Ken Mink
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Ken Mink
A 73-Year-Old Gives Basketball a Second Shot
JACKSON, Tenn. — Before Sunday’s basketball game, Coach Yogi Woods gathered the junior varsity at Lambuth University. Watch out for 73 on the other team, he said. He did not mean the player’s number. He meant his age.
Ken Mink is writing a book about his season and a rap song for his teammates. He was an editor before taking to the courts again.
The visitors, Roane State Community College, had a septuagenarian guard, Ken Mink, college basketball’s oldest player, who has started a second career after his first ended a half century ago with a mysterious shaving-cream incident.
If the 6-foot Mink was good enough to play, he was good enough to be guarded, Woods told the Lambuth players. Then he turned to the freshman Kendrick Coleman and said: “If he goes in for a layup, don’t let him have it. If he scores on you, we will never let you forget it.”
This mixture of curiosity and macho dread has greeted Mink all season at colleges throughout Tennessee. After all, how do you defend a guy whose peers are generally pumping iron to supplement their blood levels, not to build their muscles? On Nov. 3, the junior-varsity coach at King College told one of the Roane players, whom he had coached in high school, “If the old guy scores, we’re walking home.”
Late in that game, Mink entered and found himself open in the corner. He gave a pump fake, and the defender ended up draped over him like raccoon coat. Calmly, he hit both free throws. The Hack-a-Mink strategy had failed.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/sp...player.html?hp
JACKSON, Tenn. — Before Sunday’s basketball game, Coach Yogi Woods gathered the junior varsity at Lambuth University. Watch out for 73 on the other team, he said. He did not mean the player’s number. He meant his age.
Ken Mink is writing a book about his season and a rap song for his teammates. He was an editor before taking to the courts again.
The visitors, Roane State Community College, had a septuagenarian guard, Ken Mink, college basketball’s oldest player, who has started a second career after his first ended a half century ago with a mysterious shaving-cream incident.
If the 6-foot Mink was good enough to play, he was good enough to be guarded, Woods told the Lambuth players. Then he turned to the freshman Kendrick Coleman and said: “If he goes in for a layup, don’t let him have it. If he scores on you, we will never let you forget it.”
This mixture of curiosity and macho dread has greeted Mink all season at colleges throughout Tennessee. After all, how do you defend a guy whose peers are generally pumping iron to supplement their blood levels, not to build their muscles? On Nov. 3, the junior-varsity coach at King College told one of the Roane players, whom he had coached in high school, “If the old guy scores, we’re walking home.”
Late in that game, Mink entered and found himself open in the corner. He gave a pump fake, and the defender ended up draped over him like raccoon coat. Calmly, he hit both free throws. The Hack-a-Mink strategy had failed.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/sp...player.html?hp
Last edited by Grifter; Dec 12, 2008 at 04:39 PM.