HISTORY WITH HAYES
Jake Neeley arrived in the gym at J.I. Burton High School on a fall afternoon in 1974 for the first official day of basketball practice as expectations were high and those fierce Lonesome Pine District battles loomed.
Neeley was a nifty pass-catcher for the Raiders’ football team that had just completed the season with an 8-2 record.
When it came to hooping it up, the crew from Norton wound up having a winning winter those involved would never forget, and memorable moment No. 1 occurred on that initial occasion when the team gathered and preparations for the campaign began.
“Greg Adkins hollered at me and said, ‘Watch this,’ and he went up and above that rim and he slammed it home,” Neeley said. "I looked over at Gail Livingston and said, ‘Buddy, we’re going somewhere this year.’ "
The final destination would be University Hall in Charlottesville for the VHSL Group A state semifinals and along the way the Raiders won Lonesome Pine District and Region D tournament titles.
Burton finished with 24 victories, played archrival Powell Valley four times, had a postseason game delayed due to tear gas and head coach Stan Wilson gave the sports writers in Southwest Virginia plenty of material for their copy by making several bold statements.
“It was a great year, man,” Neeley said.
Powell Valley won the VHSL Group A state championship in 1974 and finished as runner-up in 1976 under the direction of masterful coach Burrall Paye and with Barry Hamler dominating the boards.
Yet, the 1974-75 season was the year of the J.I. Burton Raiders and confident head coach Stan Wilson knew it would be. He even said so.
Having gone 6-14, 10-12, 14-9 and 15-7 in his first four seasons at the helm of his alma mater, the best was yet to come.
“There is no way Powell Valley can beat us,” he told reporters on the eve of the first meeting between his Raiders and the Vikings of Big Stone Gap. “Unless we give it to them.”
Powell Valley had whipped J.I. Burton – and pretty much everybody else – the season before in going unbeaten and winning it all. Some people probably weren’t buying Wilson’s prediction.
“Well, I didn’t say anything last year and we got beat by 39 points,” Wilson later told the Bristol Herald Courier. “I thought I would try something different.”
His words would be prophetic as Burton vanquished the Vikings 70-64 with Neeley torching the nets to the tune of 24 points. It snapped Powell Valley’s 22-game winning streak within the LPD.
Powell Valley won the rematch 17 days later and it appeared that the teams were destined to compete in a one-game playoff for the LPD’s automatic bid to the Region D tournament. The teams scheduled the potential playoff for the day after Valentine’s Day on a Saturday night in Coeburn.
But first the teams had to win their final regular-season games as Burton squared off with Appalachia and Powell Valley faced Coeburn.
Wilson was self-assured and again let the media in on it.
“It’s a good thing this game isn’t played a day earlier [on Feb. 14]. It would be Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre No. 2,” Wilson told the Bristol Herald Courier. “Come Saturday night, it’s lights out for Powell Valley.”
There was just one problem. J.I. Burton didn’t win the game that would have forced the playoff.
Instead, the Raiders suffered a 67-64 loss to the Appalachia Bulldogs.
“Gail Livingston was so close to his thousandth point and we were trying to get his thousandth out of the way,” Neeley said. “Livingston was one of our best shooters and for some reason he just couldn’t find the range that night. He looked like Tennessee basketball [in Tuesday’s loss to Kentucky]. When he finally found it and we could relax we looked up and we were nine points down to Appalachia and they had a pretty good squad too.”
Meanwhile, Powell Valley clinched the LPD regular-season crown by cruising past Coeburn.
“The lights went out for Norton tonight,” Paye offered as a retort.
How did Wilson respond the following day?
“I’ve got a lot of playoff tickets and I would like to trade them for some light bulbs,” he told Kenny Kerr of the Bristol Herald Courier. “Because the lights went out over here Friday night.”
Burton got another crack at both Appalachia and Powell Valley in the LPD tournament and this time exacted some revenge.
“I remember Coach Wilson one time saying there were three seasons,” Neeley said. “I looked at him and said, ‘What are you talking about?’ and he explained to me that you’ve got the preseason where you’re getting ready, then you got the regular season and then the third season is the one that matters most. He used to call it the money season.”
Yet, the start of that third season and the anticipated rematch with Appy was delayed not for an electrical outage but due to tear gas.
After the Powell Valley Vikings had overpowered Ervinton for a 67-55 win in the first district semifinal game – Norton was the host – somebody opened a tear gas container in the lobby of the school as a frantic scene unfolded.
“Next thing I know folks were raising heck,” Neeley said. “I saw smoke rolling out and thought the popcorn machine had caught on fire. Harry Gaines [of Appalachia] came out and made a layup during warm-ups and when he made the layup he kind of buckled and then he came running right past me and kept on running out of the gym. I said something’s not right and then I went up to see my mom to make sure she was OK.”
More than 30 people were hospitalized – none were seriously injured – and two men in their early-20s from Dickenson County were later arrested for perpetrating the event. The game was postponed until the next day, but the rescheduling did not bother the Raiders as they grabbed a 69-57 victory as a 26-point effort by Greg Adkins led the way.
The following night, Burton bested Powell Valley 70-59 to win the district tournament title as Adkins earned MVP honors with a 17-point, 17-rebound performance. For Adkins, that memorable season played out much different than the season before.
“The year before Adkins had quit because he went hunting and valued it more than playing basketball,” Neeley said. “Over the summer [before the '74-75 season] he came to my house every morning, knocked on the door about 8 or 9 in the morning and we’d go to play basketball until about 7, 8 o’clock at night.”
Tim McAfee, Spurgeon Harris, Clayton Thomas, Terry Wampler, Ronnie Thomas, Gary Richardson, David Smith, James Watlington and Terry Thompson rounded out the roster that season along with Neeley, Livingston and Adkins.
Adkins averaged 17.8 points per game, while Neeley put up 16.3 points per contest. The Raiders had an impressive road win over private-school power Knoxville Catholic in December and the Raiders would finish with a mark of 24-4.
The team’s strength was stopping opponents from putting the ball in the hole.
“We played defense,” Neeley said. “That was the main thing. Coach Wilson always told us that offense keeps you in the game, but defense wins it. … After we scored, we’d jump in that 1-21-1 press. There were days in practice we didn’t dribble a basketball in that gym. We ran lines and worked on defense. We just got better and better at the fundamentals. Coach Wilson was a fundamental guy.”
It was only fitting that the finals of the Region D tournament – hosted by Thomas Walker in Ewing – came down to J.I. Burton vs. Powell Valley for the trophy with the season on the line.
Powell Valley had advanced with a 47-43 semifinal win over Pennington, while Burton had bested the Bulldogs of Jonesville by a 73-58 margin.
Round four went to the Raiders as Neeley pumped in 22 points in a 73-64 triumph. Burton built an 11-point lead with 3:18 remaining and held off one last charge by the Vikings.
“We were tooth and nail each time we played,” Neeley said. “You had to play, there was no letting up against those guys. They shot the ball real well and played defense real well – that was the staple of the LPD. It was just a dogfight each time we played.”
There were no major declarations from Wilson for that last showdown.
“When you say the things I said, you better be prepared to take the ribbing, but I’ve enjoyed it,” Wilson told a reporter at one point that season. “I think I’m just that type of a coach. I like enthusiasm. And I think we have a cocky bunch of players. They are just cocky enough to think they can win every game.”
Wilson’s first of several trips to the state tournament as a head coach ended with a 70-67 loss to Buckingham County in the semifinals. Lorenza Watson, Buckingham’s 6-foot-9 center, had 28 points, 18 rebounds and nine blocks before fouling out.
He went on to score more than 1,200 career points at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and was selected by the Golden State Warriors with the 137th overall pick in the 1979 NBA Draft.
“He was tough, man,” Neeley said. “They were 6-9, 6-4, 6-4 and the two guards were 6-2, 6-1. They were real big.”
Meanwhile, the tallest player in Burton’s rotation stood 6-foot-3.
Still, the Raiders had a chance to beat Buckingham but a late turnover and two free throws by Larry Lee of the Knights in the final seconds spelled doom.
The next day Buckingham won the 1975 VHSL Group A state championship with a 6458 overtime victory over Fort Chiswell.
“I think if we had shot better up there, we should have won that thing,” Neeley said. “We were just as good as they were, they were just bigger.”
Of course, in a season full of them Wilson offered one last quip after the loss to Buckingham.
“If I ever in my life thought Watson was that good, I probably would have done something different,” Wilson told the Kingsport Times-News.
Such as? “Probably broke his leg when he walked on the floor,” he said with a laugh.