Cancer Stretches Back in Iowa Hoops History

Hawkeyes Lost Hugh Leffingwell to Disease During 1950s

Bucky O'Connor

IOWA CITY, Iowa - Iowa basketball Coach Bucky O’Connor’s second recruiting class was one of the best in program history. Maybe the best, if you base it on accomplishments on the court.

O’Connor’s 1952-53 class included four guys from Illinois and another from Iowa. We’re talking about Bill Logan from Keokuk and the Illinois foursome of Sharm Scheuerman (Rock Island), Carl Cain (Freeport), Bill Seaberg (Moline) and Bill Schoof (Homewood).

They became known as the Fabulous Five, reaching the Final Four in 1955 and 1956 and winning back-to-back Big Ten titles after a runner-up finish in 1953-54. Over those three seasons, Iowa was 56-18 overall and 35-7 in the Big Ten. They reached the Top 10 of the Associated Press basketball poll in each of those three seasons.

All five players had their numbers retired after the 1955-56 season, which ended with an 83-71 loss to San Francisco in the NCAA title game in Evanston, Ill.

If fate had played a kinder role, there might have been another number retired after that season. That recruiting class included another all-stater from Iowa, a shooting wizard who once made all 14 field-goal attempts in a high school game, set a state prep record with a streak of 27 consecutive made free throws and averaged 24.5 points as a junior and 25.9 as a senior.

His name was Hugh Leffingwell, a 6-3 forward from Marion who had been offered 11 tenders by Division I programs by his junior season. The straight “A’ student picked Iowa. O’Connor was asked in September of 1952 if this kid could cut the mustard against Big Ten competition.

“Listen, any kid that can hit the bucket like Hughie can find a spot on a basketball team somewhere,” O’Connor said.

But Leffingwell never got a chance to make O’Connor’s words prophetic.. Two years later, the Iowa basketball team gathered at Murdoch Chapel in Marion to pay their last respects to Leffingwell, who died of leukemia on Oct. 5, 1954.

Just how good a player was Hugh Leffingwell?

“If Hugh had lived, we might have had the Sensational Six, not just the Fabulous Five,” Bob Schulz, a former Iowa player and the Hawkeyes’ freshman coach in 1952-53, said years later.

Leffingwell’s scoring feats were legendary. He finished with 1,314 career points at Marion, all but 26 of them coming in his final two seasons. His career scoring record lasted 71 years until Brayson Laube broke it last month.

Leffingwell played with glasses on, but it didn’t seem to bother him.

“He’s the type of athlete who overcomes obstacles through sheer drive and determination,’ his coach, Les Hipple, once said.

Leffingwell was a good athlete. After winning the state football throw in the spring of 1950, Leffingwell was talked into playing football at Marion. He was the quarterback. But basketball was his true love, and Hugh perfected his shot on a basket in his driveway and in school gyms.

Marion was 74-6 in Leffingwell’s three seasons as a starter. In his final game, Marion lost to Logan’s Keokuk team in the state quarterfinals, 55-39, at Iowa Fieldhouse.

Entering the 1953-54 season, O’Connor decided to start the year with a platoon system. Leffingwell was joined by Deacon Davis, Bob George, Chuck Jarnigan and Doug Duncan on one unit. The second platoon was made up of Cain, Logan, Scheuerman, Schoof and Roy Johnson. In a 51-45 season-opening victory against Washington, O’Connor started Leffingwell’s platoon and played them 151/2 minutes. The second platoon, along with Seaberg and Babe Hawthorne off the bench, played the remainder of the game.

Leffingwell scored two points, and missed some shots he routinely made at Marion. He played without glasses, but said that didn’t bother him.

“It didn’t seem to affect my shooting, but I sure did miss some shots tonight, didn’t I?” he told the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

O’Connor thought Leffingwell played tight in his first varsity game.

“Bob George and Hugh Leffingwell were especially tight, I thought,” O’Connor said.

Leffingwell agreed.

“I don’t know why I was so tight out there,” he told the Gazette.

Leffingwell made the second, and last, start of his career in the second game of the season at Nebraska. O’Connor missed the game because he was attending the funeral of his father-in-law in Boone. Assistant Bump Elliott coached the team in his absence. Leffingwell didn't score in the 81-70 loss. O’Connor dropped Leffingwell to the third team after that game. When the Hawkeyes returned home from a road trip to UCLA and USC in late December, O’Connor was concerned about Leffingwell.

Shortly after a Jan. 9 game against Wisconsin at Iowa Fieldhouse, O’Connor ordered Leffingwell to go to University Hospitals and take some tests. Dr. W.D. Paul announced on Jan. 15 that the 19-year-old Leffingwell was diagnosed with leukemia, “a blood disease for which there is no known cure,” according to the university release.

“This is a tremendous blow and shock,” O’Connor said. “There’s not much more we can say except to offer our sympathy to Hugh and his parents.”

Leffingwell started taking blood transfusions. His Hawkeye teammates and other Iowa athletes donated blood.

O’Connor was worried about the state of his team heading into a home game against No. 10 Minnesota on Jan. 16.

“Our squad is predominately sophomores and the kids practically lived together,” O’Connor said. “The news about Hugh hit them hard.”

Iowa lost the game, 59-55, but ran off six consecutive victories after that. Four members of that 1952-53 class - Cain, Logan, Seaberg and Scheuerman - ended up starting along with junior McKinley “Deacon” Davis. Logan led the team in scoring at 14.3 points a game. Cain averaged 12.9.

Leffingwell was released from the hospital on Feb. 2, 1954. He enrolled for second-semester classes, and a release from the university said he planned to play basketball the following year.

But his health didn’t cooperate.

Leffingwell’s college basketball career lasted four games, with six points scored.

Hugh Leffingwell was inducted to the Iowa High School Athletic Association Basketball Hall of

fame in 1975, a fitting tribute to “the Marion soft-shot artist,” as the Des Moines Register’s Brad Wilson called him.