From the NCAA Tournament to the Olympics: UK’s 1948 basketball team went for gold
Editor’s Note: As Lexington celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, the Herald-Leader and kentucky.com each day throughout 2025 will share interesting facts about our hometown. Compiled by Liz Carey, all are notable moments in the city’s history — some funny, some sad, others heartbreaking or celebratory, and some just downright strange.
After winning the school’s first NCAA championship, the University of Kentucky’s Fab Five competed to play in the Olympics.
During the 1947-48 basketball season, five players stood out: Ralph Beard, Alex Groza, Wallace “Wah Wah” Jones, Cliff Barker and Kenny Rollins. They became the Fab Five, winning 36 of the 39 games and winning the school’s first NCAA men’s basketball championship against Baylor in Madison Square Garden.
Just four days later, the Wildcats played Madison Square Garden again, this time for the Olympic trials. The Wildcats, as the champions, were competing against other top college teams for a chance to go to London to compete in the Olympics.
The USA Basketball Committee determined that the roster for the 1948 Olympic team would consist of an equal number of players from both top college teams and Amateur Athletic Union teams, with additional players added from the tournament.
Kentucky beat out the competition, besting Louisville by 34 points and beating Baylor again by 18 points. On the AAU side, seven-time AAU champions Phillips 66ers (also known as the Oilers) came out on top, setting up the final game between the two teams.
More than 18,000 people gathered in Madison Square Garden and watched the Phillips team — players who were no longer eligible to play college ball — beat the Fab Five 53-49. Some called it one for the history books.
“This contest has been termed by many basketball devotees the best played and most exciting game in basketball history,” USA Basketball chairman Lou Wilke wrote in his reports on the Olympic Games that year.
In Lexington, the loss was a hard one. Lexington Leader reporter Larry Shropshire wrote that the Cats played hard but “beat themselves” against the older team and “possibly never in one night made so many glaring errors — possibly the result of being overeager.”
Still, the Fab Five won spots on the 14-man Olympic roster. Another five spots on the Olympic team went to Phillips players, and the last four went to standout players from the tournament. Coaching the team was Bud Browning, coach to the Phillips team, with UK’s Adolph Rupp as his assistant.
After stops in Mount Sterling and Winchester, the Cats pulled into Union Station in Lexington and were greeted by some 10,000 admirers.
There was “no better team in the world” than the men who clamored off the train, UK’s then-acting president Leo Chamberlain said. The team then climbed aboard a fire truck to ride through the streets of downtown Lexington back to UK’s campus, where thousands more students cheered them on.
On Aug. 13, 1948, the U.S. team went up against France to win the gold medal — 65-21. Groza was the leading scorer with 11 points.
Following the Olympics, Groza and Beard, and several other Kentucky players, formed a new team in the NBA, the Indianapolis Olympians, which played from 1949 to 1953.
Have a question or story idea related to Lexington’s 250-year history? Let us know at 250LexKy@gmail.com.