A burger and a Coke, that’s all they got. While calorically dense, it was small enough proportionally not to weigh them down. Meals were always waiting for them ahead of time, for game days were about efficiency and detail, and nobody was as organized as Coach. After fueling up, the players made their way across campus to the 3,000-seat Bell Gymnasium and filed into the small locker room. Everybody dressed and made individual preparations. Travis Grant got his ankles taped. Point guard Jerome Brister huddled the guards together to go over assignments. They could hear the gymnasium, already full and rocking, on the other side of the wall. The band was cued up, the standing-room-only crowd in a frenzy.
After the players were dressed, they marched 20 yards down the corridor to the equipment closet. It was cramped and musty, but nobody spoke; nobody stirred. Coach Lucias Mitchell was a thin, bespectacled man. He dressed in nice suits and drove a Cadillac Eldorado, but when it came to basketball, he was elemental, a force of nature. Mitchell entered the room to reverent silence. He reviewed the game plan and delivered a final exhortation. Then, it was show time.
Once the ball was tipped, the game was on. Opponents struggled to get the ball across midcourt, past the Thorobreds’ vaunted 2-2-1 press that was as willowy as Spanish moss and unrelenting as kudzu. Grant and William Graham were in the front, using their height—both at around 6-foot-8—to force opposing guards to throw the ball over them. Guards Jerome Brister and Jerry Stafford were the second line, using their quickness to swoop in and intercept the passes lobbed over Grant and Graham’s outstretched, tendril-like arms. If the other team was able to break the press and make it into the front court, they’d have to contend with the big man, Elmore Smith, who, at 7 feet tall, was still so quick that he was known to catch flies out of the air. Smith would either swat or alter the opponent’s hurried shot, snatch up the rebound, and zip the ball out to his guards to head the other way for two points.
On the surface, it seemed a simple formula: Great players and an up-and-down style of play that utilized their physical advantages. But it went deeper than basketball. From 1970-72, Kentucky State University, a small-but-mighty member of the close-knit group of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), won three consecutive NAIA national championships. The Thorobreds shattered records and stole the heart of Kentucky’s capital city. More importantly, they built a bond so authentic and so fortified that it is even stronger today than it was in Frankfort 50 years ago.
• • •
The team congregated outside of New Men’s Dorm just as the morning warmth was gathering itself and preparing to fledge into midday swelter. It was September, with no basketballs in sight. The Thorobreds ran the cross- country course winding from the dorm up to the football stadium—nearly 5 miles—as Coach Mitchell drove behind them to monitor their pace. When they reached the stadium, the real workout began. Pullups on the crossbar of the goalpost, sprints on the field, and, before they could head back to shower, a few trips up and down the stadium steps for good measure. Then, with their drenched cotton T-shirts clinging to them like spandex and their legs wailing in pain, they’d walk back to the dorm together.
“I never got used to that in all the four years I was there,” Grant said. “That was something I was glad when it was over. All in one day at one time.”
That was pre-season. Come winter, the team members moved inside for three-hour practices. Drill after drill after drill, each one scripted out to the minute by Mitchell. When the final whistle blew, there was time for a quick bite before homework and sleep. The next day held full class loads and three more hours in the gym.
“You didn’t have anything left,” Graham said. “All you wanted to see was a bed, and sometimes you might think about taking a shower. It was tough times … but it was all good because we saw where it was paying off each and every year. We were getting better and better.”
Kentucky State posted a 2-19 record the season prior to Mitchell’s arrival in 1968. Mitchell enforced his will from day one and guided the Breds to a 10-15 record in his first season in Frankfort. By the fall of 1969, the transformation was complete. Mitchell had taken a program that was in disarray only a few years prior and built a winner. He found Smith—a raw, unheralded big guy from Macon, Georgia—and turned him into college basketball’s most prolific rebounder and most feared shot blocker. He gave Grant—a high-scoring forward from tiny Clayton, Alabama—the freedom and confidence to shoot from anywhere and become college basketball’s all-time leading scorer at any level.
He became a father figure to Brister, a Cleveland native who learned about the university when the KSU choir visited his church. Brister asked the choir director to help him land a walk-on tryout at the school. He made the team, earned a starting spot, and became a conduit between Mitchell and the star-studded lineup.
“My take on it is always me, Elmore, Travis and Graham—we wasn’t supposed to be there,” Brister said. “The fact that we got together—and with Stafford, too—to form a great team, it was by accident.”
Averaging more than 100 points per game, the Thorobreds lost only three games during the 1969-70 season and entered the 1970 NAIA tournament as a four-seed. The grueling event, held in Kansas City, required a team to win five games in as many days. But no team was better prepared for the physical demands than the Thorobreds. The young group from the Bluegrass State gutted out four wins of 10 points or fewer to win its first national championship. Fans greeted them back in Frankfort, as did the mayor. It was a celebration, but then it was back to work. Work-work.
Summer vacation offered no reprieve from the grind of the season. Smith went home to Georgia and got a job hauling refrigerators and other appliances. Graham worked in a steel mill back in his hometown of Pittsburgh. Grant spent that summer in Frankfort taking classes; he had worked buffing floors at a school in Rochester, New York, a year prior. These jobs gave them strength, for Coach Mitchell’s conditioning program did not include weightlifting. Running, yes, but no lifting.
The team returned to campus in the fall of 1970 stronger and with their championship lineup largely intact. They were no longer the upstarts, entering the season as the nation’s top team, losing just two games during the season, and arriving at the 1971 NAIA tournament as the No. 1 seed. The Thorobreds cruised to double-digit wins in all five of its matchups in Kansas City, each game played in front of a hearty contingent of KSU fans who had made the trip.
That looked like the end of the magical run. Graham and Brister graduated. Smith was selected with the third overall pick of the 1971 NBA Draft. Home games were moved from Bell Gymnasium to the downtown Civic Center. But Grant was still in town and Stafford, too. So again, in 1971-72, Kentucky State dominated. Smith was in Buffalo, New York, when he got a call from one of his new teammates. “Turn on the television,” the friend said. “Travis is facing off against George Gervin.” Smith tuned in to watch Kentucky State host Eastern Michigan.
“And Travis scored 18 points in the first half and 50 in the second half,” Smith remembered with a laugh.
Led by Grant, Stafford and transfer Sam Sibert, Kentucky State rolled into Kansas City in the spring of 1972 with momentum. Grant scored 60 points in an opening-round thrashing of Minot State, and the three-seed Thorobreds vanquished top seeds Stephen F. Austin State and Wisconsin-Eau Claire to secure the three-peat.
“Coach Mitchell said that that was the sweetest one because we weren’t expected to do that,” says Grant, who earned the Lapchick Trophy as The Sporting News College Basketball Player of the Year, making him the first small-college player to win the honor.
• • •
There was more success after graduation. Smith and Grant enjoyed fruitful professional playing careers before Smith went into the restaurant business and Grant into education. Graham went on to coach at KSU and serve as the school’s athletic director. Brister enjoyed a successful career in the mortgage loan industry with Fannie Mae. There are kids and grandkids now. Yet despite life’s winding course, they make time to get together every year, without fail. Locations change—Tampa, Atlanta, Virginia Beach—but they all show up.
They bring their families, watch the NBA playoffs, eat good food, and tell stories. They talk about the championship wins and the close losses. Someone always tells the story about when the team got locked out of the dorm building and Coach Mitchell had to kick the door in. They invariably rib Brister for not passing them the ball more. They reminisce about their time living on the top floor of New Men’s Dorm, the brutal workouts, and their coach, who passed away in 2010.
“Man, I tell you, sometimes you wish you could just call him up to be able to talk to him,” Smith said of Mitchell. “He taught us how to be a family. We were a united group of guys that served the same purpose … At the time, it was tough, but when you look back, you really appreciate what he put us through.”