Basketball world loses the amazing Ollie Taylor

Published 12:00 pm Wednesday, April 9, 2025

When word came to me Monday afternoon via text that former San Jacinto College great Ollie Taylor had suddenly passed away, I was shocked and saddened but also grateful that I had gotten to know him in some small way.

I learned of Taylor’s death via a text from former Tyler Junior College basketball star Harvey Hufstetler who now lives in Arkansas.

Taylor was a marvel, who played with a rare combination of speed and jumping ability in an era before the shot clock or 3-point shots. He captured the awe and respect of Tyler Junior College basketball fans in a most memorable 1967-68 season when he led his Ravens to a national title that first met the challenge of a Poo Welch led Tyler team in the regional playoffs.

Welch and Taylor would later team up to lead the Houston Cougars to a Sweet 16 appearance in 1970.

“I am shocked,” Welch said when I called him Monday afternoon. “We played together and stayed in the same dorm one year before I got married. He was a nice man and we were friends as well as teammates.”

During the COVID outbreak about five years ago, I wrote a series of articles about the greatest sports moments of my life growing up in Tyler and East Texas. There were stories of Ned Duncan and fast pitch softball, Homero Blancas and his 55 at a Longview golf tourney but what really touched my heart was revisiting and reliving the intense rivalry between a great Tyler team coached by the legendary Floyd Wagstaff and a just slightly greater San Jacinto team.

Welch was helpful to me in crafting the article with his keen memory and by getting me in touch with Taylor. I was able to talk for over an hour with Taylor and his memory was the equal of Welch’s because Wagstaff Gym was jammed to capacity for their two meetings there that year, both Tyler wins, and the only losses San Jac had en route to their national championship.

The early arriving Tyler crowds that year were treated to a feat during the warmups when Taylor did something I had never seen before or since. He would take off from the midcourt line and go up with two basketballs and dunk both of them in rapid succession. Just to make sure I was not embellishing, I asked Welch if he remembered the stuffing of two balls.

“Yes, he could do that because he had about a 46-inch vertical leap,” Welch said. “And yes he was 6-foot-2 because I was about an inch taller than him during our playing days.”

Really, a 46-inch vertical leap?

“Every inch of it,” Hufstetler said. “He would dunk one going up and another one coming down.”

I kidded Hufstetler on the phone that he “held” Taylor to only 44 in the Apaches’ loss at San Jacinto in that three-game playoff.

“I told Wag that I was doing the best I could,” the 6-foot-6 Hufstetler remembers. “Wag just said I had Converse stamped on my face.”

Wag also said in an article about those games, “Ollie was going to get his points so we just have to outscore them.”

How good were both teams in 1967-68? Tyler finished the season 32-4 with three of those losses to San Jacinto and the national champion Ravens were 34-2 with Tyler handing them their only losses in Tyler.

In the regional playoffs, Tyler won at home and then San Jacinto won at home with Taylor scoring his 44 and that necessitated a rubber game at the Stephen F. Austin gym in Nacogdoches. Besides Welch and Hufstetler, Tyler had three swift and strong big men who were seemingly unstoppable on the fast break — Jesse Marshall, Jim Brooks and Willie Chatmon. For that reason, San Jacinto took the air out of the ball and played a slow down game in the deciding tilt in which San Jacinto prevailed 71-63.

Later, at Houston, Taylor once won an opening tip from the great Kareem Abdul Jabbar who was literally a foot taller.

Because of the help from Welch, I had an hour-long phone conversation with Taylor and he told me he once met Earl Campbell at a Houston banquet and that Earl told him that he had sneaked onto the roof of Wagstaff Gym to watch the game through a glass roof. Earl would have been in junior high at that time.

The Campbell adventure just reiterated what a big deal the basketball rivalry was in those days before cell phones and the too many entertainment options that we have today. To get a good seat for the Tyler versus San Jacinto games, one would need to arrive a couple of hours before tipoff to get a seat.

After our phone conversation, about two years later, I attended an NBA Alumni golf tournament in Dallas and saw a man talking with the local host of the event and mentioned that he looked familiar to me. He introduced himself to me by saying, “I am Ollie Taylor.” I was bowled over to get a chance to meet him after working on the story and though his bald head threw me off a little as I will always remember the young Ollie of San Jac with the big afro haircut, it was a sweet moment.

For Taylor, who would go on to play in the ABA before the merger with the NBA, playing at San Jacinto and then Houston was a dream come true for a kid who grew up playing on the outdoor courts of the Bronx in New York. He was one of the Rucker Park greats along with Nate “Tiny” Archibald and countless others such as Jabbar.

Rucker Park is a must see iconic playground every basketball enthusiast should visit if ever in the Big Apple. It is known as the birthplace of the “street ball culture,” and near the location of the old historic Polo Grounds, now gone.

Taylor only scored four points in his high school career in New York because, “I rode the bench and Tiny Archibald was sitting right next to me,” Taylor said. It is truly remarkable to think of how many good players were at that high school if Taylor and an NBA Hall of Famer could get little playing time.

As Houston played for that elusive first national championship against a very good Florida team, one has to think of Taylor and that perhaps he is watching somewhere with the late Guy V. Lewis, who coached so many great UH teams that came close but never to the pinnacle.

Was hoping the Cougars would get it done this time and Ollie, thank you so much for sharing your memories with an old sportswriter who will always marvel at the sight of you dunking two basketballs. Rest in peace.

Service for Ollie Taylor, 78, is set for 6 p.m. April 18 at Clayton Funeral Home (5530 W. Broadway) in Pearland.