Sports Poets Society

https://www.cherrylandelectric.coop/2015/03/the-greatest-michigan-high-school-team-ever/ By  Cherryland March 9th, 2015 -  Michigan Country Lines So much of who I am is tied to the month of March. That’s the month my late dad, a longtime high school basketball coach and athletic director, would pack my brother and I in the car and we’d head off to East Lansing for the state high school basketball semifinals and finals. The first year he took us was 1967 – I was 13 and my brother 15. What we saw that year has stayed with us forever.  That was the year we saw the greatest Michigan boys basketball team of all time – a team whose entire starting five went on to play professional sports: Two in the NBA, two in the NFL and one for the Detroit Tigers in Major League Baseball.  The team was the Detroit Pershing Doughboys from the Public School League (PSL). The school was named after the great World War I General John J. Pershing, whose Doughboys...

Spencer Haywood, Ralph Simpson, and Will Robinson. https://michiganpreps.rivals.com/news/the-forgotten-detroit-pershing-basketball-team-of-1967 Branden Hunter Senior writer Detroit was not a pleasant place to be during the last week of July in 1967 . For four days, citizens of Detroit rioted, a civil unrest that infamously became known as the 12 street riot. The 1967 Detroit riot was one of the most violent, destructive, and deadliest riots in the nation's history . It set a thriving city back decades, both racially and economically . The aftermath of the event can still be felt today, scars in the form of abandoned homes, buildings, and businesses , representing the wounds from 50 years ago.  But contrary to belief, not everything was bad in Detroit that year. The riot was such an important part of Detroit's history, that it often overshadows the Pershing High School basketball team that year, which lost one time all season . The Doughboys - which mi...

Detroit basketball legend Curtis Jones scored  the winning basket against Pershing in 1967 https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/sports/columnists/john-niyo/2017/02/20/niyo-perfect-shot-capped-greatest-prep-game/98184082/ John Niyo The Detroit News Published 4:54 AM EST Feb 21, 2017 Detroit News archives A half-century later, the memories of arguably the greatest high school basketball game in Michigan history remain divided by school loyalties. For fans on the losing side of Northwestern’s thrilling 63-61 triumph over Pershing for the 1967 Detroit Public School League championship — a milestone game played 50 years ago today — Curtis Jones’ winning basket, a buzzer-beating jump shot from the top of the key, was hardly a thing of beauty. “They’ll tell you he stumbled, he fell, he threw the ball up the air and somehow it went in, ” laughed Spencer Haywood , the star of that Pershing team and a recent inductee in to the Basketball Hall of Fame . “I tel...