Looking Back on 1,500
As the UAB men's basketball team prepares for the 1,500th game in program history, let's examine some of the milestones we passed to get here.
When the ball is tipped on Tuesday night in Bartow Arena, the UAB men’s basketball team will have officially begun its 1,500th game. Gene Bartow’s upstart Blazers aren’t such upstarts anymore. They celebrated their 500th game in 1994; their 1,000th in 2010. Now older than 55% of Division 1 programs, UAB is used to occasions like these.
Still, 1,500 is a milestone among milestones. It will be the first time the Green and Gold have played a game of such historical significance in Birmingham; it will be the third such game played against Tulane; if all goes according to plan, it will boost the Blazers’ record in cornerstone games to 4-2.
As Andy Kennedy and company prepare for tomorrow night’s showdown, let’s examine some of the steps along the path that led us to this moment, moving along by increments of 250. The games will provide looks into five distinct eras of Blazer history — the early Gene Bartow years, the late Gene Bartow years, the Murry Bartow years, the Mike Davis years, and the Rob Ehsan years.
Game 250 — 70-54 win at Charlotte, 2/17/86
UAB was the Sun Belt’s unquestioned top dog during the first half of the 1980s. The Blazers appeared in five consecutive conference title games, won three consecutive conference championships, and enjoyed deep runs into the NCAA Tournament’s Rounds of 16 and 8. Although the Green and Gold struggled through a frustrating 1985-1986 season marred by incidents of bad fan behavior at Western Kentucky and Old Dominion, the program was still seen as the class of the SBC at the time of the its 250th game. Just weeks earlier, WKU had taken down UAB in a program-defining victory, a game which you can read more about here.
A abysmal Charlotte team (7-17, 1-11) was hoping to revitalize its season by pulling off a similar upset over the visiting Blazers. The invigorated 49ers put on one of their best performances of the year, holding close to their superior opponents until the three-minute mark of the second half; it was then UNCC coach Jeff Mullins decided to go into a 2-3 zone, allowing UAB guard Michael Charles to fire at will.
Charles, pictured above, swished three consecutive baseline jumpers to propel his team to a 70-54 win.
“We didn’t think he could hit three in a row, to be honest,” a disheartened Mullins said after the game.
Charles finished with 12 points. Jerome Mincy put up 17 points and 11 rebounds, James Ponder contributed 14 points, and Steve Mitchell contributed 10.
Game 500 — 78-73 win at DePaul, 2/9/94
In 1991, UAB left the Sun Belt in favor of the Great Midwest Conference, a league comprised of Cincinnati, Memphis, Marquette, DePaul, and Saint Louis. The Blazers were no longer the biggest fish in the pond: as the 1993 season began, Gene Bartow and crew had yet to post a GMWC winning percentage above .500. The Green and Gold made just one NCAA Tournament from 1987 to 1993, setting an ignominious school record.
The ‘93-’94 campaign brought change. UAB coasted to one of the best starts in program history, winning 17 of its first 20 games and eventually sliding into the March Madness field. Further frustrations were on the horizon — Bartow would retire in 1996, one year after he put up the only losing record of his UAB career — but at the time of the Blazers’ 500th game, all of the pressure was on their opponents.
While the Green and Gold were essentially guaranteed an NCAA bid at 17-3, DePaul entered the evening of February 9th, 1994 in desperate need of a victory. The Blue Demons were 2-5 in conference play, prompting head coach Joey Meyer to resort to begging.
“I would like to get a win in this league — will someone give us a win?” Meyer was quoted as saying in the Northwest Herald.
UAB used a massive first-half run to grab a 37-29 halftime lead, which the Blazers didn’t relinquish until DePaul forward Tom Kleinschmidt tied the game with 1:15 left. Robert Shannon immediately responded with a baseline jumper, and Clarence Thrash swatted Kleinschmidt’s last-second layup attempt, denying Meyer’s plea. Shannon scored 22, Carter Long scored 17, and Reginald Allen scored 14.
The victory came in spite of the efforts of Kleinschmidt, who finished the night with a career-high 37 points.
“We had five people try to guard him. I thought Murry was going to get in there and try to guard him after a while,” Bartow joked. “He had a phenomenal game.”
Game 750 — 83-72 loss at Tulane, 2/16/02
Murry Bartow took over for his father in 1996, leading the Blazers to one NCAA Tournament and two 20-win seasons over six years. By the waning days of the 2002 campaign, the younger Bartow’s tenure had all but run its course, with his squad mired at 13-17 — to this day the worst record in program history. The Blazers performed so poorly during a three-game losing streak in February that Bartow sealed off the players’ dressing room with tape.
One of the losses came in the program’s 750th game, when the Green and Gold went on the road to take on equally-struggling Tulane. UAB stars Mo Finley and Will Campbell had both suffered injuries the previous week; the former hurt himself diving after a loose ball and the latter sprained his ankle. Finley managed to perform admirably against the Green Wave, but the big man Campbell was limited — Bartow described him as moving at “60 percent speed.” UAB lost 83-72 after giving up an 18-1 run midway through the game.
Bartow resigned fewer than four weeks later.
Game 1,000 — 58-49 win at Tulane, 1/9/10
The program’s 1,000th game came under much brighter circumstances. Now led by fourth-year head coach Mike Davis, the Blazers were off to their best start since the aforementioned 1993-1994 season, entering the new year with a sparkling 11-2 record. After further padding their already-impressive resume with wins over Arkansas and East Carolina, UAB headed to New Orleans as significant favorites.
Once again facing off against Tulane, the Blazers put on a grotesque offensive display, making 41.2% of their field goals while turning the ball over 18 times. UAB recorded just 9 assists on the night, a statistic that infuriated Davis.
“We’re not sharing the ball at all,” Davis said. “We got guys open and they don’t get the ball. Everybody just wants to take a turn shooting the ball. We’ve just got to clean that up.”
The Green and Gold’s only saving grace was Tulane’s equally eye-watering statline: 36.2% shooting, 17 turnovers, and 3 assists. A scowling Davis walked off the Fogelman Arena court in clear disgust, but UAB improved to 14-2. Howard Crawford and Elijah Millsap were the lone Blazers to score double-digit points.
Although the 2009-2010 campaign would ultimately fall short of expectations — two heartbreaking late-season losses to Memphis and UTEP denied UAB an NCAA Tournament bid — the program’s 1,000th game coincided with perhaps the highest point of the Davis era.
Game 1,250 — 63-50 loss, Richmond, 11/20/17
UAB’s most recent milestone game was played just a year after Rob Ehsan became the sixth coach in program history. The Blazers were coming off a vastly disappointing 2016-2017 campaign that saw the team drop from 89th in KenPom to 196th; Nick Norton’s season-opening ACL tear doomed them from the start.
Although the Green and Gold scored two promising blowouts to begin the 2017 season, the opening game of the Cayman Island Classic brought them back to earth. A bad Richmond team that would only post two other non-conference wins jumped on UAB early and never relinquished their lead. The Blazers clawed within six in the second half, but a late Spider run buried Ehsan’s squad. It was a coming-out party for UR freshman Grant Golden, who racked up 26 points on the afternoon.
Only Zack Bryant and William Lee scored double-digit points for the Blazers, who shot 17.3% from beyond the arc and turned the ball over 16 times.
“Offensively, we just really struggled tonight… I thought [holding Richmond to] 63 points, we should have had a different result," Ehsan said. "If you would have told me they would have scored 63, I thought we'd be in good shape."