THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 5, 1995 TAG: 9502050199
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY RICH RADFORD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 300 lines
Whether it was a chilly January evening or an unseasonably warm February night, Ricky Michaelsen could be found wearing those fur-lined, black leather gloves that became his trademark.
Opponents of the Princess Anne star saw the gloves as a quirk, but Michaelsen had his reasons. One was superstition.
As he continued to light up scoreboards during the 1969-70 season, Michaelsen thought: Why mess with a hot streak?
But the gloves, which he wore in the stands while watching JV games before the main attractions, also served a practical purpose.
``My mom bought me those gloves at the Navy Exchange at Little Creek,'' Michaelsen says. ``I liked going onto the court with everything warmed up, and that included my hands. I wanted them soft and pliable, and gyms were cold in the winter.''
Nobody argues that Ricky Michaelsen spent most, if not all, of that winter with a hot hand. There's no other way to average nearly 40 points a game.
Even more remarkable was that Michaelsen, a 6-foot-5 guard/forward, was not alone.
Roy Ebron, a 6-9 center for Booker T. Washington, matched Michaelsen - hoop for hoop, point for point - right down to the final quarter of the final game of the regular season.
The greatest scoring battle South Hampton Roads has ever seen was waged in packed gymnasiums before fans who either sat on the edges of seats or rose to their feet every time Michaelsen or Ebron touched the ball.
A quarter of a century later, it remains a season to remember.
Heading into the final week, Ebron and Michaelsen each had scored 35 or more points in nine of 16 games. Both had two regular-season games left.
Michaelsen was averaging 37.8 points, Ebron 35.4.
Ebron would play at Norcom on Tuesday and end the regular season Wednesday against Lake Taylor at the old Norfolk Arena. Michaelsen was at Cradock on Friday and at home against Wilson Saturday.
Ebron had to outscore Michaelsen's final-week total by at least 39 points; he needed a superhuman effort. By all accounts, it was just that.
The Bookers walloped Norcom, 115-69, as Ebron started his two-game assault with 56 points.
Ebron concedes the Bookers, as a team, ``were going for the scoring title. thinking.''
Ebron was anything but one-dimensional. Along with the 56 points, he grabbed 25 rebounds and blocked 11 shots.
Tom Fraim, who would later officiate in the ACC, called the Lake Taylor-Booker T. game the following night and remembers ``a tremendous sense'' that something special was about to happen.
``It was a destiny-like feeling,'' says Fraim. ``I was thinking to myself, This could be another Wilt Chamberlain-like 100-point night. Roy was coming off that big game against Norcom, and the crowd was expecting another equally big one.''
In addition, a victory would give the Bookers their first Eastern District title.
Ebron started slowly, scoring eight first-quarter points. He'd twisted his ankle slightly against Norcom, and it took awhile to loosen up. An 18-point second quarter gave him 26 at the break.
``Everything just came into the flow,'' says Ebron, 43, who works as a merchant seaman based out of Norfolk. ``I can't say what it was, but the intensity picked up in the second quarter and I was feeling it. We were sitting in the locker room looking at each other and thinking, `Let's let it happen.'
``They all told me they were going to look in to me. I told 'em, `No problem, I'll do my best.' ''
Lake Taylor double-teamed Ebron in the third quarter. He responded with 27 points.
``In the second half, the Bookers were shooting at the end with the old Center Theatre stage,'' Fraim says. ``There was only two feet of space beyond the baseline before you got to the stage.
``Most of the time when Ebron was stuffing the ball, I was jumping up on the stage to get out of the way because the Bookers were coming on the fast break and weren't stopping for anyone.''
The Titans began the fourth quarter triple-teaming Ebron; by the end of the game they'd switched to a box-and-one, with the box designed for Ebron. One other Titan was left to cover the Bookers' other four players.
``I probably didn't know at the time what I was looking at,'' Fraim says. ``But (Lake Taylor coach) Kirkie Harrison was innovative enough to try some different defenses.
``I guess the numbers proved Kirkie's plan didn't work.''
Ebron pumped in 29 more points in the fourth quarter.
``It was just going so good that night that I don't think the defense would have mattered,'' says Ebron. ``They put four guys on me. They could have put 44 on me. I was hot.''
By night's end, he had 82 points in a 127-77 victory, breaking the state Group AAA record for points in a game - 74 by Mt. Vernon's Marty Lentz in 1961. Ebron's record still stands.
There had been higher outputs from other local players - Norcom's Johnny Morris scored 127 points in a 1961 game and Churchland's Freddie ``Scrapiron'' James scored 83 in 1954. But neither played at the Group AAA level.
Ebron was 38 of 50 from the field and 6 of 11 from the foul line.
He finished the regular season with a 39.1 average, which also broke Lentz's mark of 37.3.
Now it was Michaelsen's turn. He needed 102 points in two games to reclaim a scoring title that seemed his at week's start.
But he knew whatever he did, Ebron could do nothing about it.
Michaelsen started by scoring 40 in an 87-66 victory over Cradock, leaving him 62 points shy. It wasn't as if scoring 62 would be uncharted waters - Michaelsen had 65 in a game earlier that season against Deep Creek.
That Saturday, Michaelsen plopped down in front of the TV to watch his idol, Louisiana State's ``Pistol'' Pete Maravich.
``People used to think Maravich was flashing the peace sign at the basket,'' Michaelsen says of Pistol's jump-shot release. ``But the truth was that those are the last two fingers you want touching the ball. I made sure I had those same two fingers pointing at the basket on my follow-through.''
Like Michaelsen, Maravich was having a dream season. His 44.5-point average remains the NCAA Division I single-season record.
``I didn't wear the long hair like Maravich because my dad wouldn't let me,'' Michaelsen, 42, says from his home in Palm Bay, Fla., where he works in real estate. ``But I wore the floppy socks and the sweat bands.
``Pistol was an innovator. He did it well, and he did it with panache.''
Michaelsen sat mesmerized as Maravich scored 64 points. ``I was pumped to play after that. But it pumped everybody in the world to watch Pete play.''
As with Ebron's final-game performance, there was a heightened sense of anticipation at Princess Anne. Nearly everyone in the gym took notice when Ebron slipped in the door.
``You couldn't miss Roy when he walked in with those sunglasses on,'' Michaelsen says. ``He was 6-9 and had two 6-8s with him. I knew he was up there.''
Ebron was known to wear rose-tinted sunglasses with tortoise-shell rims; he too remembers wearing them when he walked in like a prize fighter with his entourage.
``Me and my guys had to be there because I knew he'd get close,'' Ebron says. ``I just didn't know if he'd get what he needed.''
Ebron's presence didn't bother Michaelsen, who had 23 first-quarter points.
Ironically, the game was stopped after Michaelsen scored his first point on a free throw. He received a game ball for scoring his 1,000th career point. He would score 68 more before the night was through.
He scored from the corners, and from what today is called ``NBA 3-point range.'' He even made a 55-footer at the first-half buzzer.
``He was a one-man show,'' recalls Wilson coach Jim Sherrill. ``I put every man I had on him and nobody could stop him. I don't remember him missing a shot.
``At one point, I accused (Princess Anne coach) Leo Anthony of trying to start a riot by letting the kid shoot so much. Michaelsen was feeding off the crowd's energy.''
Anthony, who readily admits giving Michaelsen the green light to chase the scoring title, recalls being as surprised as anyone.
``When he made that last shot before the half, I said to myself, `Jesus God, he's making everything,' '' Anthony says.
Michaelsen says it was anything but easy. ``Wilson had a guy named Mike Fagan who was an all-state tackle in football and he was beating me to death,'' he said.
Anthony put Michaelsen at the top of a 1-3-1 zone on defense, where he could get out on the fast break and pick up some easy baskets. It also kept him further away from Fagan.
As for Ebron and friends, Michaelsen remembers their exit well.
``Right after my 62nd point went down,'' he says.
``There was no reason for me to stick around,'' Ebron says.
Michaelsen finished with 69 points. The scoring title was his with a whopping 39.6 points per game - half a point better than Ebron's 39.1. He spent the game's last 3:37 on the bench shaking hands and signing autographs after picking up his fifth foul. Princess Anne won, 107-68.
Michaelsen's state record scoring average stood for eight years. Osbourn Park's Billy Fields averaged 40.1 points in the 1977-78 season.
Michaelsen was 21 of 27 from the field and 27 of 35 from the free throw line in that final regular-season game.
``And who knows how many he would have scored if the 3-point line would have been around then,'' says Kempsville High coach Vernon King, who also played at Kempsville and faced both Ebron and Michaelsen. ``He could shoot it from the time line in. A 25-foot jumper was like a layup to him. But he had to make his 3s the old-fashioned way: score the basket, get fouled, and one.
``When he was on, the net didn't move. I always tell my players if they've made a pure shot, the ball will go through the basket and bounce right back to where they were. If you'd left the ball alone after Ricky Michaelsen's shots, it almost always would have rolled back to that spot.''
Michaelsen says Anthony had ``15 plays designed for me to shoot from outside today's 3-point line. It would have been great if the line had been around back then.''
Was basketball that much different then that two players could average nearly 40 points? Or were these two just a blip on the screen?
Since then, the area has had its share of prolific scorers: Indian River's Alonzo Mourning, Kempsville's J.R. Reid, Norfolk Catholic's Ronnie Valentine, Norfolk Academy's Glenn Youngkin and Garth Forsyth, and Cradock's Stanley Branch, Rolando Lamb and Petey Sessoms.
But of that group, only Sessoms topped out at more than 30 points - 32.5 his senior season in 1991.
Another 30-point scorer, Cox's Keith Sudduth, was but a footnote to the Michaelsen-Ebron battle. The 6-foot guard averaged 30.3 points that season to finish a distant third in the scoring race.
``Basketball has become more of a control game,'' Ebron says. ``We played it wide open, and the only time (Booker T. coach John) Milbourne pulled the starters was when they felt too tired to play.''
Leo Anthony recalls it being a time when coaches ``had one or two guys they leaned on to score points.
``Today, coaches use up to 10 players in a rotation. It makes it very difficult for one player to be dominant.''
It was also an era without the dunk. The Lew Alcindor Rule was in effect at the high school and college levels.
``Without the dunk, you had to develop some post moves,'' Ebron says. ``My man back then was Julius Erving, and I tried to copy some of the stuff he did, the hanging and the elevating for shots.''
As talented a shooter as Michaelsen was, former Princess Anne teammate Don Maskall remembers Ebron as having one of the ``best hook shots I ever saw. And he could shoot the little jumper.''
``It was the last of the purists' era,'' Michaelsen says. ``You had to be able to play the game. There are a lot of 6-9s who aren't good at anything but being 6-9. Roy could play.''
Michaelsen and Ebron met twice that season. In a regular-season game, Michaelsen had 41 and Ebron 26 in Booker T.'s 92-76 victory. In an Eastern District semifinal, Ebron had 32 and Michaelsen 18 in a 84-71 Booker T. victory that ended Princess Anne's season at 16-4.
Booker T. lost its next game to eventual state runner-up Maury, 56-46, in the Eastern District final. The Bookers finished 18-3.
Michaelsen and Ebron have a deep respect for each other's abilities, but they've never talked about their scoring race.
``Sure, we saw each other at a lot of pickup games, especially over at the old Norfolk Arena,'' Ebron says. ``But what is there to say?''
A real estate development sales manager in Brevard County, Fla., Michaelsen is still a basketball junkie.
He played at Old Dominion University and was leading the team in scoring at almost 23 points a game when coach Sonny Allen dismissed him from the team at midseason of his junior year for not attending classes. His departure came on the heels of a 45-point game against Kentucky Wesleyan - a performance that ranks as ODU's fifth-best all-time and remains the ODU field house record.
Michaelsen says he can still play. Although considerably heftier than in his college days, Michaelsen says he teamed with former ODU assistant coach Pete Strickland and some friends to win an ODU recreational league 3-on-3 tournament two years ago.
``Shooting a basketball is like riding a bike for that guy,'' says Strickland, now an assistant at University of Dayton. ``He never forgot how.''
Michaelsen bounced from job to job before moving to Florida 15 months ago. Sometimes he takes in a game at the Florida Institute of Technology, or one involving the NBA's Orlando Magic. On occasion, he'll even catch a high school game.
And every time he sits down to watch, he can't help but think of his record season of 25 years ago.
``It was one of the best times of my life personally,'' Michaelsen says. ``You can't have a bad game and score 40 for an average.''
Despite Michaelsen winning the scoring title that season, Ebron was named the state's player of the year. He was considered one of the three best high school centers in the country, behind Tom McMillen, who ended up at Maryland, and Tom Burleson, who would be part of an NCAA championship squad at North Carolina State.
Ebron played three years at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He averaged 20 points and 14 rebounds as a junior, then bolted to the American Basketball Association.
He had to. Midway through his junior season, the NCAA charged the Ragin' Cajuns with 125 rules violations, including illegal recruiting practices involving Ebron and teammate Bo Lamar. The program was shut down for two years. Ebron still sidesteps talking about those issues.
Ebron played a year with the Utah Stars, averaging 2.4 points in 40 games. The Stars signed Moses Malone the following season. Ebron was cut and landed with the Denver Nuggets for a year, played in Europe for two more years and finished his pro career with two seasons in Mexico.
For the next 10 years, he worked at a recreational center in New Orleans - ``After going to USL, I kind of liked it down there'' - then moved back to Norfolk to be near his ailing mother. Following her death two years ago, Ebron remained in Norfolk and became a merchant seaman.
He still plays as much pickup basketball as his knees allow, making the rounds to Norfolk's better outdoor courts.
``But that concrete kind of wears on me,'' says Ebron, who carries 270 pounds on his frame.
As with Michaelsen, Ebron calls those high school days ``some of my best.''
``Sometimes I'll run into someone I haven't seen in a while and we'll start reminiscing,'' Ebron says. ``Eventually, they'll say, `Do you miss it?' And I always say, `You always miss something that was that good to you.' '' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
Photos
ROBIE RAY/Staff
Ricky Michaelsen scores against Roy Ebron, right, in one of the two
games in which Princess Anne faced Booker T. during the 1969-70
season. The Bookers won both games, with Michaelsen averaging 29.5
points and Ebron 29.
Photos
FILE
Roy Ebron played pro ball for six years, first with the Utah Stars
after three years at the University of Southwestern Louisiana.
Ricky Michaelsen scored plenty in his 2 1/2 seasons at ODU - he
still holds the field house record with a 45-point game.
by CNB