A Retired USC Basketball Number That Will Stay Retired

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BOYD.BANNER

USC unveiled the banner last night to retire former player/coach Bob Boyd’s No. 19. The good news is the number will actually remain retired because 19 is no longer a legal number in college basketball. This will prevent another convoluted situation where Bill Sharman’s No. 11 gets unretired for Jordan McLaughlin and then Pat Haden says he got Sharman’s approval before his death.

Now let’s see if Reggie Miller claims Boyd’s banner is somehow disrespectul of his sister, Cheryl Miller.

BOYD.PLAYER

10 thoughts on “A Retired USC Basketball Number That Will Stay Retired”

  2. Kissy 86er actually showed his face on the ruin site so they called off the search and rescue operation.

  3. As usual the blogger misses the most obvious of the 5 W’s of journalism…

    WHY is # 19 no longer a legal number in college basketball ????

    Inquiring minds want to know.

    • Doing the obvious job the lazy or incompetent blogger can’t or won’t do….

      American basketball leagues at all levels traditionally use single and double digits between 0 and 5 (i.e. 0, 00, 1–5, 10–15, 20–25, 30–35, 40–45, and 50–55). The NCAA and most amateur competitions mandate that only these numbers be used. This eases non-verbal communication between referees, who use fingers to denote a player’s number, and the official scorer. In college basketball, single-digit players’ numbers are officially recorded as having a leading zero. Teams can have either a “0” or “00”, but they cannot have both.

      Basically, it eases the communication between the refs and the scorers; since you only have five fingers per hand, refs can only denote numbers one through five non-verbally. After a foul, if you watch the ref you’ll notice that they show the scorers which player it was by showing their jersey number with their hands.

      Art out (mic drop)

      • Nice work, Art. Was gonna ask Flow but you beat me to it. Definitely learned something new today. Thanks.

      • Wow. This was all way beyond Birdcage the Troll lover.

        Thanks for the great info. You’re an example of why USC fans really show up here.

  4. Coach Boyd deserves the honor of retiring his number. he was a very good coach. He did not buy a player but recruited, unlike the Cheater across town.

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