Frank Ramsey Jersey

Raised in Madisonville, Kentucky, Ramsey was a multi-sport athlete at the University of Kentucky, playing baseball as well as basketball. Playing under legendary coach Adolph Rupp, Ramsey, as a sophomore in 1951, helped the Wildcats win the NCAA Championship with a 68-58 victory over Kansas State. A jersey honoring Ramsey hangs in Rupp Arena. In the fall of 1952, a point shaving scandal involving three Kentucky players (a fourth player, Bill Spivey, a teammate of Ramsey's on the 1951 championship team, was accused of being involved in the scandal but denied the charge) over a four-year period forced Kentucky to forfeit its upcoming season, Ramsey's senior year, as well as that of Cliff Hagan and Lou Tsioropoulos. The suspension of the season made Kentucky's basketball team, in effect, the first college sports team to get the "death penalty", although it was nothing more than the NCAA asking members schools not to schedule Kentucky, and not mandating it. Ramsey, Hagan and Tsioropoulos all graduated from Kentucky in 1953 and, as a result, became eligible for the NBA draft. All three players were selected by the Boston Celtics—Ramsey in the first round, Hagan in the third, and Tsioropoulos in the seventh. All three also returned to Kentucky for one more season despite graduating. After finishing the regular season (one in which Ramsey averaged 19.6 points per game) with a perfect 25-0 record and a #1 ranking in the Associated Press, Kentucky had been offered a bid into the NCAA Tournament. However, then-existing NCAA rules prohibited graduate students from participating in post-season play; the Wildcats declined the bid because their participation would have forced them to play without Ramsey, Hagan and Tsioropoulos, thus jeopardizing their perfect season. Upon completion of his college career, Ramsey scored 1344 points, which at the time ranked him fourth in the school's history, and grabbed 1038 rebounds, a school record later surpassed by one of his future Kentucky Colonel players, Dan Issel.