The article about Ricky Medlock 's induction made me have flashbacks. I can remember watching and listening to basketball games before Sutton with my father. I remember Medlock hitting most of the free throws he tried. I also remember the center on that team. The center stayed in foul trouble. The coach decided to change the center’s image with a hair cut and a shave in an effort to affect the refs into not calling so many fouls on the center. What was the center’s name?
Darryl Saulsberry. It didn’t help. He still started most games with 3 fouls
Thank you. I couldn’t remember his name.
Didn’t Medlock make 91 FTs in a row at one point? Something like that. And yes Saulsberry was never going to make the cover of GQ for his neat looks. I started school up there in 1974 and went to many games in the Barn. Great times!
Medlock is still an Optometrist in LR. He grew up in Cave City, AR.
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Speaking of haircut, Ricky and I have the same barber. We have had good discussions about Razorback basketball. Ricky was a big fan of Nolan and was very upset with what went down. He wished he had played in Nolan’s uptempo style. He is now a big fan of Mike.
Actually he’s an ophthalmologist: An MD specializing in eye care and surgery. Optometrist is not an MD and mainly fits people for glasses/contacts.
Rickey is a retina specialist in Little Rock and very good. He works in same clinic with the MD who did Jean Ann’s cornea replacement surgery about eight years ago. I called Rickey to see if he’d do it. He said, “No, just retina surgery.” But he said the guy who worked in the next office was/is the best for cornea replacement. He’d done Rickey’s mom’s replacement. The guy checked out Jean Ann’s eye, then worked Jean Ann in and did it in two days. They had told us at the Fayetteville clinic that this guy had a waiting list of 150. That could be two months. But someone balked who was early on his list and they got more corneas than they had expected and we came on six-hour notice. I’m sure Rickey helped along the process. Never was mentioned, but I’m almost sure he did. Great person.
Dr. Medlock performed the laser procedure on my wife’s detached retina. He is a really fine guy and has a great reputation as a surgeon. He was a freshman All-American he told me. When he was a frosh, he was not eligible to play varsity ball.
Coach Anderson might want Rickey to come up and help us with our free throwing shooting. He was a great shooter and a great free throw shooter.
When Ricky was a senior, we had the top 2 free throwers in thecountry. Both players shot right at 95%
I visited Ricky in cave city when we were both seniors. He had an amazing trophy room that had so many awards he had received in high school
That would be Robert Birden
But I think it was about 90%
Ricky had a routine on the line and did it the same way every time, game or practice. It was something like, left foot slightly forward at the same place, 3 dribbles, catch on the third and continue up in one smooth motion all the way to the release and follow through. Of course, I did not see it, but was told he did it that way every time in practice and would practice it for hrs.
I don’t know if he could help the players today. They are far more interested in Sports Center than in winning games at the line. Perhaps some of his pointers would help if they would listen, but it seems his stongest point was dedication to the task.
I also heard that before he left the gym he made himself make 100 in a row. Don’t know if that was true as stories like that seem to grow aroung greats, but it sounds like him.
I looked up Ricky’s ft percentage his senior year in 1975 was 93.9 %. Birdens ft% was 91%. I had heard during that year that Ricky was at 94% and Robert was at 95%
Of course you guys are assuming our staff doesn’t know crap about free throw shooting. All of them were excellent free throw shooters in their playing days.
Also, you can see clearly there are many excellent free throw shooters in the Sportscenter era. Are you saying that everyone in pre-Sportscenter days shot free throws well?
Nothing of the sort. Just that Ricky really worked at it and it paid off.