1957  LRCHS  BASKETBALL

     "I played on a championship basketball team 13 years ago here at Central and have hoped since then to coach one" mused the Tiger head basketball coach Lawrence Mobley.  With the 1957 Tigers, Coach Mobley got this wish.

     The '57 Tigers were the Big Eight Conference Champions, winning eleven and losing three games in Conference play.  Seniors Harry Vines, Carl Powell, Marshall Day, John Robinson, and Butch Ferriter played with the first championship team in their high school years.  In the non-conference play before the actual season, the LR cagers won six, beating North Little Rock, Berryville, Harrison, Jonesboro twice, Sheridan, and losing by three points to Pine Bluff.  During the Big Eight Christmas Tourney, Coach Mobley's crew defeated El Dorado 70-46; Pine Bluff 55-54; and North Little Rock 54-47, winning the tournament.

     Entering the conference with nine winning experiences and only one loss in the pre-season play, the hoopsters beat Hot Springs 56-54 and Texarkana 52-49, in two close games.  During the entire season, the Tigers played nine if their twenty-four games with final scores of three or fewer points difference.  Beating Pine Bluff and Fort Smith in a row, they lost to strong El Dorado Wildcats in another close contest, 55-53.  With Blytheville an easy target and the Wildcats from across the river almost as easy, the Tigers were on top again.  Hot Springs' surprised tally of 42 points with CHS trailing by only one point, put the championship flag into a more competitive race.

     Then after swamping Pine Bluff by 39 points, and downing Texarkana by 11, the Tigers faced in the last four games, the four strongest teams in the conference.  First, beating the North Side lads by one point in a thriller, the hoop stars went on the following Friday night to beat El Dorado.  In the final week-end of play the Bengals lost a close one to Fort Smith.  On Saturday night they clinched the Big 8 title by soundly defeating Blytheville, thus rounding out the season with twenty wins and four losses and making them the undisputed champions of the Big Eight Conference.