January 18

From Hoopedia

• 1896 - The University of Chicago defeats Iowa, 15-12 to win the first college basketball game with five players to a side. It was the idea of Iowa Professor Henry F. Callenberg (who refereed the game) to reduce the sides from seven or nine. Amos Alonzo Stagg coached the Chicago team. About 400 spectators crowded into the Iowa Armory to witness the recently-invented game. (Some sources report the game date to be January 16; some also report the final score to be 13-12, Chicago.)

• 1928 - (Right) Hall of Famer Alexander Gomelsky is born near Leningrad, USSR (Russia). He would coach the Soviet Union to seven European championships, two world championships and one Olympic gold medal.

• 1950 - Dino Meneghin, one of the greatest European players of all time, and only the second Italian player inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, is born in Alano di Piave, Italy.

• 1967 - Harlem Globetrotter star Reece "Goose" Tatum passes away on the same day that WNBA Houston Comets star Kim Perrot is born. Perrot would pass away on August 19, 1999 from cancer.

• 1997 - A month shy of his 16th birthday, Andrei Kirilenko becomes the youngest player to compete in the history of the professional Russian Superleague.

• 1999 - Less than a month after the American Basketball League folds, reserve guard Katrina Price of the Philadelphia Rage dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She was 23 years of age.