Plenty of guys on here old enough to remember the notorious, infamous, quasi-legendary basketball uniforms of March 1989, that the Cowboys wore in their two NIT games that year, and never wore again. The two games were a home win over Boise State, and a road loss at St. John's that ended the season. They didn't have Richard Dumas for these games, as he went into rehab shortly prior. But anyway, there was a buzz was about the uniforms. Photos are hard to come by, and all I have ever found are from the Oklahoman and O'Colly archives so the quality is suck. The ones I have are:
So I also dug a story out of the O'Colly archives, that talks about the uniforms, and why they came into existance:
Well, I found something to buy about a week ago. No. 35 would have belonged to a freshman named Byron Houston.
I'm convinced that this is an example of those uniforms the article talks about, and that the Cowboys wore in the NIT loss at St. John's.
However, I don't think Byron Houston ever got close to this uniform. A conversation with the seller makes me pretty positive this was a salesman's sample. But all of the details match up with everything I can see in the photos - lettering and numbering, no names on the back, the trim, the side stripe, the Russell logo on the pants and its placement. So it looks to me like it's a sample that was the same as those that were actually worn, not some intermediate thing that got tweaked for production.
Who knows what ever happened with the actual uniforms? I don't recall the pants being very popular, more of an object of ridicule than anything else. And I think what was going on was that so many of the players were wearing those compression shorts that came out from under the uniform shorts (see Jayson Williams in the photo above), that this was an intermediate step - or misstep - by Russell as they searched to evolve uniform shorts to the longer ones in use today, in part to cover up the compression shorts. Anyway, the uniform is still likely a one-of-a-kind, and I think it's pretty cool hanging in my OSU room. Maybe it's Leonard Hamilton's real legacy at OSU.
So I also dug a story out of the O'Colly archives, that talks about the uniforms, and why they came into existance:
Well, I found something to buy about a week ago. No. 35 would have belonged to a freshman named Byron Houston.
I'm convinced that this is an example of those uniforms the article talks about, and that the Cowboys wore in the NIT loss at St. John's.
However, I don't think Byron Houston ever got close to this uniform. A conversation with the seller makes me pretty positive this was a salesman's sample. But all of the details match up with everything I can see in the photos - lettering and numbering, no names on the back, the trim, the side stripe, the Russell logo on the pants and its placement. So it looks to me like it's a sample that was the same as those that were actually worn, not some intermediate thing that got tweaked for production.
Who knows what ever happened with the actual uniforms? I don't recall the pants being very popular, more of an object of ridicule than anything else. And I think what was going on was that so many of the players were wearing those compression shorts that came out from under the uniform shorts (see Jayson Williams in the photo above), that this was an intermediate step - or misstep - by Russell as they searched to evolve uniform shorts to the longer ones in use today, in part to cover up the compression shorts. Anyway, the uniform is still likely a one-of-a-kind, and I think it's pretty cool hanging in my OSU room. Maybe it's Leonard Hamilton's real legacy at OSU.
