The sports pages didn’t provide much encouragement for Floyd Kerr and his Colorado State teammates as they prepared for their second game in the 1969 NCAA basketball tournament.
With 40 points supplied by the trio of Cliff Shegogg, Floyd and his twin brother, Lloyd Kerr, the Rams advanced with a 52-50 victory over Dayton in a first-round game in Fort Worth, Texas. Then it was on to Manhattan, Kan., and the second round. CSU’s opponent was, of all teams, the Colorado Buffaloes.
“In those days we never played Colorado in the regular season,” Floyd Kerr, now the athletic director at Morgan State in Baltimore, said last week. “Our coach, Jim Williams, and Sox Walseth at Colorado were good friends, and we heard that they had agreed to not play each other.”
But the coaches didn’t have a choice in the NCAA Tournament schedule. Most everyone in Colorado couldn’t wait for the game.
“The game took on a life of its own,” Kerr said. “By today’s standards, it wasn’t as difficult to get to the Elite Eight, but it was special back then.”
CU appeared to have the better team. Sophomore forward Cliff Meely had won the Big Eight Conference scoring title, averaging 24.9 points a game. His supporting cast included guards Gordon Tope and Dudley “Bo” Mitchell. The Buffaloes were a team that finished 21-7, including a 10-4 record in conference play.
The Rams countered with Shegogg leading the way through the regular season, both in scoring at 16.6 points a game and in rebounding at 6.1 a game. CSU, playing an independent schedule, finished the regular season with a 15-6 record.
“We were said to be serious underdogs in both Denver newspapers,” Kerr said. “We heard rumors that the headlines already had been written before the game was even played. We knew Meely was one of the best players in the country, and everyone said he was going to destroy us.”
CSU won 64-56.
Meely scored 32 points, but Shegogg and the Kerr brothers combined for 46 points. CSU’s Mike Davis, a 6-10 center, contributed 10 points and 13 rebounds.
“We never were intimidated by them,” Kerr said. “Our regular- season schedule had some tough games. When we got on the floor, we found out we were bigger than they were. We led the entire second half. We weren’t a run-and-gun team, but we were so well-prepared to play them, and our confidence went from there.”
It was more than just a victory for CSU. Even though the Rams lost 84-77 to Drake in the Midwest Regional championship game, they had their reward.
“It was a big statement between two institutions and two communities,” Kerr said. “A little school in northern Colorado had beaten a Big Eight Conference team.”
After leaving CSU, Kerr continued to play basketball in Europe and with the Harlem Magicians. In 1984, he turned to coaching and came back to Fort Collins as an assistant on the CSU staff. His coaching stops included a year at Colorado as an assistant to Tom Apke and a year in Youngstown, Ohio, as head coach of a team in the World Basketball League.
Kerr turned to administration in 2000 after getting a fill of traveling and recruiting. But he kept his hand in basketball by serving on NCAA committees. In 2005, he became the athletic director at Morgan State.
“I miss teaching the game of basketball, but I don’t miss the traveling,” Kerr said. “I learned from my coaches that the practicing and the teaching are the most rewarding part of it.”
Once in a while, he still takes a basketball to the gym or to the driveway.
“The touch still is there,” Kerr said. “I’ve learned a couple of new shots. I’ve got to keep the touch going.”
Kerr bio
Born: Nov. 20, 1946, in Oxford, Miss.
High school: Washington, in South Bend, Ind.
College: Colorado State
Family: Wife Vivian, daughter Kimberley
Hobby: Painting in a style he calls abstract surrealism
Future: Returning to Colorado someday to renew old acquaintances
