Glen Roberts - Overview

Overview

Glen Roberts' Pound, Virginia high school did not field a basketball team his first two high school years. Roberts’ team won the state championship his junior and senior years (1930 & 31). The team record for 1930 was 28 wins and 2 losses with 1931 being 35 wins and 0 losses. Roberts was designated captain of the All-State team both years. Roberts played varsity ball 4 years (1931–35) at Emory & Henry College scoring 2,013 points in 104 games for a per game average of 19.4 points in an era when team scores were seldom over 30 or 35 points per game. His scoring was a new record for that time and still stands for play prior to the 1937 revision of the center-jump rule which called for walking the ball back to the center-line after every basket made and with the clock still running. (It’s been estimated that this used up 8 to 10 minutes per game.) Roberts scored 1,531 points against college opposition in 80 games and 482 points against pro and semi-pro teams in 24 games. Emory and Henry’s overall team record was 90 wins and 14 losses. His scoring total and per-game average was featured in Ripleys’ "Believe it or Not" in 1936.

One significant reason for Glen Roberts’ prolific scoring was his use of a jump-shot. Historian and writer Stephen Fox, in his book “Big Leagues,” contends, after exhaustive research, that Glen Roberts was the very first college player to utilize a jump-shot to such a scoring advantage. It was an offensive weapon the opposition had never seen before.

In the 1930s there did not exist the well defined college conferences as today. Consequently smaller schools like Emory & Henry were as likely to play the largest of schools as well as the smaller ones. Emory & Henry regularly played the University of Richmond, Virginia Tech, University of Tennessee, William & Mary, East Tennessee State, George Washington, University of Virginia etc.

A game against the much larger University of Richmond Spiders is significant. The only team to have an undefeated season, in the history of Virginia college basketball, was the 1934-35 Richmond team. Richmond's late coach, Malcolm (Mac) Pitt, in a letter to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, describes how Richmond, in its final game of the season, narrowly edged Emory and Henry with their defensive efforts being focused primarily on Roberts. Richmond defeated Emory and Henry, IN OVERTIME, on Richmond's home court in an era when officiating was far less than the high caliber profession it is today. The "home court" was generally considered a 4 or 5 point advantage for the home team.

Upon graduating, Glen Roberts received many professional offers from National Basketball League (NBL) and other professional teams, but opted for coaching basketball at Norton High in Norton, Virginia. He turned the program around and won the district championship in the two years he coached – 1936 and 1937 seasons. He was induced by the Firestone Non-Skids of the NBL to play for the 1938-39 season. The Firestone team had four All-Americans including Glen Roberts – Art Bonniwell of Dartmouth and John Moir and Paul Nowak, both from Notre Dame. Firestone won the NBL Easrern Division championship with a 24 and 3 season record. They then won the NBL Championship by beating the Western Division champions (Oshkosh All-Stars) in a best of 5 series. Their .875 winning percentage for the regular season is the highest winning percentage in the history of the NBL and the NBA (National Basketball Association). Ironically, the standout player on the team was a non-collegian, "Soup" Cable, a local Akronite, who averaged 10 points with the other scoring being fairly evenly distributed in the 3 to 6 point range. Glen Roberts played little basketball in the two years after college, yet was able to make a significant contribution to the Firestone teams’ outstanding season. Roberts, knowing that basketball wasn’t going to be his life’s career, took advantage of a job opportunity with Firestone after the one spectacular season.

Glen Roberts and his six brothers (five of whom were Virginia high school all-state) fielded a team and dominated the Northeast Ohio industrial leagues during the early 1940s. Roberts and his brothers took a leave of absence from Firestone in January 1945 to sell war-bonds by barnstorming Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and West Virginia where Glen Roberts' name was still legend. Their opposition was colleges, pro and semi-pro teams. (On March 10, 1945, $50,000.00 was raised in a victory over Milligan College.)

Five of the seven brothers were exempted from military service during the World War II years because their Firestone jobs were critical to the war effort. The other two did a tour of duty in the navy and army respectively.

Play with his brothers in the mid 1940s was the end of Glen Roberts’ involvement with basketball with the exception of two years in the 1960s. He coached Clinch Valley College of the University of Virginia for two seasons – 1964 through 1966. The team record for the season prior to his arrival was 2 wins and 19 losses. Roberts’ record was 14 wins and 6 losses each of the two years he coached. Until Roberts’ college coaching debut the school had never known a winning season.