1975 Plaisance Team Had Camaraderie
BOBBY ARDOIN
St. Landry Now.com Editor
Ask any player from the 1975 Plaisance High team to identify the key ingredient that enabled them to capture the first boys’ state basketball title in St. Landry Parish history and they all have the same answer.
“It was the chemistry. That was the main thing along with the closeness we had. The guys played together,” says Dr. Willie Collins, a longtime Opelousas dentist and former high school forward who helped with the inside scoring and defense for a Plaisance team that gathered at a local restaurant Saturday night to reminisce about a season they haven’t forgotten.
Plaisance defeated Chaneyville High 58-50 in the Class 1A championship game played at Rapides Coliseum in Alexandria guided by head coach Murphy Guillory, a longtime parish coaching icon and state coaching Hall of Fame recipient.
Combined with the ability of Guillory, who stressed conditioning along with his fairness and flashes of likability, the Indians reached the Saturday championship game 50 years ago after defeating Davidson High in a semifinal contest and beating Brusly in the quarterfinal round.
Longtime Plaisance assistant Donald Dupree, who perhaps knew Guillory best and who eventually took over the Indians’ basketball program, remembers that he and Guillory initially felt the 1973-74 team actually had a better chance of winning a championship.
However Collins said the players started the next season with a confident vibe that maybe went unnoticed by their coaches.
“The year before we lost in the semifinals. It was basically a senior team. Our team (1974-75) scrimmaged those seniors a couple of months later. Coach Guillory set it up like a regular game and we beat the team from the year before. That gave us some confidence,” Collins said.
Dupree said the players on the state title team were coachable.
The team also knew hardknocks basketball, since most of them grew up playing a physical game in the backyards near the campus.
It was also a unified bunch, Dupree said.
“With the state championship team, it was all about teamwork, combined with getting along so well with one another. The team the year before was the one we thought would bring back the championship, but it was the one that followed that did it,” Dupree said.
Forward John Watson, who attended the event, described Guillory as a coach who acquired a player’s respect in a variety of ways.
“Coach Guillory could be easy going and he was enjoyable to play for. However he could be firm and he really believed in conditioning. He certainly stressed being in shape,” Watson recalled.
Watson said the Indians were versatile when it came to running an offense.
Defensively Plaisance used a variety of man defenses along with zone mixtures that featured center Joel Murray in the middle.
Guard Tom Green, who Dupree estimates finished the championship season averaging in the 20’s, said he and his teammates were always in shape.
“All of us played all the sports. We were football players and then it was basketball. After that we all ran track. I remember working out in our gym, running and doing those figure eight drills you had back then,” Green said.
Green remembered that he had his teammates always respected what the coaches wanted them to do.
“Most of all we listened. Whatever the coaches said, we did. Coach Guillory had us disciplined,” Green said.
Murray recalled that the Plaisance title team was composed of players with sufficient athleticism and talent.
“At the guards we had (Green) and Greg Dupre. We had good height on the inside and scoring ability. We also had John Wheeler and Wilbert Green with us that season. You could say everything just came together,” Murray added.
Murray wore a championship ring to the reunion, but he and the others who attended admitted there was a tangible piece of the tile that was missing.
No one can locate the state championship trophy, which Tom Green and Guillory think may have once resided in the school gymnasium foyer or possibly might still be in the school library.
Plaisance flooded several years ago and there is suspicion that the trophy and other awards from Plaisance athletics may have been moved then, or possibly a former principal may have dumped the trophies in the trash, some of the former players thought.
However Murphy Guillory Jr., who attended the event along with Clyde Watson, said it’s the memories of that special season that can’t be erased.
“I know these guys remember. And as you can see, all of them are still close. If you were with my father and you were in a store or around people that he knew, this team, that championship and what it meant to him was something he would always get around to talking about. It never left him,” Guillory said.
