55 years ago tonight on February 9, 1966, St. Patrick and Millersburg Military Institute played a nine overtime game in the St. Patrick Gymnasium. It still holds the record for the longest game in state history. The final score: MMI 106, St. Patrick 105.
Here are some excerpts from my book, "How We Play the Game:"
Two things stand out for those who played in the game -- the length of time it took for the game clock to wind down between the overtime periods and how the crowd got bigger as the game kept going.
The old clock in the St. Pat gym had a sweep hand that started at eight minutes.
Steve Gallenstein, who scored 22 points in the game for St. Patrick, says the MMI coach wanted the horn to go off automatically when time expired instead of relying on the St. Patrick timer to sound the horn after three minutes. So the clock had to run down from the eight minute mark to the three minute mark before each overtime period began. That was a total of 45 minutes of down time.
When the game started, there wasn't a very big crowd, but that changed as people who were listening to Don Stahl call the play-by-play on WFTM radio started showing up at the gym.
James Parker scored a game-high 43 points for MMI.
Bob Garey led St. Patrick in scoring with 37 points. He fouled out in the seventh overtime.
No comments:
Post a Comment