|
When Cuba Conquered Kentucky: The Triumphant Basketball Story of a Tiny High School that Achieved the American Dream | 
 enlarge | Author: Marianne Walker
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $14.95
You Save: $5.00 (25%)
New (5) Used (9) from $13.28
Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 905872
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 209
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.3 x 1
ISBN: 1558537457
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.323630976993
EAN: 9781558537453
ASIN: 1558537457
Publication Date: January 1, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: 1st printing, 1st edition, no remainder marks, perfect condition
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
When Cuba Conquered Kentucky is a classic underdog tale of a basketball team from a tiny Kentucky high school that in 1952 won the state championship against supposedly stronger teams from much bigger schools.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 Relative of the players August 14, 2008
Great book. My great uncle is Howard Crittenden and my second cousin is Jimmy Webb. I just saw Uncle Howard on Saturday and he looks great. I got pictures of him at our family reunion.
 Good Effort by a Woman who Knew Nothing About Era Basketball August 9, 2004
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
The author, a junior college professoress, is a good writer, but her knowledge of basketball, and the absence of a proof reader, makes this otherwise neat book sometimes excruciating. The faux pas range from some gratuitious editorializing to innocent, perhaps, but nevertheless excruciating misobservations, e.g., e., she thinks that a basketball backboard, sometimes bankboard, or the area of the net, basket, or goal, is properly described as "goalposts." Her efforts to be adjectivially writerish are sometimes downright absurd, i.e., Doodle Floyd's shooting "lighting" up the scoreboard with "windmill" hookshots from all parts of the floor. Nonsense, he may have shot them from all around what used to be shaped as a key, but not all over the floor, for crying out loud ! Sheeeeeeeeeeeeesh -- betcha none of them were from behind the ten second line! In numerous little ways the authoress gnashes a minimally knowledable person of era basketball. e.g., at the time the ball could be taken out rather than a freeshot taken when a foul was committed, at least in, I think it was the last two minutes of a game or half. In a game in which Cuba was behind, the author seems surprised that the opponents took the ball out of bounds rather than shoot free throws when fouled. Of course they did ! The reason they were fouled was to obtain a turnover. If the team fouled missed a free throw there was a chance for a turnover. A team ahead likely would be interested in freezing the ball. Of course, for crying out loud, they would take the ball out of bounds rather than shoot a free shot. Several times the authoress comments on players shooting a "jump shot". No, not likely. They may not have shoved it up two handed from the waist or chest, and they may have shot running one hand shots, or one hand set shots, maybe be from the waist, and maybe with a pumping motion, but if she thinks they were shooting "jump" shots in the form of modern jump shots, that notion is almost as erroneous as that of players posting themselves under the "goalposts". Describing the Cuba gym, she mentions a "box" office adjoining the coach's office. A what ? Was this an office for boxes ? It would hardly have been a press box one wouldn't think. And then there was a player who drove for lay up and missed although he "tossed" it up. And, a shot is a shot, not a throw, unless someone throws it instead of shooting it. I wonder if there are some films somewhere which show these boys of the mid-century as they were. playing as they did ? Or if the authoress has any idea of how the game looked then ? Aside from not knowing what game must have appeared like, the authoress has produced a neat book in which one can grasp the tenor of life as experienced by its participants. Yet, I hungered for more of the very genre of insights she provided, such as pictures, verbally and actual pictures, of the participants away from the court. I would like to have seen more of this, the front of Harper's, a picture of the ball court there, the community as it was. And I searched the pictures that were vainly trying to grasp the Cuba gym. And I wonder if they dressed in a dressing room with showers, or in a class room ? Did they have JV preliminary games ? Or junior high games ? They gym was suggested by the authoress to be under regulation dimensions. Personally, the smallest gym I ever seen (not saw) was a junior high gym at Flint in Morgan County Alabama, the ceiling was in play and was just a few feet higher than the top of the wooden backboard, the end boundaries were painted half on the court and half on the wall at one end and on the stage at the other, and at the stage end the out of bounds line actually went up the steps on one side. Basketball courts vary in width and length, but the foul line is always ten feet from the goal (not the "goalpost"). Courts vary in length and width. I don't think there was any such animal as an unoffical court. Nevertheless, the authoress has provided a good story and an absorbing read about a happy collection, a synchronicity of capable youths and a coach who both taught and allowed the ablity of these boys of the mid-century to flow out of them. A remarkable story.
 When Cuba Conquered Kentucky is a fine American adventure! February 5, 2001
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Basketball was a passion in Kentucky & every highschool, no matter its size, organized a team to play game after game, traveling miles in all sorts of vehicles & weather. In Cuba, Kentucky, an isolated rural town around which three rivers poured & flooded, a group of rambunctious 8th grade boys became inspired by Coach Jack Story's dream of winning the 1952 state basketball championship & the American Dream. To a lesser degree yet with as much passion, the girls in the school fought & conspired to form a cheer leading troupe. In their long skirts & neck high Peter Pan blouses, they added their energy to the fever pitch. Marianne Walker has told their stories with enthusiasm including insights from a time before over-the-counter medicines; when most everyone raised their own food; many were share-croppers & there were no funded school programs; school bussing & television. In a time when radio was king, not everyone had telephones & sports writers were the revered messengers of the marathon games for which just about every person would turn out. Fascinating read! Do check out my full review.
When Cuba Conquered Kentucky January 12, 2000
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is an excellent, easy to read, true heart warming story that is a real inspiration. It is a classic, a book that every parent, teacher, coach and team player will enjoy and learn from.
"Cuba" is for those who love basketball and rural America January 2, 2000
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
As a radio newsman for the past 35 years I have had many interesting interview guests... including the legendary Adolph Rupp. No interview has been more interesting than the one I conducted in the summer of '99 with Marianne Walker and Howie Crittenden about the Cuba Cubs of 1951-52. Cuba defeated my hometown school (Corbin) in the '52 tournament, so I have no reason to feel warmly about that Graves county school. But I do. And it's because of the wonderful way Marianne made their story come alive. It's much more than a David and Goliath story. It's a story about shared dreams, hard work, and rural pride in dreams realized. If you're sick of high-salaried, big business basketball, return to the days of sport for sports sake....WHEN CUBA CONQURED KENTUCKY.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
