Get the ball to BEVO

 

Who Was Bevo Francis?

In the January 20^th Shawnee News-Star there was an article about OBU’s Terry Coner, Jr. being added to the Bevo Francis Top 100 watch list for small-college basketball players.  I am going to guess few readers know anything about Bevo Francis. During my growing up years in the fanatical basketball state of Indiana, Bevo Francis was a household name.  Here’s why:

Clarence “Bevo” Francis was a farm boy from Hammondsville, Ohio. “Bevo” Francis got his nickname in his childhood from a non-alcoholic beer his father drank.  The near-beer was called BEVO.   He was 6’9” and played two years (1952-54) at Rio Grand College in Ohio.  During his playing days his school was 39-0.  He accomplished a feat that seemed impossible—on January 9, 1953, he became the first player to score 100 points in a game when he scored 116 points against Ashland Junior College in Kentucky.  He scored 65 points during the first three quarters and had a 51-point fourth quarter.  In another game he scored 113 points.  During his two-year career, he scored 3,272 points, which gave him an average per game of almost 50 points.  He was the first NAIA player to achieve All-American status.

Bevo was in every newspaper and on every radio sports broadcast in Indiana. Conversation in the barbershops, on the school buses, in the classrooms and at the dinner table spoke of his seemingly impossible basketball achievement. Everything about the Bevo story was like a fairy tale—farm boy, small unheralded college, and an unknown player skyrocketing to the top of the basketball world.

  During his phenomenal career, there was no three-point shot line or the 1 and 1 foul shot.  Following his college playing days, he signed with the Boston Whirlwinds, who were the sacrificial lambs to the Harlem Globetrotters.  He later served as the girls’ basketball coach at Southern Local High School in Ohio where his granddaughter played and the team went 65-5.

In the 1950’s I was a farm boy playing basketball and dreaming of being a great player like Bevo.

Glenn Peck

Shawnee, OK