Too hot to handle

By Scott Goode , assistant athletic director for sports information

It was unseasonably warm on Monday, Dec. 13, 1965, in Searcy. The high was in the low 60s and the sky clear. Nationally, people were paying attention to goings on in Vietnam and to the Gemini 6 and 7 space missions that would rendezvous more than 100 miles above the earth two days later. In Searcy, the news that week centered on finding a contractor to build the new vocational college on the east side of town. The campus was abuzz as dismissal for Christmas break would come later in the week. The Bison newspaper anticipated such a frenzied exodus that it reminded students in an editorial to follow the speed limit as they burned up and down Highway 67 on the way to their hometowns. That night students needing a study break and local residents looking for entertainment filed into the Rhodes Field House to watch Har?ding’s basketball team play its final home contest before the break against rival Arkansas Tech. They saw an individual performance by a Harding guard that has never been matched.

Ronnie Brown grew up in Pocahontas, Arkansas. His older brother, Jim Brown, who came to Harding in the late 1950s, pitched for the Bison baseball team and covered sports for the school newspaper. When it came time for Ronnie to attend college, Jim convinced him to enroll at Harding as well. Ronnie certainly had the athletic pedigree. He placed second in the hurdles at the Arkansas Class A state track and field meet, and Harding coach Carl Allison offered him a scholarship to play football. “I figured I could do more as a basketball player,” Ronnie said, “so I switched.” As a freshman, Ronnie played baseball and basketball while majoring in physical education.

When Brown arrived on campus, the basketball program was beginning its eighth season after the University restarted intercollegiate basketball in 1957-58 after a hiatus of almost 20 years.

On the hardwood, the 6-foot-1-inch Brown averaged 7.0 points and 3.1 rebounds as a freshman for a Harding team that finished with an 11-17 record. “I was a wing man and played a little bit of point guard,” Brown says. Then with a chuckle, “I shot a lot.”

As a sophomore, his season started quickly. He scored 24 points in the season opener against Southwest Baptist. He had a 21-point game against Henderson State in which he connected on 8 of 10 shots. Three games later, he was 12 of 18 from the field and 9 of 10 from the free-throw line and scored a season-high 33 points in a 91-83 win over Arkansas A&M (now Arkansas-Monticello).

Two games after that came Arkansas Tech.

Sam Hindsman began coaching basketball at Arkansas Tech in 1947 and would retire from coaching following the 1965-66 season. In his final year, Hindsman used a two-platoon system, substituting five players on and taking five off for each substitution.

It did not matter who was in the game for Tech that night. Nobody could stop Ronnie Brown.

“I was an outside shooter and a penetrator,” Brown says. “It seems like in that game, both parts were going pretty good.”

Brown scored 14 points in the first quarter, hitting six shots and two free throws. He matched that total in the second quarter, giving him 28 points at halftime and giving Harding a 58-44 lead.

“You don’t check the scorebook at halftime if you are playing,” Brown says. “So I had no idea how well things were going. It was a close game, so my concentration was on winning the game.”

Brown scored five points in the third quarter, and Harding led 77-67 with one quarter left. Tech closed the gap early in the fourth and took the lead 83-82 with just over six minutes left.

There were two ties and two more lead changes in the next five minutes, but with 1:05 left in the game, Brown made a free throw to put the Bisons ahead for good at 94-93. Harding won 97-93. Brown made one more free throw in the last minute, his 14th point of the quarter and school-record 47th point of the game.

It is still Harding’s school record.

“I’ve been kind of surprised that I still hold the record,” Brown says. “You would think that with all the good players Harding’s had over the years that someone would have broken it by now. What is that … 53 years?”

A few players have come close. Hall of Famer Rolando Garcia had 43 points against Central Methodist in 1990. Harding’s only player drafted by an NBA team, Stan Eckwood, had 42 points twice. Tiago Lewis scored 42 against Philander Smith in 1992, and the most recent 40-point effort came from Jacob Gibson in 2016.

Brown actually set three school records that night: the record for points in a game (47), shots made (18) and shots attempted (31). College basketball did not have the 3-point shot for more than 20 years after Brown set the record. He estimates that maybe half of his buckets that night would have counted as 3-pointers now. He set his record with nothing but ones and twos.

“I got tired shooting,” Brown told The Bison later in the season, “but Tech kept giving me good shots.”

The 1965-66 team finished 11-18. Brown was the leading scorer, averaging 19.3 points, still good for 20th on Harding’s single-season scoring average list.

Brown played his final two seasons of collegiate basketball at Arkansas State, where he started and averaged 10.2 points.

After his collegiate career ended, Brown coached high school basketball in Arkansas for 25 years with stops at Pocahontas, Morrilton and Dardanelle.

“My fondest memories of playing basketball at Harding involved my teammates,” Brown says. “I had some awfully good teammates who were great friends.”

Many years later, Brown humbly says that his record-setting game was the result of “poor defense and the fact that the ball was going in the hole.”

You could say that on that December night at the Rhodes, Brown’s shooting touch was unseasonably warm. No Harding player has ever been hotter.