Last season basketball season, which marked the 50th Anniversary of Coach Joel Eaves's famed Seven Dwarfs winning the 1960 SEC Regular Season Championship, came and went without notice. It still being 2010, we at The Big Blue Bagel Blog Spot had hoped for some type of acknowledgment for the coaches and players from this historic team. However, just like 2009 came and went, without celebrating the 1999 SEC Regular Season Champions, so has the snub of Eaves's team.
The athletic department would probably use the controversy of Cliff Ellis's, the 1999 squad's head coach, dismissal as a reason for the obvious snub almost two year ago. But the failure to honor the 1960 team is baffling. Especially considering, the contributions of Eaves to basketball itself.
Eaves was the architect of the offense, that came to be known as The Auburn Shuffle. It was the precursor to modern day offenses such as Motion and Flex. Talk to any college basketball coach today, and they will tell you that Eaves was a genius and ahead of his time. West Virginia coach Bob Huggins, whose team made last year's Final Four, was asked about Eaves impact and he minced no words. "Much of what I do, can be traced back to Coach Eaves," Huggins said, obviously referring to his Motion offense.
Eaves, who coached the Tigers for 14 seasons, later went on to become the athletic director at the University of Georgia, beginning in 1963. In 1988 the Coliseum at Auburn was renamed the Eaves Memorial Coliseum; later renamed Beard-Eaves Memorial Coliseum, in honor of the last Auburn Athletic Director, Jeff Beard.
Somebody, in the athletic department, or the current basketball staff, please do the right thing! After all, we can't imagine snubbing football.
