1959 - Bainbridge HS Pointers - Putnam

The big, cool, unbeaten Putnam County champions – Bainbridge’s Pointers – will carry the hopes of small town partisans Saturday in the Lafayette Semistate of Indiana’s 49th high school basketball tournament.  On the records, the Pointers may turn in their 27th straight victory in the afternoon but the night game against the winner of the East Chicago Washington Lafayette contest (who will have an extra hour and quarter rest) is plainly marked “Dead End Street.”  Fans who saw Bainbridge beat Crawfordsville’s defending Semistate champions last week think the Pointers may tear down the sign and build a new road.  Coach Ed Longfellow of Bainbridge (brother of Muncie Central’s John Longfellow Jr._ has come up with an amazing collection of talent for a school of 146 pupils, far and away the smallest left in the tourney.  Jeff Blue, Bainbridge’s 210-pound 6’5” junior center has fascinated fans with his tremendous rebounding but the Pointers are by no means a one-man team.  Besides big Jeff up front are Don Jeffriesw, 6’3” and Bill Harshbarger, 6’0”.  The guards are Mike Blue, 6’ 1½”and Mike O’Hara a 6 footer who is the playmaker and excellent outside shot.  Bainbridge’s disadvantage is in not playing a major league schedule.  It ran up its string of regular season victories against small schools like Roachdale, Fontanet, Fillmore, Cloverdale, New Winchester and Avon.  Logansport, although it had only a 10-10 record for the regular season took its lumps in the tough North Central conference and against such rugged outsiders as Hammond and South Bend Central.  Crawfordsville was the first “name” school Bainbridge had met this year.  The Pointers didn’t choke up.  They broke away from a tie in the last quarter and won by 13 points.  Longfellow figured that put his team over a big hump.  They’re practicing this week with a minimum of goose pimples.  East Chicago Washington of course is a top-heavy favorite in the meet.  The Senators, ranked #2 in the state lost only once in 26 starts, 76-61 to a Gary Froebel Team that dropped three of its next four games.  One of those Froebel relapses was a 90-60 beating by Fort Wayne South Side’s defending state champs.  Johnny Baratto’s Senators are huge, fast and prolific scorers.  Along with 6’5” Pete Auksel, 6-4” Ron Divjak; 6’4” Darryle Williams and 6’5” Jim Bakos; it has a benchful of good guards who are small only by comparison.  Speedster Santos Jiminez, however, a native of Reynosa, Mexico is only 5’8” and ready to match steps with any of those fox terrier-type players Washington may encounter.  Lafayette without Washington’s tremendous physical resources was beaten 11 times during the regular season.  Marion Crawley’s sound coaching herded the Bronchos through unimpressive Regional victories over Fowler and Rossville.  They did win, however and if Crawley doesn’t come up with something special to slow down the Senators, a Purdue fieldhouse full of people will be surprised.  Incidentally, one of Lafayette’s late losses was 73- 46 to the Crawfordsville team that Bainbridge beat last Saturday.    ~~~transcribed by kbz