Orange Had Its Day in Sun 75 Years Ago : Boys’ basketball: Albert Kuechel, the lone survivor from that State championship team, says players expected to win.

ORANGE — Orange High played Stockton for the State basketball championship 75 years ago next month--Woodrow Wilson was president, and World War I had just ended--but starting center Albert Kuechel recalls the game as if it was played last week.

“I played every minute of the game, and I made seven baskets and 14 of our points,” said Kuechel, who at 94 is the only living member of the Orange team. “We beat them, 45-29. We expected to win. We had won all of our league games and we had a pretty good team.”

Kuechel even recalls minute details of Orange’s semifinal victory over Colton for the Southern California championship.

“We beat them, 28-16, at Colton and we couldn’t hit a free throw for the love of it,” Kuechel said. “I think all of our points that day came on field goals.”

Kuechel, the tallest player on his team at 5 feet 11 3/4, was somewhat reticent to say how vital he was to Orange’s victory over Stockton on March 27, 1920. But newspaper accounts in the Stockton Record gave him credit for controlling the game: “Kuechel outjumped Schaefer (Stockton’s center) on nearly every jump, putting Stockton on the defensive from the start.” In the 1920s, there was a center jump after every basket, so winning jump balls was an integral part of the game.

Kuechel also recalled that guard Lyle Richards, the team captain, had a “real good game” against Stockton, which had defeated Utah in the quarterfinals and Nevada in the semifinals of what was also known as the Western States Championship. The box score showed that Richards had 10 points, and forward Dwight Roberts scored a game-high 17 points.

The box score and newspaper accounts were provided by Orange’s John Dowden, whose father, Albert Dowden, coached the team. Dowden said his mother, Ruth, actually dated Stockton’s coach, Pete Lenz, before she married Albert Dowden.

“I guess she decided to go with the winning team,” said Dowden, whose son, Bill, played for Orange in the 1970s and is now an assistant boys’ basketball coach at Camarillo.

Dowden said his father never took much credit for leading Orange to an 18-2 record and the State title. Orange’s only losses were to Los Angeles Harvard Military Academy and Long Beach.

“He said they had all played together when they were younger and that it was just a matter of keeping them focused,” John Dowden said of his father, who later coached swimming at UCLA and California. “He gave all the credit to the team, but I know he was damn proud of the team and the achievement.”

The crowd that day in Stockton’s gym was listed as 1,500 by the Orange Daily News. Reporter Bill Hart wrote: “Orange’s clean accurate passing gave a machine-like quality to their play. They whisked the ball across the field time after time almost without interference. The ease with which that shower of field goals were rained stunned the Stockton players and crowd alike.”

Kuechel said the team was greeted at the train station by the whole town. “I remember we had a special assembly to honor us and the city took up a collection and bought us sweaters and basketballs to pin on the sweaters,” he said.

The Orange Daily News reported that Orange merchants decorated their shops in orange and the town had a parade for the team.

Kuechel, who played college basketball at North Central Illinois and taught high school music in the Los Angeles area, said the team never had any reunions. A few years later, starting forward Neal Granger was killed in an automobile accident on his way back from Harvard, Kuechel said.

“He was the most unselfish player on the team,” Kuechel said.

Dave Zirkle, Orange athletic director, honors the school’s only State champion basketball team with a banner that hangs in Orange’s gym, The Dome. Zirkle said he paid an Ohio company $600 to make the banner.

Is it worth the money?

How else would visitors know what Albert Kuechel and friends accomplished in 1920?