teams won 655 games, lost 316, captured 14 conference and iwo NCAA national championships. He won gold medals for America at the last two Olympics, and has been named again to coach them for a record three in a row. Ten Iba players became All-Americas.

More than 200 grew to manhood under the Iron Duke's formative eye. A lot of men would stumble over those kind of footprints. But because he helped make some of the deepest as both player and coach, Aubrey has the shoes to add a few of his own. His roots are deep in basketball. He has lived it most of his life.

Born in Sapulpa, Aubrey attended Tulsa Central back when it was the anly highschool in town. mm mt mm Sam Aubrey in 1942 with Henry Iba in 1946 and Wddon Kern, left, and Bob Kurland, riant, in 1946. 4 OKLAHOMA'S OMIT 1071.