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Rating: 
Summary: Interesting topic, but not a quick read
Review: The author has researched well this game in 1966, but the writing leaves a little to be desired. I felt the author could have done a better job of caputring the players as charachters in the book rather than just topics of a history paper.
Rating: 
Summary: Why the dunk was outlawed
Review: This is the best book available on the monumental historic 1966 NCAA men's basketball championship of Texas Western, the first team to start 5 blacks in the Final Four. It is very well researched, with an extensive bibliography. The civil rights impact is well dealt with, as are the racial attitudes of several of the major players. The Kentucky coach, Adolph Rupp, is treated fairly and the reader is left to make his own decision about his character. This is tricky to handle, because his attitudes had to be presented on a backdrop of his times and environment.I have two minor criticisms of the book, which prevent me from awarding it 5 stars. The first is that the racial attitudes of Don Haskins, the Texas Western coach, were not clearly portrayed. We are left with the impression that he cared about the game more than anything, and we know that he was a little bit country, but we never really find out whether he harbored any prejudices. Second, while the race issue is well dealt with by Fitzpatrick, he does not deal in depth with the problem with gentlemen's agreements. This refers, for example, to the rule of thumb "2 at home, 3 on the road, 4 when behind" that apparently many coaches used to define their quota for black players. A discussion of this, including who knew about these agreements and how widespread was their impact, would definitely have been in order in this book which is trying to place that basketball game in its spot in history.
Rating:
Summary: Why the dunk was outlawed
Review: This is the best book available on the monumental historic 1966 NCAA men's basketball championship of Texas Western, the first team to start 5 blacks in the Final Four. It is very well researched, with an extensive bibliography. The civil rights impact is well dealt with, as are the racial attitudes of several of the major players. The Kentucky coach, Adolph Rupp, is treated fairly and the reader is left to make his own decision about his character. This is tricky to handle, because his attitudes had to be presented on a backdrop of his times and environment. I have two minor criticisms of the book, which prevent me from awarding it 5 stars. The first is that the racial attitudes of Don Haskins, the Texas Western coach, were not clearly portrayed. We are left with the impression that he cared about the game more than anything, and we know that he was a little bit country, but we never really find out whether he harbored any prejudices. Second, while the race issue is well dealt with by Fitzpatrick, he does not deal in depth with the problem with gentlemen's agreements. This refers, for example, to the rule of thumb "2 at home, 3 on the road, 4 when behind" that apparently many coaches used to define their quota for black players. A discussion of this, including who knew about these agreements and how widespread was their impact, would definitely have been in order in this book which is trying to place that basketball game in its spot in history.
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