ATHENS, Ga. (AP) Ronnie Hogue, the first Black scholarship athlete on the Georgia Bulldogs men’s basketball team, died Friday, the school announced. He was 69.
Hogue was a native of Washington, D.C., and lived in Maryland. No cause of death was given.
Arriving at Georgia in 1969, Hogue averaged 20.5 points per game as a junior and scored a career-high 46 points against LSU on Dec. 20, 1971 – the second-highest total in school history and most ever by a Georgia player at Stegeman Coliseum.
In a 2011 interview, Hogue recalled the difficulties of breaking the color barrier at a Deep South school.
”The first year I played, I can remember having spit balls and hot pennies thrown at me during games, but my teammates would huddle around to cover me up,” he said. ”By the second year, after I proved I could play basketball, people were lining up to get my autograph.”
As a senior, Hogue averaged 16.5 points a game and was picked as the team’s top defensive player. He finished with a 17.8-point scoring average in his three years on the varsity team.
Hogue was a seventh-round pick of the Washington Bullets in the 1973 NBA draft.
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