Jerry Waugh remembers well the moments leading up to the first basketball game between traditional college basketball powers Kansas and Kentucky on Dec. 16, 1950, in Lexington.

Phog Allen coached Kansas; his former player, Adolph Rupp, coached Kentucky. Three of KU’s starters from that game, Bill Hougland, Bill Lienhard and Waugh, live in Lawrence.

“We came in after warmups, and Doc had a training table set up in the middle of the dressing room under a couple of lights,” Waugh said of Allen. “The rest of the room was dark. He always wrote the names of the five starters on the chalkboard and what our defensive responsibilities were.”

Superstar center Clyde Lovellette and Claude Houchin were the other two Kansas starters.

“Doc said, ‘You five men can represent the great tradition of Kansas against another great tradition, Kentucky. And you five are the only ones who can carry the flag.’ He was very inspirational in setting the scene,” Waugh said. “And we went out there and got our tails kicked.”

Bill Spivey (22 points), Frank Ramsey (19) and Walter Hirsch (10) led the Wildcats to a 68-39 victory witnessed by 13,000 in Memorial Coliseum. Lovellette scored 10 points and was the only Kansas player in double figures.

“Kentucky was ready to play, and we were ready for Christmas,” Waugh said. “That put a scar on my soul that will never heal.”

Don’t feel too sorry for Waugh. He has eight holes-in-one to his credit, routinely beats his age on the golf course and has a mind sharper than the tip of a tungsten needle.

Waugh and Hougland attended KU’s practice Wednesday, and Hougland and Lienhard plan to attend Saturday’s game vs. Kentucky in Allen Fieldhouse. Waugh, who with wife Delores spent four weeks in Wichita rehabilitating from an automobile accident, suffered a fractured ankle and will not attend the game.

“I’ll be disappointed not to see this game,” Waugh said.

A former assistant coach at KU, Waugh watches his alma mater religiously on TV.

“They’re veterans, and they should be taking better care of the ball,” Waugh said. “That’s the exasperating part. When they do throw it away, most of the time it’s because it’s someone doing something on his own rather than doing it within the movement of the offense.”

Lienhard, whom Waugh called a “great shooter,” predicts a victory for his school, but has concerns.

“The problem with our team is we live or die with the three,” Lienhard said. “If we’re not making the three, we get beat. Our offense is out of whack.”

Hougland came away from Wednesday’s practice impressed with the effort of the players.

“He’s working the heck out of them,” Hougland said of coach Bill Self. “The thing that I was really impressed with was that after practice, the kids came over and said hello to us. That’s Self’s influence on them. It was obvious that was something he thought they should do, and that was really nice.”

Hougland said he doesn’t remember much from the game other than that, “They beat the heck out of us.”

“Rupp and Doc were friends,” Hougland said.

Such good friends that Rupp was one of Allen’s pallbearers.

Lienhard, also a pallbearer at Allen’s funeral, remembered that Kentucky was supposed to return the game the following season but canceled, and the series didn’t resume until 1959, when Kentucky won, 77-72, in Allen Fieldhouse.

Kentucky leads the series, 22-6, and has a three-game winning streak, including last season’s 72-40 blowout in Chicago in the Champions Classic. One quarter of the games have been decided by margins of greater than 20 points, including Kansas victories by scores of 150-95 (Dec. 9, 1989, Allen Fieldhouse) and 73-46 (Jan. 7, 2006, Allen Fieldhouse).

Kansas, with far more players back from last season’s loss than Kentucky and with the Allen Fieldhouse crowd backing it, will be favored in this one.

— Sports editor Tom Keegan appears on The Drive, Sunday nights on WIBW-TV.