Larry Kenon was standing in the lobby of the Laurie-Walton Family Basketball Center, the University of Memphis basketball program’s five-year-old, $20 million practice facility, admiring a wall honoring former Tigers whose jerseys have been retired.

The occasion was the 50-year reunion of the team that reached the 1973 national championship game against UCLA.

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Kenon, a major reason for the Tigers’ successful run and one of those whose jersey number has been retired, was telling family members about the teammates with whom he shared a magical season.

A Texas junior college transfer who spent only the 1972-73 season with the Tigers, Kenon was in both a jovial and pensive mood. He smiled as he took multiple selfies with family, former teammates and basketball staff members in front of his retired jersey plaque in the area of the facility known as the Hall of Traditions.

And he exhibited a serious tone as he turned back to the wall and looked at large photographs accompanying the plaques, including one of late teammate Ronnie Robinson, a former Melrose High star and a starting forward on the team.

Kenon, not one who has spoken much through the years about his time in Memphis, stared at the plaque of Robinson, stopped talking for a moment, and allowed the memories to come rushing back.

Robinson averaged double figures in scoring and rebounding in his three seasons. He remains the only Tiger to have scored 1,000 points and grabbed 1,000 rebounds, and owns the single-game school record with 28 rebounds.

“I don’t think Ronnie Robinson gets enough credit,” Kenon said. “When I first came here, I had to show that guy I wasn’t afraid of him. He outweighed me by about 25 or 30 pounds. That guy was something else. I really miss him.”

Robinson’s rebounding ability was on display during the team’s NCAA Tournament run. In the Houston Regional, he had 17 rebounds against South Carolina and 16 against Kansas State in the regional final. In a national semifinal win over Providence, he also grabbed 16 rebounds.

“I had no aspirations of anything when I came to Memphis. It was just play hard, practice hard, the old American story. You do that, and you get just rewards. We did that, and it just magically came together.”

Larry Kenon

In addition to his 28-rebound game against Tulsa in 1971, he had three other games in his career in which he collected 24 rebounds.

“He was all heart and had a love for the game,” Kenon said. “He was the most fundamentally sound basketball player I was ever around.”

Kenon averaged 20.1 points and 16.7 rebounds for the Tigers and posted a remarkable 25 double-doubles in 30 games.

Yet he doesn’t reminisce much about the season in which he was named Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year, joined teammate Larry Finch on the five-member 1973 NCAA All-Tournament Team and received an Associated Press All-America honorable mention.

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Rather, Kenon likes to say they were “just a bunch of kids putting on our sneakers” and coming together for coach Gene Bartow.

“It’s not something I think about all the time,” said Kenon, whose single-season rebound average remains the school record.

“I had no aspirations of anything when I came to Memphis. It was just play hard, practice hard, the old American story. You do that, and you get just rewards. We did that, and it just magically came together.”

Behind Kenon’s contributions, which complemented what Finch, Robinson and Bill Laurie brought to the lineup, the Tigers put together an early season 14-game winning streak that calmed concerns following a 2-3 start.

“Larry Kenon just got better every freaking game,” said Bill Cook, a freshman guard on the 1972-73 team. “He’s the one who took us over the top.”

In the next-to-last game of the regular season, the Tigers clinched their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1962 with a victory at New Mexico State.

“We weren’t going to practice every day (that season) thinking we were going to be in the NCAA Tournament,” Kenon said. “At that time, there were only (25) teams that went to the tournament, so we had no aspirations. We were just enjoying ourselves.”

And Kenon enjoyed the competition, especially a championship game matchup with UCLA All-America center Bill Walton.

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Walton, famously, connected on 21 of 22 field goal attempts and finished with 44 points while leading the Bruins to their seventh consecutive national title. Kenon had 20 points and eight rebounds, but was hampered by foul trouble.

“(Kenon) was begging for the ball at the beginning (of the game),” said Doug McKinney, a reserve guard for the Tigers. “He wasn’t afraid of anybody.”

Kenon’s exceptional season was a prelude to a 10-year professional career, mostly in the NBA. He began in the old American Basketball Association, spending time with the New York Nets and playing alongside future NBA legend Julius Erving. Kenon averaged 15.9 points and 11.5 rebounds as a rookie, helping the Nets to the 1974 ABA championship.

A few years later, as a member of the San Antonio Spurs, he joined the NBA when the league added the Spurs, Nets, Denver Nuggets and Indiana Pacers. In the NBA, Kenon was twice named to the All-Star team.

Former Southwest Tennessee Community College coach and Tigers assistant Verties Sails was coaching at Melrose when the Memphis State program added Kenon to the mix. It was, Sails said, what the Tigers needed to take the next step.

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“Memphis was talented with Ronnie and Larry, but then they added Kenon,” Sails said. “(Kenon) played inside with Ronnie and Larry and he played outside in the pros. He was so talented.”

On the ride to the reunion in early March, Kenon, 70, told his family what a special arena the Mid-South Coliseum was and how electric the atmosphere was on a game day.

“I remember coming out of the locker room and looking up in the crowd and seeing those kids I’d just been in class with a couple of hours ago cheering their heads off for the team,” he said. “That’s what I found exciting. Those students fired us up.”

Kenon joined the program from Amarillo (Texas) College and admitted he kept a low profile. He enjoyed being in Memphis, but he didn’t experience too much of it.

“I was a 20-year-old kid with no bills, no kids,” Kenon said. “My life was just right there (on campus). I didn’t get out much in the city. I was insulated.”

But his skill set was obvious from the outset.

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Bob Jones, former Tigers basketball beat writer for The Commercial Appeal, recalled a preseason scrimmage in which he and late Memphis Press-Scimitar sports editor George Lapides served as coaches.

A draft was held. Jones, now 80, had done his homework. He had consulted with Tigers assistant coach Wayne Yates, a former NBA big man with an eye for talent.

“That year, Coach Bartow asked George and myself to be the coaches of the intrasquad preseason scrimmage,” Jones said. “We had a coin flip (to determine who chose first). I’d gone to Yates before the scrimmage. He said if I got first choice, I needed to take Kenon. We just blew Lapides out.”

Kenon admitted some didn’t think it made sense for him to come to Memphis. He had completed a season at Amarillo College in which he was among the top five scorers and rebounders in the nation. There was a justifiable reason to believe Kenon wouldn’t get many touches on a team led by Finch and Robinson.

But he hadn’t seen much of his family while in Texas the previous two seasons and made his decision based on the city’s proximity to his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Kenon said he didn’t even make an official visit to the Memphis campus.

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Although he had concerns about joining an established group, eventually, everything meshed.

“We just had a great core of guys who pulled for each other,” he said. “That’s what I remember. We pulled for each. We wanted it for each other.”