True Sons: War and Glory

Today's excerpt: 1943-44 and the arrival of Jumpin' Dan Pippin.

In 1938, enrollment at MU had surged past five thousand. By 1943 it was down to fifteen hundred as men went off to war. But even as other activities around campus and the country were curtailed, college athletics—including Big Six basketball—carried on to help boost morale on the home front. Even so, Kansas coach Phog Allen undoubtedly was right in his assessment that "not many people will take a wartime championship seriously. With us here athletics are simply incidental to the war effort."

That effort had decimated the Tigers. Thornton Jenkins, Pleasant Smith, and others should have led Missouri's fight for a Big Six title. Instead, they were engaged in a fight of infinitely greater consequence. And with a dwindling student population, George Edwards's immediate challenge was not to win the conference; it was simply to field a team.