THIS DAY IN GOPHER HISTORY- DECEMBER 16, 1950

[Nomellini]

Minnesota 72 Pittsburgh 43
Gophers run out to 37-13 lead at break and hold Pitt to 23% shooting. Minnesota gets 11 points from a slick guard who will go on to play for the Minneapolis Lakers. He is sometimes credited with inventing the jump shot. Can you name him?

 

[Doc Gopher]

Leo: Meyer "Whitey" Skoog

 

[sunnyday2]

Whitey actually played forward for the Gophers but, yes, guard for the Lakers. He was from Brainerd though he learned the jump shot in the Army. The idea that he invented the J is of course foolishness. The technology for getting action photos from basketball games and printing them in the newspaper came into being in the mid-1930s. Look at the sports pages from the mid- to late 1930s and you'll see plenty of photos of basketball players shooting while jumping. Sure, the techniques varied, but if those aren't jump shots, I don't know what they are. But it is true that they 1st started calling it the "jump shot" in the early 50s, and Skoog was a leading practitioner at that time. He was a 2 time all-American at the U, and later scored as many as 15 ppg for a world championship team, not bad. I had the pleasure to meet Whitey 25-20 years later as a young advertising account exec, Whitey had founded a company which my company pitched but did not end up serving. He was also long-time coach at Gustavus.