U. ready to unveil All-Century team

Later this week, the University of Utah All-Century basketball team will be unveiled during halftime of the Utah-San Diego State game. The initial announcement of the 16-man team will come Tuesday afternoon.

Sorry, it's too late for you to vote, but it's not too late for me to offer my votes for the team as one who has followed Utah basketball for nearly half a century.

A committee of U. athletic department employees came up with the original list of 34 names for the ballot, and Ute fans were allowed to vote during November. To me, the 34 players can be divided into three groups.

The first 10 are easy.

Billy McGill, Keith Van Horn, Andre Miller, Andrew Bogut, Danny Vranes, Arnie Ferrin, Vern Gardner, who have all had their jerseys retired, are obvious choices. So are Mike Newlin, Jerry Chambers and Josh Grant.

Newlin was a three-time all-WAC player who finished No. 3 all-time in scoring average and 4th in total points. Chambers had the second-best scoring average of all time at 24.6 ppg and was named MVP of the 1966 Final Four. Grant finished as the No. 3 all-time scorer with 2,000 points, was a WAC MVP and led the nation in free-throw percentage at 92 percent.

Then there are a dozen players on the borderline — Tom Chambers, Jeff Judkins, Jeff Jonas, Alex Jensen, Art Bunte, Ticky Burden, Michael Doleac, Merv Jackson, Glen Smith, Mitch Smith, Mike Sojourner and Bill Kinner, of which we can only pick a half dozen.

The other dozen -— Jimmy Soto, Byron Wilson, Walter Watts, Buster Matheney, Manny Hendrix, Nick Jacobson, Pace Mannion, Kelvin Upshaw, Wat Misaka, Hanno Mottola, Britton Johnsen and Dick Romney were all nice players, but to me, not worthy of the best of the best.

Uh, hold on a minute. Where in the heck is Ken Gardner on these lists?

Somehow Gardner, who played alongside Newlin for three years from 1968-71, was left off the 34-man ballot.

Gardner was easily better than the last dozen players I mentioned and on the same level as the middle dozen. He was a 6-5 forward from Clearfield High who ended up as the fifth-best rebounder in Utah history at more than 11 boards a game. If you don't count two-year players, Gardner was second all-time behind McGill in rebounding.

Scoring-wise, Gardner was No. 10 on the all-time Ute scoring average list at 16.3 points per game. He was all-WAC three times.

So how was he not included in the original 34 on the ballot?

Good question.