Top 10 players in Alabama Basketball history...

The Moose - Jerry Harper      

     It is difficult to compare players in different eras. Each generation tends to believe that the years they observed the game was the best. I know longer even try. This is going to be the first in a series on my picks of the top ten players who wore the Crimson and White. I’m not going to rank them now. At the end I’ll put down in the order I think they merit.

       

Jerry Harper still leads
the Tide in career rebounds

  Jerry Harper was 6-8 inches tall and weighed around 220 lbs.  He played at the University of Alabama from 1952-56.  His friends called him Moose. His opponents called him a holy terror. At one time he held 16 of the 18 official records kept by the SEC in his era. That's how good he was. He was a bull of a young man. I can remember him being the tallest human I’d ever seen at the age of 9 years. I can also remember him taking the time to shake my hand and ask me if I was going to play at Alabama one day. “I hope”, was all I could muster. Harper still leads the Crimson Tide in rebounding even thought the last game he played was almost 50 years ago. He still holds the SEC record for rebounds, and it is a record that will never be broken in all likelihood. That surreal number is 1806. Think about that for a moment. That is over 400 hundred a year. Some years his team only played 24 games.

Three Time All-American ...

  

          He was a Second Team All-American his freshman year. After that he was First Team All-American. He averaged more than 20 points per game for his career. The only three point plays in his days were the old fashioned kind. His senior year he scored 21.3 ppg and an unbelievable 21.5 rebounds an outing. I don’t care what era you played. Those numbers are astonishing.  He played for a great coach, Johnny Dee, whose excellence seems to be lost in Alabama basketball history. Harper played for the nationally prominent Rocket Eight which was named after an Oldsmobile.  Harper was the rocket engine on that team. Harper’s team was the first team to score over 100 points against Kentucky. He wasn’t recruited by Kentucky, and Harper made sure they remembered their error.  He as a First Team All-American his junior and senior years. He is the only player from Alabama to hold that accomplishment. He is member Sports Hall of Fan. 

Hard to understand how great Harper was ...

   

    It is difficult to explain how good Harper really was. He was huge for his day. He was so strong it was amazing, and he could jump. He was a goor free throw shooter who got over 480 chances in his career. He could make jump shots, but if he got you down low and his back was to the basket he was going to score.  Stats were a little different in those days. What percentage did he actually shoot? I’d say over 45%. He scored, or if he missed he frequently got his own rebound and then scored. Other players would actually step out of his way when he went up for a rebound. He had razor sharp elbows and knew how to use them. He was my first hero.  Could he play today? He certainly would start for most Alabama teams since his day. If he played this season he would have been the best player on the team. Alabama would have made the NCAA and could have had a run. He was ahead of his time. He was a great athlete and an even better basketball player. Any list of the top 10 players in Alabama history would not be credible without Moose. He died in 2001 at the age of 67 after fighting cancer for a decade. I can still see his smiling face and that flat-top haircut. I got my hair cut just like his because I idolized him. He was friendly and outgoing until he stepped on the court.  He then became a machine who mowed down anything in his way. He called me “little Bill”.  His presence is a fresh in my mind as Levi Randolph is today. He was a man among children. I'm not sure Alabama has ever had a more complete player than Jerry Harper.