2026 INDUCTEE – BILLY DON SHARP

By David Elwell
The Decatur Daily

Honoring a Bulldog basketball great

When Billy Don Sharp was 7 years old, he asked his father for a basketball goal on their farm in Priceville.

A year later it became a reality.

Sharp then asked his father for another basketball goal so he and his friends could play full-court.

“To my surprise, he put up another goal and that made it really good,” Sharp said. “In the evenings I had buddies coming from across the fields and pastures to play.  It was just a dirt court and the ball would get pretty grimy, but we loved it.”

On many days at that dirt court in Priceville, Sharp would step off the 15 feet from the goal to where the free throw line should be. He would take a stick and scratch out the line in the packed dirt. Then he would begin the process of shooting free throws.

“I took a lot of pride in shooting free throws,” Sharp said. “They didn’t keep up with stats back when I played like they do now. I probably shot about 80 percent from the free throw line.”

The biggest free throw of his life came in the 1965 Class AA state championship game.  A Sharp free throw produced what turned out to be the game-winning point in the Bulldogs’ 40-39 victory over Lineville.

While Sharp’s free throw is long remembered, it was the 6-foot-4 junior center’s blocked shot in the closing seconds that kept Lineville from possibly winning the game.

The 1965 state championship was Priceville’s fourth in 15 seasons. The Bulldogs previously won championships in 1951, 1955 and 1961.

It was an amazing time for basketball success in Morgan County. Union Hill started it off with a state championship in 1950. Austinville won championships in 1953, 1957, 1958 and 1959. Danville brought home state championships in 1962 and 1963. That’s 11 state championships for one county and four different schools in 15 years.

“If you look at the names on the rosters for those state championship teams at Priceville, you will see many of the same last names,” Sharp said. “You see last names like Clark, Maples and Sharp. It was a lot of brothers and cousins all mixed together. I remember sitting in the stands at Foster Auditorium in Tuscaloosa watching my brother John play on the 1961 team.”

Athletics at Priceville 60 years ago was vastly different from what it is today. There were no sports for girls. The school had no football team. Basketball was king. The start of school meant the beginning of preseason workouts. Attending games was a way to bring a proud community together as one.

“It got to the point that the expectations at Priceville were that to have a good season you had to make it to Tuscaloosa,” Sharp said. “Winning a state championship meant it was a great season.”

Behind most great teams there is a great coach. The 1964-1965 Bulldogs had one in Herman Myers, who was inducted into the Morgan County Sports Hall of Fame in 1994. Myers had coached at Danville and Hartselle before moving to Priceville to be principal. After a couple of years in that position, he moved back into coaching.

“I wished he had been my basketball coach when I was in the seventh grade,” Sharp said. “I would have been a much better player. He could mold a group of guys into a basketball team like he wanted. That was a team that played hard.

“Whatever he told me to do, I did. We never questioned him. We were scared of him, but we respected him.”

Myers served in the Marines in World War II. He was known for his disciplined pre-season workout program. There were weeks of physical conditioning before the players ever touched a basketball.

“It was tough. There was a lot of running,” said John Williams, who also played for Myers at Priceville. “He would pick his team based on how hard you worked.

“One day we were running in our small gym. One of the guys ran so hard he hit the wall with his head and knocked himself out. He’s lying on the floor, out cold. Myers stood over him and said ‘This man has made the team.’ That’s how tough it was.”

Priceville opened the season with 12 straight wins before falling to rival Cotaco, 64-60. In the Decatur Invitational, Priceville squared off with one of the biggest schools in the state in Lee of Montgomery. The Bulldogs won 46-41. The finals had host Decatur winning 71-65.

The Bulldogs bounced back with a 73-56 win over Athens to push the record to 19-2. Priceville averaged 71.4 points a game with an average winning margin of 18.3 points.

Going into the Morgan County Tournament, the headline in the Decatur Daily asked “Who can stop the mighty Bulldogs of Priceville?”

Priceville opened the tournament by edging host Hartselle, 74-72, on Bobby Landers’ basket with 13 seconds left to play. The Bulldogs got revenge vs. Cotaco in the semifinals with a 74-64 victory.

That set the stage for the championship game between Priceville and Danville, coached by Wayne Bowling. Back in the day when there were just two classifications, the Bulldogs were ranked No. 1 in Class AA. The Hawks were No. 1 in Class A. The night at Hartselle’s Petty Center belonged to Bowling’s Hawks with a 76-70 victory.

“We probably played our worst game that night,” Sharp said. “We really wanted that county championship.”

It would have been Priceville’s first county tournament championship since 1955. Instead it was Danville’s first since 1954 when Myers was the Hawks’ coach.

The county tournament finals had been delayed by winter weather from Saturday, Jan. 31 to the following Tuesday on Feb. 3. Ironically, the teams had a rematch scheduled for that Friday, Feb. 6.

“It was our home game, but because they expected a big crowd and our gym was so small, they moved the game to Hartselle,” Sharp said. “There was no way we were going to lose this time.”

Priceville won 79-72 on what would be the start of an undefeated streak that led to the state championship. In those days the state tournament was an eight-team affair with three wins needed to take home the state championship trophy.

The Bulldogs eased past Douglas, 66-57, and Lexington, 57-40, to set up the finals with Lineville. It was a third straight state tournament for Lineville. The  Aggies played in the finals in 1963 and lost in the semifinals in 1964.

“They were a really good team and we got behind big and were down {16 points) at halftime,” Sharp said. “We put the defense on them in the second half and they scored like six points.”

According to Sharp, the last few minutes of the game was chaos with missed shots, turnovers and even the ball being accidently kicked into the upper section of Foster Auditorium.

“There was about two minutes left when I got fouled trying to shoot,” Sharp said. “We were up 39-37. It was a 1-and-1 and the first one was the most important. I don’t remember being nervous and I made it with no problem. Because of that it doesn’t make sense that I missed the second one.”

Sharp said there was about 1:30 left on the clock and he expected more scoring in the final 90 seconds. Lineville did score to make it 40-39.

“They got the ball back with just a few seconds left. That’s when I got the block,” Sharp said. “It was against their big man. It was a clean block with no controversy.”

Senior captain Kenny Clark was named the tournament MVP after scoring a game-high 15 points in the finals. Clark was one of Sharp’s neighbors who would frequent the dirt court with two goals.

“Everybody wanted to play on Billy Don’s court,” Clark said. “It was a great opportunity to play on a full-length court with two goals. I believe it made us all better players.”

Clark was joined on the All-Tournament team by teammates Wayne Landers with 3 points and Kenneth Speegle with 4. Sharp scored 5 points.

“There was no doubt that Kenny Clark was the MVP,” Sharp said. “He was a great player and a great team leader.”

Other players on the Priceville state championship team were Bobby Landers, Gary Oden, Kenneth Lipscomb, Tommy Brenner, Ray Brown, Earl Holt,  Ferrell Maples and Bobby Taylor.

The Bulldogs finished 32-3. Because of the small size of their gym they played just 10 games on their home floor that season.

In the days after the tournament, Myers was quoted in the Decatur Daily saying that the key to the team’s success was how it bounced back from the losses.

“I knew we would have a good team,” Myers said. “Sometimes you have to lose to find out whether they’ve got what it takes.”

Sharp was one of six players returning for the 1965-1966 season. It was another winning season, but the team fell short in the regional with a double overtime loss to Hazel Green. Sharp was selected for the North team in the state’s annual North-South game.

“I really think that team our senior season was better than the state championship team,” Sharp said.

Sharp continued his athletic career playing basketball and baseball at Calhoun Community College and then Saint Bernard College in Cullman. After college, he was a high school basketball coach in south Alabama.

In 1976, Sharp got a phone call from Myers, who had just been named the boys coach at Johnson High in Huntsville.

“He wanted me to coach the junior high and junior varsity teams,” Sharp said. “I told him that I would be there tomorrow.”

The pair worked together for five years. On most days they rode to school together.

“It was a special time working with him,” Sharp said. “Herman could take a troubled kid and make something special out of him.”

One of those troubled kids at Johnson was Donnie Humphrey, who became an All-American defensive lineman at Auburn and played in the NFL.

Sharp coached basketball for 20 years and retired after 34 years as a teacher.