Bob Mott A Part Of Cyclone Hoops Tradition

AMES, Iowa- Iowa State celebrates 100 years of men's basketball in 2007-08 and there have been a plethora of players who have contributed to the outstanding tradition of Cyclone hoops. Bob Mott is one of those players.

He is not one of the 15 members of the ISU All-Century Team. Nor is his number hanging in the rafters of Hilton Coliseum. But for a brief moment in time in the mid-1940s, Mott was one of the best players in the Big Six Conference.

Mott was a catalyst for one of the best teams in ISU history, the 1944-45 squad that wrapped up consecutive Big Six titles for legendary coach Louis Menze during World War II. In the final game of that magical season, Mott's Cyclones were pitted against Phog Allen's tough Kansas squad in rustic State Gym on the ISU campus. Both teams had one loss in the conference and the winner would be outright conference champs.

“State Gym was small and it probably only held about 3,000 people, but there had to have been over 5,000 people crammed inside for the championship game,” Mott recollected. “There were people sitting shoulder-to-shoulder and standing all along the endlines. It was basically wall-to-wall people except for us players on the court.”

The outcome of the game was not expected. ISU had lost at KU earlier in the season, 50-35 and Allen had solidified himself as one of the greatest coaching minds in college basketball. Menze's Cyclones ignored history and thrashed Kansas, 61-39 in front of a standing-room only crowd in State Gym. Mott was the hero of the game, scoring 18 points to pace ISU to the Big Six crown and the largest Cyclone margin of victory over a Kansas team in Ames.

“I remember Coach Menze handed me the ball at halftime and said, ?lead them out,'” Mott said. “Boy, was I ready to go play after that. Basketball is a funny game. If you get a bunch of guys that want to play defense and rebound, you can have a winner. Coach Menze always stressed that.”

Mott's outstanding season in 1944-45 earned him first-team all-Big Six honors by the Associated Press and made him an answer to a unique trivia question. Since freshmen were allowed to play during the war years of the 1940s, Mott found a spot in the starting lineup at the ripe age of 17. Always young for his grade, Mott did not turn 18 until after the season ended, making him the youngest player in NCAA Division I basketball history to earn first-team all-conference honors.

Mott grew up in Hamilton County near Ames and watched many of the old Cyclone stars play basketball as a youngster. He got the chance to watch Waldo Wegner, Jack Flemming, Al Budolfson and Price Brookfield. Brookfield's abilities especially stood out to Mott. A 23-year-old All-American at West Texas State who enrolled at Iowa State as part of the Naval V-5 program, Brookfield led ISU to the 1944 NCAA Final Four and was the first Cyclone to ever play in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

“I think Brookfield was one of the best all-around players to ever play at Iowa State,” Mott said. “He was an amazing talent. He could play three positions. Brookfield shows up for his first game in January of 1944 and had not met anybody. He had never practiced with the team and hadn't met Coach Menze. He gets there to board the train to Lincoln for ISU's first conference game vs. Nebraska and scores 18 points in the first half. Coach Menze doesn't even play him in the second half. He could do things at that time that no one had seen before.”

Mott sometimes fights away tears when thinking about his old coach. Menze retired from ISU in 1947 as its all-time winningest coach with 166 wins and a school-record four conference titles.

“Coach Menze was a guy that didn't play favorites,” Mott said. “He was really bullheaded. I thought I was pretty good coming out of high school because I could score baskets. But he told me I had to learn to play defense first, then worry about scoring. He wouldn't let me play until I did that. He was one of the greatest influences in my life.”

Iowa State University Athletics

Bob Mott A Part Of Cyclone Hoops Tradition

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