Heading into the 1961-‘62 school year, the Lima Senior sports prospects were still somewhat in the toddler stage. The school was only in the seventh year of existence after the merging of South and Central high schools. And, while the school had begun to carve out its reputation as a state power in swimming, football and baseball, area Spartan enthusiasts were still waiting for the basketball program to catch up.
Certainly there had been some successes, if the measuring stick used was appearances in the regional, something the Spartans had done four times in those first seven years. But Coach Don Penhorwood, no doubt, harbored desires for Columbus’ final four.
Following a semifinal regional loss the previous year, Penhorwood did have three returning senior starters — Mac Wagner, Tom Barrington and Bob Gunn. Of those three, Barrington was destined to achieve more fame in another sport: football. After playing for Woody’s Buckeyes, Barrington played professionally for the Redskins and Saints.
As for Gunn, despite measuring just 6’2”, he was a prodigious leaper, someone whose arms reached several inches above the rim when going for a rebound or executing a dunk. He’d already left teammates and coaches in slack-jawed wonder in preseason when during practice he’d touched the 11-foot marker on a device most called “the sticks,” designed to measure leaping ability.
Wagner — whose nickname was short for Macarthur — certainly is in the conversation when it comes to best all-around athletes in school history as a classic three-sport force in football, basketball and baseball. He averaged double figures the previous season, the only Spartan to do so.
The regular season opened on the road against the Presidents of Marion Harding with a Spartan loss, 63-50. While the Senior High Spartans were right there for a large part of the game, they were outscored in the final 12 minutes, 28-16.
Losses at home to Kettering Fairmont and on the road to Greater Ohio League foe Hamilton Garfield had Senior High limping out of the blocks at 0-3. The loss to Garfield was particular galling when the Spartans blew a 17-point second-half lead and were outscored 18-4 in the final five and a half minutes, wasting terrific performances by Wagner, who scored 29 points, and Gunn and his 21.
Finally, there was a win in Game 4 versus Portsmouth, 56-44, paced by Mac Wagner’s 21 and 13 apiece by Gunn and Bob Butler. But the win that night was somewhat upstaged that night by another stellar local schoolboy, LCC’s Billy Murphy, who scored 44 points in an 82-74 win over Kenton, eclipsing the then-Lima record for most points in a single game by Lima Senior’s Bill Clay, who scored 38 in a 1956 game against Ashland. The 5’8” Murphy, like Wagner, was an outstanding three-sport athlete.
From there, the Spartans seemed to play in spurts. There were back-to-back blowout wins over Shawnee (59-38) and Portsmouth (70-34) that evened the record at 3-3 before a home 50-45 loss to Springfield South, a game they could have won had they not missed 13 of their 20 free throws.
Another loss, a close one (60-58) to a very good Dayton Belmont team with two stellar sophomores — Bill Hosket and Don May, who would star in college at Ohio State and University of Dayton, and then go on to NBA careers — preceded a home win, 54-52, against Toledo DeVilbiss, powered by Gunn’s 28.
Game 10 at home showed another tight contest and another glimpse at a disturbing trend of not playing well with large leads. The Spartans frittered away a 16-point lead to Middletown before losing in two overtimes to drop their record to an unimpressive 4-6. Infuriatingly, the Spartans again showed poor free-throw shooting, making only 14 of 32.
The rollercoaster continued against Troy when Gunn tallied his highest point total to date with 30, while Tom Barrington dropped 11 in the 63-55 win. Mike Current, another future Ohio State football star and NFL player, and Bob Leonard added 7 a piece.
As the regular season wound down, Coach Penhorwood looked for a spark to reverse momentum-breaking trends, the penchant for losing large leads, the close losses and the poor free-throw shooting.
A Game 13 blowout win, 99-39, over Bryan allowed Penhorwood to empty his bench shortly after halftime. Balanced scoring paved the way in the 60-point win, as Gunn had 24, Wagner 14 and Barrington and a pair of Bobs — Butler and Leonard — tallied 11.
An item worth noting provides a glimpse into the sportsmanship of an old-school coach. Besides pulling starters with plenty of time for his bench players to gain experience, Penhorwood also ordered his team to hold the ball from the 25-second mark to the final buzzer, forgoing a chance to score the 100 points many in the stands were craving.
A 56-38 win over the Hamilton Garfield Griffins, fueled by 20 points a piece by Gunn and Wagner, finally saw the Spartans claw back to .500 at seven wins and seven losses.
While Lima Seniors’ rollercoaster of a season certainly didn’t merit any attention in the state polls, Cleveland East Tech was steamrolling its way through the regular season at 15-0, the number-one ranked team in the state by Associated Press. Only the cockeyed optimist could ever have thought at this stage the two schools would come out of different regions for a date in Columbus.
Don Penhorwood yearned for a little momentum in the final regular-season contest before the tournament, but the job wouldn’t be easy against league foe Middletown, coached by the legendary Paul Walker on the road. Walker’s mid-to-late 1950s Middies teams led by Jerry Lucas were a juggernaut, and while his ’61-’62 team surely wasn’t as good, the Middies still were formidable.
Avenging an earlier 62-60 double-overtime loss in a game in which Penhorwood saw his team squander a 17-point lead, this time the Spartans rode a brilliant Wagner 37-point effort and 20 more from Gunn to a 73-72 victory.
From a 3-5 record over the first eight to 8-7 by regular season’s end, Lima Senior showed progress. But if you espouse the philosophy of pro football Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells, you are what your record says you are. For the Spartans, that meant more so-so than so good.
In an era when there were only two divisions, AA for big schools, and A for small, the Spartans headed into a tourney field crowded with powerful squads like East Tech, Toledo Central Catholic and then large-school Mansfield St. Peter’s.
Please join me next time to look back to see how history unfolded for Wagner, Gunn, Barrington and the rest of the supporting actors on March’s biggest stage, tournament time.
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