TicketsPaul Hogue was born April 28, 1940, in Knoxville, Tennessee, to Otis and Melissa Hogue, and was raised in the Five Points community as a child. His athleticism was on display from an early age, as he frequently played basketball at the courts across the street from his house, which was then known as Union Square Park.
Hogue would attend Austin High School during his teenage years, where his father was the principal. While he played offensive tackle on the football team, his size would prove to be the difference on the basketball court. The Knoxville Journal mentioned Hogue being 6’8” at just 15 years old, helping him become one of the Panthers’ key players as a sophomore.
By the time his senior year began in 1957, Hogue was considered one of the best basketball prospects in the state of Tennessee and led what The Knoxville News-Sentinel called “one of the nation’s best Negro high school teams.” However, with segregation still a major issue in the United States at the time (the Little Rock Nine had begun to attend Little Rock Central High School in the same school year), he received no interest in playing basketball from any schools in the South, which was commonplace for black players until the late ‘60s.
Programs such as Dayton, Kansas, Ohio State, and St. Louis were keen to recruit Hogue, however, who was averaging 20 points and 20 rebounds for the Panthers in his last year of high school hoops. But there was one school in particular that had an advantage over the rest, in the form of one of Paul’s biggest basketball idols.
Oscar Robertson was playing his first varsity basketball season for Cincinnati at the time, making a name for himself as one of the finest players in the country. On a visit to Cincinnati, Hogue met Robertson, who also had to endure racism and discrimination during his experiences in high school and beyond. He decided he wanted to play with The Big O after meeting with him and signed his National Letter of Intent in February of 1958, becoming a Bearcat.
After enrolling at Cincinnati, Hogue got the chance to room with Robertson in French Hall, whose doors were too low for the man the Cincinnati Post labeled the “tallest UC hoopman of all time.” Hogue spent his first year on campus on the freshman team, earning a varsity spot during the 1959-60 season. Expectations were high for the big man, who was seen as the paint patroller the Bearcats desperately needed to pair up with Robertson.
The tandem worked together beautifully, with Big O filling up the stat sheet and Hogue relieving some of the pressure Robertson had when it came to snagging boards. One of the greatest examples of how dominant they could be came in a game against St. Bonaventure in December, where the two combined for an incredible 62 points and 39 rebounds. Hogue, who was described by the Cincinnati Enquirer as someone who “more and more becomes a tower of strength in every game,” contributed 23 of those boards.
Hogue’s sophomore season was a successful one, contributing to Cincinnati’s Final Four appearance and being voted as the team’s most improved player by his peers. He was seen as a focal point of the new era of Bearcats basketball, as Robertson had been selected by the Royals in the 1960 NBA Draft, and longtime head coach George Smith left his post with the basketball program to become the athletic director.
Most preseason polls had UC ranked in the teens, unsure of how the team would look with Hogue, Carl Bouldin, and Bob Wiesenhahn leading the way. They got off to a rocky start, holding a 4-3 record over the first seven games. After a loss to Bradley in Peoria, Enquirer sports editor Dick Forbes wrote that the young players “simply weren’t good enough” to grab a road win against one of the best teams in the country.
That statement aged poorly, as the Bearcats would begin one of the greatest winning streaks in college basketball history. After kickstarting it with a win against Dayton on December 29th, the streak hit 10 victories against the Braves at Armory Fieldhouse on January 31st, with Hogue putting up 16 points and nine rebounds in a 73-72 win. The winning came with some fun off the court, too. Days before Hogue dropped 26 and 18 against Wichita State in February, he reportedly tried shaving future UC Hall of Famer George Wilson’s head, who was a freshman at the time. He apparently did such a bad job that Wilson ended up shaving all his hair off, electing to go bald instead.
For as bad as he was as a barber, Hogue was becoming a remarkable player for Cincinnati, being described as one of the “nation’s leading basketball sharpshooters” by the Post. Leading the way with Bouldin and Wiesenhahn, “Duke” (as his teammates called him) rode a twenty-game winning streak into another Final Four appearance, this time against Utah. In the biggest game of his life up to that point, Hogue posted 18 points and 14 rebounds, giving Cincinnati an 82-67 victory over the Utes, setting up an All-Ohio national championship bout against Jerry Lucas and the Ohio State Buckeyes.
Head coach Ed Jucker gave Hogue one major responsibility when facing 27-0 Ohio State: ensuring Lucas did not take over the game. While Jerry had 18 points at halftime, Hogue did a masterful job on defense in the second half, allowing Lucas to score only three more field goals while getting him up to four fouls in the contest. While Hogue himself contributed nine points and seven rebounds, one of his greatest plays came in crunch time. Tied at 61 with one second remaining, the Buckeyes tried to get Lucas the final shot, throwing him a pass near the basket. However, Hogue intercepted the pass, sending the game to overtime, where the Bearcats pulled away 70-65, earning them their first national championship in school history.
Hogue finished the 1960-61 season as the team’s leading rebounder and shot blocker, with the highest field-goal percentage on the squad and the second-most points per game at 16.8. He earned 2nd-team All-America honors from Converse and was named team captain for the following season at the team’s award ceremony in April.
It was now Hogue’s chance to be Cincinnati’s absolute star player, as he was described as “the most underrated player in the U.S.” by Jucker before the start of the season. The Bearcats picked up from where they left off the year before, finishing the regular season 25-2 with a 14-game win streak and another Missouri Valley Conference title. In a game against Drake in February 1962, "Tall Paul” posted a career-high 29 points, moving him to third all-time on Cincinnati’s career scoring list.
Hogue led the team in scoring for the first time with 16.9 points per game, while also leading the team once again in rebounds. After finishing the season with a win against fifth-ranked Bradley, the Bearcats would win their first two games in the NCAA tournament to reach their fourth-consecutive Final Four. It was in these two games that Hogue further cemented himself as one of the greatest players to ever play for the Bearcats, making his talents undeniable to the rest of the country. Next up, UCLA in the semifinals.
In a game described as a “point-for-point, basket-for-basket dazzler” by the Enquirer, Hogue had the game of his life. He put up an incredible 36 points and 19 rebounds, almost single-handedly winning the game for Cincinnati, and giving them a shot at back-to-back national championships. He shot 66.7% from the field in that game; the rest of the team shot 37.5%. Their opponent in the title game? Jerry Lucas and the Ohio State Buckeyes, in a rematch for the ages.
After barely scraping by the Bruins in a game where Hogue bruised his hand, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for OSU to get a taste of revenge against UC by denying their in-state rivals a second national title.
Hogue would not be denied, however. Once again getting the chance to match up against Lucas, he dominated the Buckeyes inside Freedom Hall, posting 22 and 19 while smothering Lucas on defense, holding him to just 11 points. There would be no dramatic ending this time, as the Bearcats coasted to a 71-59 victory, giving them their second consecutive national championship. Hogue would earn Most Outstanding Player honors for the tournament, racking up 58 points and 41 rebounds in the final two games alone.
He earned 1st-team All-America honors from multiple outlets at the conclusion of his senior season and was named Player of the Year by the Helms Foundation. At the time of his graduation, Hogue was third in program history in both rebounds and points and was only the second UC player ever to have multiple 500-point seasons, next to Robertson.
Hogue was selected with the 2nd pick of the 1962 NBA Draft by the New York Knicks, playing three seasons in the league. After his basketball career ended, he worked for many years for the U.S. Postal Service in Cincinnati. He was married to his wife, Patti, for 43 years, and they had three sons and one daughter. He was inducted into the UC Athletics Hall of Fame in 1982 and the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.
He passed away on August 17, 2009, at the age of 69. Two years later, the City of Knoxville renamed Union Square Park, where Hogue spent countless hours as a boy falling in love with basketball, in his honor as Paul Hogue Park.