Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Clarence "Bevo" Francis stands in front of a team photo from his freshmen year at Rio Grande College. Francis is No. 32 in the middle. Click photo for larger image.

Bevo Francis, a man of few words and many records, remembers little about the night he scored 113 points in a college basketball game. "I've never dwelled on it," he says, 50 years after the fact. "Somebody did a computer analysis and told me that, if the three-point shot had existed, I would have scored 164 in that game." Francis stood 6 feet 9, weighed 190 pounds and could run and jump like an antelope. He played basketball for Rio Grande College, which had just 92 students, 38 of them boys. But the obscure Ohio school (pronounced Rye-o Grand) featured a cast of good athletes and a show-biz genius of a coach in Newt Oliver.

"I had a Division I team in that little, podunk place," said Oliver, now 80 years old.

He knew just how to take advantage of his riches.

Oliver reasoned that, if his five starters each averaged 12 or 15 points a game, nobody would give a hoot about the Rio Grande Redmen. But if one player scored 50 a game, he could create a sensation in the middle of nowhere.

"I told the team we'd have people breaking down the doors to watch us play," he said.

His players may have doubted him, for Rio Grande had only four buildings at the time, one a gym without any seats. But they went along with his strategy of making Francis the team's designated scorer. The other starters -- Dick Barr, Roy Moses, Bill Ripperger and Wayne Wiseman -- put aside their egos.

Francis, a center who played outside as well as inside, said he cannot specifically recall what he thought of the one-man scoring scheme. All he knew was that he seemed destined to play basketball, the game that rescued him from childhood trauma.

Finding fame

	Never to be broken? Bevo Francis' record 113-point game has stood atop the NCAA record books for 50 years. It has to be included with any of the following when it comes to arguing those sports records that have stood the test of time and just might never be broken. The others: Career wins by pitcher Cy Young, who retired in 1911. Has stood for 92 years. Batting average of Rogers Hornsby in 1924 -- the highest of the modern era. Has stood for 79 years. Hack Wilson's single-season RBI total in 1930. Has stood for 73 years. Points scored by Wilt Chamberlain vs. the New York Knicks in an NBA game in 1962. Has stood for 42 years. Goals scored by Wayne Gretzky in the 1981-82 NHL season. Has stood for 21 years. Games in a row won by the men's basketball team at UCLA (1971-74) -- a major-college record. Has stood for 30 years. Games in a row that Joe DiMaggio hit in in 1941. Has stood for 62 years. TD passes in a single NFL season for Dan Marino in 1984. Has stood for 19 years. Wins for Richard Petty in NASCAR's 1967 season. Has stood for 37 years. Consecutive PGA tournaments won by Byron Nelson in 1945. Has stood for 58 years. Consecutive NCAA men's basketball titles by UCLA (1967-73). Has stood for 30 years. Feb. 2, 1954 Scorecard

Gangly and anemic, Clarence Francis was born Sept. 4, 1932, in Hammondsville, Ohio, about 55 miles west of Pittsburgh. Nicknamed Bevo after his father's preferred brand of beer, he missed two years of grade school because of illness.

Once he grew stronger, Francis gravitated to the rural basketball courts around his hometown. Some days he shot the ball for eight hours at a time.

By the time he was a teenager, Francis had turned into a beanpole with a deadly jump shot. Older than his classmates because he had missed so much school, he was regarded as a ringer on the court.

That reputation stuck to him like tar, especially because he transferred from Irondale to Wellsville (Ohio) High for his freshman year. Rivals protested that Francis had been recruited in violation of scholastic rules.

So loud were the howls of protest that Francis was declared ineligible during his first two years of high school.

Once unleashed as a junior, he averaged 30.6 points a game for a Wellsville team that went 23-2 in 1951-52. Oliver coached him that year. It turned out to be the last hurrah in Wellsville for each of them.

Francis would turn 20 before his senior season, making him ineligible for Ohio high school basketball. A pack of college recruiters swooped in to try to sign him.

By Francis' recollection, 64 colleges offered him a basketball scholarship. He chose Rio Grande because Oliver, a graduate of the college, had taken the head coaching job there.

In the fall of 1952, Francis completed the last two credits he needed to receive his high school diploma. Then he joined Oliver in the college ranks.

"Contrary to what is often said, we didn't pay Bevo to get him. Not a nickel," Oliver said.

Francis, already married and the father of an infant son, received a full scholarship and housing.

Rio Grande, west of Gallipolis in southeastern Ohio, might as well have been in Argentina when it came to getting press coverage. It had won only four games the year before Francis and Oliver arrived. Another of the college's obstacles to athletic notoriety was its weak schedule.

In addition to competing against other small four-year colleges, Rio Grande traditionally played a mix of junior colleges and teams from military bases. Oliver inherited that hodgepodge schedule in 1952-53.

Rio Grande blew away a string of unheralded opponents. All fell without fanfare. Then one mismatch got so out of hand that it turned Francis into a red-hot story.

On Jan. 19, 1953, he scored 116 points in a 150-85 victory over Ashland (Ky.) Junior College. The NCAA subsequently refused to recognize Francis' scoring record because the competition was against a two-year school. That triple-digit game was erased from the record book, as though it never happened.

Nonetheless, Francis and Rio Grande had found the spotlight. He achieved just what his coach envisioned, averaging 50.1 points for the season, and 48.3 in games recognized by the sanctioning body of college sports.

Rio Grande finished 39-0 in 1952-53. Twenty-seven of its wins came against teams that did not grant degrees, but public interest in Francis and his team surged anyway.

"By then we had more reporters on campus than we had students," Oliver said.

A season to remember

Francis' startling statistics set the stage for bigger opportunities. Oliver got busy and began scheduling major universities for the following season.

He booked Rio Grande to play Creighton, North Carolina State, Providence, Villanova and Wake Forest, all on the road. He had no choice. Rio Grande's gym had no showers or bleachers. Folding chairs had to be hauled in to accommodate fans. Teams the caliber of Wake Forest would never consent to visit such a backwater.

Not every collegiate power wanted to test itself against upstart Rio Grande. To this day, Francis maintains that Ohio State ducked his team.

Even without the Buckeyes on the schedule, Francis faced decidedly improved competition in his sophomore year. No college basketball star ever streaked higher or flamed out faster than he did.

Rio Grande failed in its first big test when it played Adelphi Dec. 3, 1953, in Madison Square Garden. Before a crowd of more than 13,000, Francis scored 32, but only four in the second half as Rio Grande faded and lost, 83-76. New York writers proclaimed him overrated.

Oliver says it was momentary stage fright.

"Worst game we ever played," he said. "You know, country kids who had never seen the big city."

In Philadelphia the next night, Villanova edged Rio Grande in overtime, 93-92. Francis scored 39, and media interest in him escalated again, even though Rio Grande had lost two in a row after 40 consecutive victories.

Rio Grande then defeated Providence in Boston Garden and Miami in Florida. Francis scored 41 against the Friars and lit up the Hurricanes for 48.

After that, Rio Grande headed to a Christmas tournament in Raleigh, N.C., where it lost by 15 to North Carolina State and defeated Wake Forest by two. Francis scored 34 and 32.

He accumulated his points in an era without the three-point shot or the one-and-one bonus shot on free throws. Even casual fans began to follow his exploits, which peaked Feb. 2, 1954, against Hillsdale College of Michigan.

The teams met in a high school gym in Jackson, Ohio. Hillsdale's defenders swarmed all over Francis but could not contain him. He had one of those nights where the basket seemed as big as a swimming pool.

"Bevo made shots from deep in the corner, even with two or three men hanging on him," said Wiseman, Rio Grande's point guard,

Francis, shooting on almost every possession, made 38 baskets in 70 attempts. He also made 37 of 45 free throws.

At the final buzzer, he had a college-record 113 points. Rio Grande won the game, 134-91.

In 27 games against four-year schools, Francis averaged 46.5 points. Rio Grande finished 21-7 overall and cracked the nation's top 20.

Then, in a flash, Francis' college career was finished. Rio Grande suspended its basketball hero for skipping classes and missing exams.

"One day he just got up and left," Wiseman said.

Going pro

Today, a player of Francis' caliber who flunked out might immediately find a lucrative career in the National Basketball Association. But in 1954, steelworkers made more than NBA stars.

Francis and Oliver bolted Rio Grande about the same time, hoping to make a bundle as foils for the Harlem Globetrotters. Francis signed to play for the Boston Whirlwinds, a white team that traveled with the Trotters. Oliver was named the Boston team's coach, though he had no influence on the outcome of games, all of which were rigged for the Trotters to win.

Monotony became their steady companion. For two quarters each night, Francis and the Whirlwinds would play reasonably hard. Clowning dominated the rest of the game.

Oliver says Francis gained 40 or 50 pounds during his association with the Trotters. He lost his shooting touch and some competitive fire.

The Philadelphia Warriors wanted to bring Francis to the NBA, but they never could agree on money. Francis said the team's offer peaked at $3,500, about one-fourth what the Trotters had paid him.

Francis still had a name people recognized, so he barnstormed and then played in the Eastern League, a lower-tier professional circuit. His basketball career ended in the early 1960s, when he returned to Ohio and went to work loading trucks in a steel mill. Francis held the job for nearly 20 years until the plant closed in 1982.

Now 71, he lives in Salineville, Ohio, about an hour's drive from Pittsburgh. His passion is the outdoors. He hunts during winter, and camps when the weather turns warmer.

As for Oliver, he made millions investing in the stock market. He lives today in Springfield, Ohio.

The Walt Disney Co. bought the rights to a movie about Francis, Oliver and Rio Grande, but nothing came of the project. In many respects, it was as much a David-Goliath saga as the other great basketball story of 1954. That one happened in Indiana, where Milan High School, with 162 students, 73 of them boys, won the state championship.

Milan defeated Oscar Robertson's Crispus Attucks team in the quarterfinals, and nipped Muncie Central, 32-30, in the title game. The tiny school that won a state title inspired the 1986 movie "Hoosiers."

In terms of national exposure, Francis' glorious year was overshadowed by what happened in Indiana.

But he is still a big man on the Rio Grande campus. Today, Rio Grande is a university with about 2,200 students. It annually hosts basketball tournaments in honor of both Francis and Oliver.

Oliver says he saw better players than Francis. "But I would say he was the greatest shooter," Oliver added. "In his prime, he shot it better than anybody."