The IU basketball program held a former player reunion over the weekend.
Players as recent as Trayce Jackson-Davis were there, and a player from the 1953 national championship squad was in attendance as well.
Phil Byers came to IU from Evansville, Ind. in 1951. He played both football and basketball for a year for the Hoosiers before deciding to focus just on hoops after one season.
Byers was one of nine Hoosiers to play in the 1953 national title game, when Indiana beat Kansas 69-68 at the Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, Mo.
Indiana had all of their championship trophies — Big Ten and national titles — out of the trophy cases and in the program’s team room inside Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall this weekend.
Byers likely hadn’t touched the 1953 championship trophy in 71 years, but he got a chance to sit down with it this weekend. He’s probably in his early 90s based on his 1955 graduation year.
Here are photos of Byers as a player for Indiana, the team with the trophy in 1953, and Byers holding the trophy this weekend.
Photo – IU Archives
Photo – IU Archives
Photo – Adam Howard
Byers was an all-state football and basketball player at Reitz High School in Evansville.
For his career, Byers played in 57 games at IU and scored 93 points. The 5-foot-11 point guard took two shots in the 1953 title game and didn’t score.
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