While I do not claim to be the court of final appeal when it comes to University of Texas basketball history, as the author of Longhorn Hoops (UT Press, 1998), I submit that few people know it better. One of that book’s most compelling stories involves Raymond Downs.
In 1952, as a 6′ 3″ forward at San Antonio’s Brackenridge High School, he had scholarship offers from TCU, Rice, Kansas and Baylor. Downs’ older brother, Terry, had been an all-Southwest Conference football player for the Bears, and he decided to go north to Waco as well. But coach Bill Henderson reneged at the last minute, and Downs learned that the Horned Frogs, Owls and Jayhawks were full, so he opted for Del Mar Junior College in Corpus Christi. His coach there was Ed Kelley, a former UT football and basketball player. Not only did Kelley teach Downs several tricks of the hardwood trade, he contacted Longhorns coach Slue Hull and advised him of Downs’ potential; he had scored 40 points in several games while at Del Mar.
He enrolled at Texas and, as the rules then dictated, sat out the 1954 season. During that time, he grew an inch to 6′ 4″, added 15 pounds of muscle and honed his game. In scrimmages at Gregory Gymnasium, Downs impressed Hull, assistant coach Marshall Hughes and teammates with his ambidextrous shooting, overall hoop ability and killer instinct. This guy, they saw, had a lot of moxie.
A starter from the word go, Downs was splendid in orange and white, averaging 22.3 points and 8.4 rebounds per game. His numbers as a junior really sparkled: 26.4 and 9.5. Not even Kevin Durant (2007 Big 12 player of the year, consensus all-American and Wooden and Naismith Trophy winner) had such a lofty scoring average.
With the Longhorns going 4-20 in 1955, 12-12 in 1956 and 11-13 in 1957, Downs never played a post-season game. One can only wonder how bad UT would have been without its star forward, who was twice all-SWC and received a few all-America votes. Downs got very little support, and that goes not just for his teammates but his coaches; Hull had a drinking problem and Hughes (who took over for him in 1957) was in over his head.
Despite all that, the Downs family was thrilled with his showing in the college basketball realm. His father, Raymond, Sr., his mother, Ina, his brother, Terry—the ex-Baylor gridiron star—and his sister, Lucille, often saw him play at Gregory Gym as well as at G. Rollie White Coliseum (Texas A&M), Autry Court (Rice), Moody Coliseum (SMU) and other venues.
Here are some excerpts about him from my book. First, from 1955: In a 59-52 loss to Houston, “Downs kept it close with 19 points on an assortment of drives, hooks and fadeaway jumpers. He had an uncanny knack of using his hips to draw fouls and then converting free throws.” In a 75-74 overtime defeat of Arkansas, “Downs (41) was nothing short of magnificent.” After a 75-56 loss to TCU, former Longhorn Tom Hamilton said, “Downs is a great player. He has the finesse I wish I could have had when I was at Texas.”
From 1956: In an 80-73 defeat of Baylor, “Downs, with 32 (12 of 16 from the field) eclipsed John Hargis’ season scoring record.” In a loss to SMU in Dallas, “Downs scored 32 of UT’s 96 points.” In a wild and rough 94-82 win over Rice, “Downs, described flatly by the Daily Texan as ‘the greatest basketball player in University of Texas history,’ scored 32.” During that same game, “when Downs fouled out, he returned to the court for some not-so-friendly repartee with [Owls star Temple] Tucker.” In a 101-95 defeat of Baylor in Waco, “the phenomenal Downs went on a scoring rampage that included 18 of 30 field goal attempts and 13 of 17 free throws for 49 points. He might have gotten 60, but Baylor used a five-man defense toward the end, causing 3,000 of its fans to hoot disapproval.” As in his sophomore season, “Downs was again a member of what the UT sports information office called the ‘300 Club,’ consisting of players who had scored at least 300 points in a season…. Downs’ whopping 625 points in 1956 was another matter entirely. He was in a club by himself.”
And in 1957: “In a 68-65 defeat of previously unbeaten Tulane in sweltering New Orleans, Downs wheeled and dealed for 24 points, breaking Slater Martin’s career scoring record.” In an 89-76 loss to Arkansas in a mid-season SWC tournament, “the Hogs fashioned a deep, sagging defense for Downs, but the muscular, gum-chewing San Antonian still scored 31.” Against TCU, “Downs was simply great in an 85-76 win. He rebounded, played stout defense against the taller TCU players and scored 34 points on 11 of 14 from the field and 12 of 13 from the charity stripe.” In what the Austin American-Statesman rather grandiloquently called “the miracle on Speedway,” UT defeated No. 3 SMU 77-68, and “Downs (28 points and 13 rebounds) was the tremendous performer Austin fans had grown accustomed to watching.” Despite the Horns’ 79-56 loss to SMU in Dallas, Daily Texan writer Pat Truly penned a column “refuting one in the Dallas Morning News which called [Mustangs all-American] Jim Krebs ‘the Southwest’s greatest basketball player.’ Truly proceeded to show why Downs was superior to the big, if not agile, SMU center.” In the season finale, a 74-60 loss to TCU, “Downs had no help. He scored 25 and received a long ovation when the Fort Worth crowd expressed appreciation for the greatest Longhorn scorer of all time…. He had worn out the nets over the past three years.”
Always a serious student, he graduated on time with a business degree. Drafted by the St. Louis Hawks, Downs went to training camp and got the cold shoulder from Slater Martin. A hard-edged playmaking guard, Martin had won four titles earlier in his career with the Minneapolis Lakers. Rather than welcome the former Longhorn and show him the ropes of the NBA, Martin did the opposite. Downs never played a game for the Hawks, although he spent one season with the Kansas City Kaycees of the National Industrial Basketball League. He has been employed in the insurance business— for John Hancock and Mutual of New York, specifically—for 68 years, belongs to five professional associations and is still active at age 91. He works remotely from his home in Vermont and travels to Boston occasionally for meetings.
Inducted into the Longhorn Hall of Honor in 1987, he has not been forgotten by his alma mater. But Martin (15), T.J. Ford (11) and Durant (35) have had their numbers retired, so why not Downs (31)? I doubt that he worries too much about that because his life is more than basketball, and he had a harrowing experience as an eight-year-old boy that puts such things into perspective.
In 1941, Downs’ father took a job as an engine mechanic with the United Fruit Company. That required living in Colombia and Costa Rica. Due to the poor educational systems in those two countries, Terry soon returned to Texas. The remaining four family members were not far behind him, however, since Downs senior had decided to join the Marines (he ended up in the Coast Guard) and help win the intensifying war. They boarded the Heredia, a freighter that had been a luxurious passenger ship in its earlier days. Carrying 1,500 tons of bananas and coffee and a complement of 62 people—only ten of whom were passengers—it departed Puerto Barrios, Guatemala on May 12, 1942.
German submarines known as U-boats were sinking “enemy” ships all over the Atlantic Ocean, even close to the east coast of the USA. But the Heredia, under Master Erwin F. Colburn, was moving through the supposedly safe waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Colburn took them to Corpus Christi and then made a fateful decision to complete the rest of the journey to New Orleans. Perhaps he did not know that the Nazis had sent 23 U-boats, all equipped with multiple torpedoes, into the Gulf.
Forty miles southwest of the Crescent City, around 2 a.m., U-506, commanded by Erich Würdemann, launched three of them at the Heredia. The explosions blew up the decks, stopped the engines and destroyed the lifeboats and rafts. The ship sank within eight minutes, leaving the survivors clinging to small makeshift rafts. For 20 hours, they hoped the sharks circling below them would not bite, dealt with the burning sun and craved food and water; Lucille kept up her spirits by singing “Nearer My God to Thee.” When local fishing boats were informed by the Coast Guard of the sinking, they came to the rescue. Almost miraculously, Downs, his father, his mother and his sister were picked up by the J. Edwin Treakle. Shrimp jambalaya was cooking in the boat’s kitchen, and one can just imagine how it smelled and tasted to these weary people. Brother Terry heard quite a story when they got back to San Antone.
All this is documented in a 2016 book by Michael J. Tougias and Alison O’Leary, So Close to Home: A True Story of an American Family’s Fight for Survival during World War II. I am not sure whether it mentions how military justice was delivered to Würdemann and his Nazi sub crew. On July 14, 1943, U-506 was sunk in the Atlantic Ocean west of Vigo, Spain when a U.S. Army Air Forces B-24 spotted it and dropped depth charges. Würdemann, just 29, was killed, along with all but six men. They had inflicted a lot of death and destruction on Hitler’s behalf over the previous 15 months, sinking eight American ships (including, of course, the Heredia), seven British, one Swedish, one Norwegian and one Nicaraguan.
Erich Würdemann…
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