TicketsTony Yates was born on September 15, 1937, in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, to Robert and Alice Yates. At four years old, his neighborhood playmates were a year older than him and were starting kindergarten. Tony would follow them to school, then end up crying as his mom had to drag him back home, not understanding he wasn’t old enough yet. This went on for a while until Alice decided to enroll him in the school, but with a small problem. The doctor’s office where he was delivered had a fire, meaning his birth records were burned. So, Alice told the school that Tony was turning five on December 15th, and they accepted it.
Yates would later enroll at Lockland Wayne High School in Cincinnati, a school with an all-black student body, faculty, and support staff. He was a standout guard for the Panthers, and he graduated at 16 in 1954, thanks to starting school early.
However, Yates noticed that those at the college level didn’t seem to give him the same opportunities as other players in the area. While his teammates in high school all-star games were receiving full-ride scholarships from Dayton, Miami, and Xavier, Yates had only partial scholarship offers from the Musketeers and the Cincinnati Bearcats. Feeling let down, Yates elected to work odd sales jobs for a year, playing on barnstorming basketball teams with players older than him in the meantime.
He joined the U.S. Air Force, where he was assigned to Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. He regularly played various sports while in the Air Force, including basketball and fast-pitch softball. His time with the Air Force ended in 1959, and he still held dreams of playing college basketball.
Cincinnati still only offered him a partial scholarship. This time, though, Yates accepted, wanting to stay in his hometown. At 22, he would be able to live out his dream of playing college ball.
He was the oldest player on the 1959-60 freshman team by a few years, earning the nickname “Gramps” from his teammates. While he scored a decent amount for the Bearkittens, it was his defensive prowess that made Yates stand out from the rest. He would join the varsity squad the next season, filling a spot in a backcourt that had just lost Oscar Robertson to the NBA.
Described as “running four years behind the normal schedule” and being born “with a perpetual smile that gets bigger and brighter when he’s playing basketball” by the Enquirer, Yates carved out a role on Ed Jucker’s squad that was based on his defending and playmaking abilities. He was also seen as Jucker’s “coach on the floor” due to his experience and effort. If a player was not playing well, Yates would dribble past Jucker and tell him to take that player out of the game.
Yates’ first start on the varsity squad was against Dayton, with the Bearcats holding a 3-3 record. From that point on, the ‘Cats would not lose another game the entire season, as they rode a 24-game winning streak all the way to their first national championship in a 70-65 overtime thriller over Ohio State. Yates contributed 13 points in the game, with Jucker giving him praise for the “magnificent job” he did on the defensive side of the ball. At the championship celebration at Armory Fieldhouse, Jucker called Yates the “greatest defensive player in the country.”
“Gramps” would continue his winning streak as a starter into the next season before it was snapped at 28 games by Wichita State. Now described as the quarterback of the offense, he saw an uptick in production across the board, averaging nearly two more assists in 1961-62 than he did the previous season. He hit a career high in points against North Texas in January, dropping 23 by “hitting on outside shots with abandon,” according to the Post.
The Bearcats continued to dominate all season long, once again colliding with the Buckeyes in the national championship game. Acting as a “brilliant magician” in the rematch, Yates would score 12 points in an easy 71-59 UC victory. In his first two years on varsity, Yates helped lead UC to two national titles.
His excellent play would continue into his senior year, after he was named team captain. The Bearcats would make a third straight national championship, falling just short of a three-peat in an overtime loss to Loyola-Chicago. For his efforts, he was named a third-team All-American by the Associated Press, wrapping up an illustrious collegiate career. In the span of almost a decade, Yates had gone from foregoing college basketball altogether and enrolling in the Air Force to getting married, finally returning home, and becoming a two-time national champion and one of the most beloved Bearcats in program history. During his three years, UC recorded an incredible 82-7 record.
He was selected in the fifth round of the 1963 NBA Draft by the St. Louis Hawks and returned to UC as an assistant coach under Tay Baker and Gale Catlett in the 1970s. A decade later, he would become the program’s first black head coach, mentoring players like Roger McClendon across five seasons.
Yates was inducted into the UC Athletics Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame in 2020. He passed away on May 16, 2020, at the age of 82. When asked about Yates by the Enquirer, McClendon had immense admiration for him:
"He was very stern in his values and what he thought was important. He was a family man. He taught people about life. People called him stubborn in a way, but what he went through in the military to battling racism, to being in sales, and then getting the privilege to be a coach ... he came from the school of hard knocks.”
“He was the pillar. He gave back, volunteered in the community. He’s going to be missed.”