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Post by Commissioner on Apr 2, 2023 15:23:58 GMT -5
I don’t know if anyone else out there ever peruses the Titan Record Book, which is available on-line in chopped up form at detroittitans.com/sports/2012/8/13/MBB_0813121355. (I know I’m geekier than most on such things). Like most schools, our Record Book features the Year-by-Year results of the team. And like at least many schools' pages, when you go back to the early days, it includes a number of errors and uncertainties In the early years of the 20th century, scheduling was totally different than today. Most schools--not just our Titans--played all kinds of opponents, including high schools; two-year colleges; YMCA, Knights of Columbus, and other club teams; and sometimes company sponsored teams. During WWI and WWII, and often for a year or two thereafter, it was common to play military base teams. (These teams were often among the best in the country, featuring plenty of young men in excellent physical condition, usually a bit older than the college teams, and often including former collegiate stars). Teams generally played other local schools, with an occasional train trip into another region, on which they would often play games on 3, 4, or even 5 consecutive nights. It’s worth noting that until 1914, even the rules were not standardized, but varied around the country, depending on the region. Small colleges could and did go toe-to-toe with the large state universities that dominate collegiate sports today. In the 1990s, basketball historians Pat Premo and Phil Porretta put an amazing amount of work into examining team records, tracking down many games not previously even appearing in team record books, and retroactively ranked college Top 20s from 1896 through 1948 (the AP poll made its appearance in 1949). Schools such as Allegheny, Illinois Wesleyan, Muskingum, and Ohio Wesleyan regularly appear in their rankings. As late as the mid-1940s schools such as Muhlenberg, Denison, and Panzer appear in their rankings. And of course, you can't judge other teams by where they are today--for example, in the 1920s the Titans often played both Olivet and Eastern Michigan, but Olivet was usually the more feared opponent. Not until 1957 did the NCAA split into “University” and “College” divisions, and only in 1973 did the College Division split into Divisions II and III, with the University Division becoming Division I. Even after the split into University and College Divisions, through the 1970s University Division teams played lots of College Division teams. For example, as late as 1973 DePaul’s 25 game schedule included Westmont, Lewis, St. Mary’s of Minnesota, St. Joseph’s of Indiana, Winona State, and Green Bay and Eastern Illinois (both of which were still in the College Division). Butler, though a "university" or "D-1" team, continued to compete in the small college Indiana Collegiate Conference right up through 1978. Thus, their 1977 schedule included home and home series with Valparaiso and Evansville (both still in Division II), DePauw, Indiana Central, and St. Joseph’s of Indiana, plus a non-conference game with Wabash. Anyway, looking at early Titan seasons, I got to wondering who were some of the teams that appeared on U of D’s schedule in the first half century of Titan basketball. Some are pretty obvious: The High Schools: “Delray H.S.” (1906) was Delray High School. “Eastern H.S.” and “Central H.S.” (1907) were Detroit Eastern and Central Highs. The Club Teams: Many of the Club Teams are also pretty obvious: “Ann Arbor Y” (5 games between 1911 and 1915) was the Ann Arbor YMCA. “Detroit Y” (2 games in 1918) was, as you probably suspected, the Detroit YMCA. “Utica K of C”, played on a 1922 swing through upstate New York and Vermont that included 6 games in 8 days, was a team sponsored by--can you guess?--the Utica, NY, Knights of Columbus. (The Titans fortunately got an extra day off on that swing when a game against St. Michael’s College of Vermont was cancelled because the Titans missed a train connection.) Military Bases: Most of the military base teams are clearly identified and easily tracked down: Fort Custer (in Battle Creek), whom the Titans played 7 times in connection with WWI and WWII; and WWII era opponents Selfridge AAF (Army Air Force base), Romulus AAF, Dearborn NTS (Naval Training Station), and Great Lakes NS. However, some teams in all three of these categories are less obvious, such as “Collegiate” (the very first Titan opponent ever), “Young Men’s,” and “U.S. Hospital.” Also, whoever created or maintained the Titan Record Book at some point update most school names to their modern names. Thus: Western State Normal School (and all its incantations over the years—Western State Teachers College, Michigan College of Education, and Western Michigan College) is always listed as “Western Michigan” (although at least once the Record Book scrivener apparently made a mistake and credits a game against Western as being against Kalamazoo College). Likewise, for the following schools, the Record Book uses modern name in place of all former permutations: Eastern Michigan is used for Michigan State Normal School. Central Michigan for Central Michigan Normal School. Northern Illinois for Illinois Normal School at DeKalb. Case Western for Western Reserve University and Case Institute after 1940—before that the Record book uses their respective older names. The institutions merged in 1967. Michigan State for Michigan Agricultural College. Wayne State for Detroit City College. Dayton for St. Mary’s College of Ohio. Cleveland State for Fenn College. Oklahoma State for Oklahoma A&M. There are others. On the other hand, some colleges are listed by the name they had at the time the games were played. I’ve looked some of those up, discovering university histories of which I had no knowledge. What follows in this thread is info on early Titan opponents that I think most people wouldn’t otherwise recognize—defunct schools, club teams and military base squads not readily recognizable by their names, and schools that long ago changed their names, but without the new names being updated in the record book. Who were these guys?
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Post by Commissioner on Apr 2, 2023 15:28:30 GMT -5
Armour Technological Institute. The Engineers of Armour Tech were a regular Titan opponent in the 1920s and 1930s, with the Titans winning 12 of 16 encounters between 1920 and 1939. Armour Tech? Where and what the heck was that?
In 1890, a prominent Chicago pastor named Frank Gunsaulus gave a sermon in which he stated that if he had $1 million, he would start a college that would be open to all persons of merit, allowing poor and working class youth to obtain a quality education and help prepare them and the country for the industrial age. In attendance was Phillip D. Armour, the wealthy meatpacker (Armour Meats, still in your grocery). After the service, Armour approached Gunsaulus—apparently a very convincing and motivating pastor—and said that he would give Gunsaulus that $1 million (about $35 million today) if Gunsaulus would devote 5 years of his life to getting the new university off the ground. The result was the Armour Technological Institute, or, for short, the Armour Institute, or sometimes Armour Tech. By 1893, the school was off and running, offering degrees in engineering, chemistry, architecture, and library science. Gunsaulus didn’t just devote 5 years to it—rather, he served as president until his death 31 years later. Of course, one has to grimly chuckle a bit—in 1890, today's equivalent of $35 million launched a university: Today, it won’t build a new arena for the Titans.
Athletics featured prominently at Armour from the start, with its football team facing the likes of Purdue, Northwestern, Michigan State, and the midwestern powerhouse of the day, the University of Chicago. Football was dropped after 1905, but hoops remained. Armour Tech wasn’t second rate competition there either, regularly playing Notre Dame, Loyola, DePaul, and the major schools in the Chicago area and elsewhere in Indiana and Illinois.
As with some of the other schools on this list, the Titans gradually outgrew Armour in athletics, winning the final eight contests, including a 60-35 drubbing in the schools’ final game in 1939.
Armour Tech merged with the Lewis Institute in 1940 to form the Illinois Institute of Technology, whose College of Engineering is still named after Armour.
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Post by Commissioner on Apr 2, 2023 15:32:54 GMT -5
Assumption.
Starting in the 1929-30 season, Assumption College was a regular Titan opponent, often the season opener. As many older Titan fans will remember, Assumption was a fellow Jesuit school in Ontario. In 1964 it affiliated with the secular University of Windsor and took on that school’s name for sporting purposes. As “Windsor” It remained a regular on the Titan schedule through 1969, when new NCAA rules cut out regular-season competition with Canadian teams. Assumption was routinely one of the best programs in Canada, and other teams along the border, such as Niagara, regularly played Canadian colleges. Early on in this series, Detroit held an edge, but the series was competitive. But after losing three straight in the rivalry over the 1934 and 1935 seasons, the Titans won the final 19 games between the two Jesuit schools. In the final tally, Detroit was 29-4 against “Assumption” and then 6-0 vs. “Windsor.”
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Post by Commissioner on Apr 2, 2023 15:36:43 GMT -5
Battle Creek
According to the Record Book, the Titans went 2-3 against “Battle Creek” in 5 games played between 1912 and 1928. Who exactly was “Battle Creek?”
It turns out to have been Battle Creek College, which had emerged from the famous Kellogg sanitarium in Battle Creek. The Battle Creek College Training School for Nurses opened in connection with the Sanitarium in the west Michigan city in 1884. The Battle Creek Sanitarium School of Health and Home Economics was founded in 1906—primarily to train dieticians. The Battle Creek Normal School for Physical Education was then founded in 1909. Dr. John Kellogg, head physician and director of the sanitarium, eventually brought the three schools together as Battle Creek College. A founding principle of the school, reflecting the progressive sentiments of the day, was “race improvement through eugenics and euthenics.” All students, faculty, and staff were to follow Dr. Kellogg’s principles regarding diet, exercise, and abstinence from smoking and drinking. School menus did not include meat. The school had an enrollment of about 900 at the start of the Great Depression, which fell to under 300 by 1935.
Although the school played football through 1926, basketball seems to have always been the primary sport at Battle Creek. The UofD first played Battle Creek in 1912, with the Bobcats edging the Tigers, as the Titans were then known, 27-26. Detroit won the final matchup 43-18 to open the 1927-28 season. That Titan squad, led by UofD athletic legend Lloyd Brazil, won 8 of its first 9 on the way to an 11-4 season. Before heading home, the Battle Creek squad took in a movie on Woodward Avenue. While at the film, their uniforms were stolen from their bus.
Starting in 1930, the Bobcats competed in the Michigan-Ontario Conference, which included such schools as Ferris State and Lawrence Tech, and some common Titan foes of the era including Adrian, St. Mary’s Orchard Lake, and Assumption College of Ontario. But after suffering financial losses throughout the depression, Dr. Kellogg lost interest and the school closed in 1938.
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Post by Commissioner on Apr 2, 2023 15:42:23 GMT -5
Bliss Detroit played Bliss Business College of Columbus, Ohio, 5 times, winning 4 straight from 1925 through 1928, but losing the last game in Columbus in the final game of the 1930 season.
Bliss College was founded in 1899. In the 1950s it called itself “Ohio’s Greatest School of Business.” By the 1970s, it was operated by Lear-Siegler, Inc.—the sprawling aerospace, weapons, computer, and just about everything else manufacturing concern—as part of a for-profit chain of small business schools around the country specializing in computer training. (My favorite Lear-Siegler school was called “Fails Business College,” in Nashville. How’d you like your diploma to come from “Fails College?”) In 1975 Lear-Siegler settled a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission for $750,000, paid out to former students who attended its schools, including Bliss, between 1970 and 1973. The allegations were that Lear-Siegler had misled applicants about job opportunities from attending their schools. Although the New York Times reported that Lear Siegler closed its computer schools at that time, it appears that Bliss continued to operate until 1993—I bought my first home in 1991 about 1/2 mile from the college, and used to pass it regularly--perhaps under new ownership. Bliss still played basketball (perhaps off and on) into at least the early 1980s, though it’s hard to find records.
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Post by Commissioner on Apr 2, 2023 20:03:04 GMT -5
Carlisle.
The Record Book reports a lopsided 34-4 win over “Carlisle” in the 1917-18 season. This was presumably the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, although the Varsity News says the team was a mix of “former students at Carlisle and Haskell [Indian School].” The Carlisle School was founded by the federal government in 1879, and its mission was to advance Indian welfare by a forced assimilation into mainstream American society. Students typically had their hair cut, and often were given Anglo names, and Indian culture was pretty much obliterated. Those behind the school (and several similar schools around the country) were progressives who meant well—they believed that Indians were equal to whites and merely had to be assimilated into Western culture, as opposed to many in society who considered Indians inherently inferior. Its founder was quoted as saying his goal was to “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” Despite the lopsided score in this game, Carlisle had a respectable athletic history--Jim Thorpe was on its 1912 roster. 1918 was the last year of operation for Carlisle.
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Post by Commissioner on Apr 2, 2023 20:05:08 GMT -5
Cass Institute.
According to the Record Book, the Titans clobbered he “Cass Institute,” by a 47-20 score during the 1917-18 season. In fact, this is simply a typo—the game was against the Case Institute, now part of Case Western Reserve.
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Post by Commissioner on Apr 2, 2023 20:07:23 GMT -5
Cleary.
The first two Titan teams, in 1905-06 and 1906-07, played games against “Cleary,” winning 38-9 and 36-9.
The Cleary School of Penmanship—sort of like the computer school of modern times--was founded in Ypsilanti in 1883 by Patrick Roger Cleary, an Irish immigrant. The school’s broadening offerings led to a name change to Cleary Business College in 1912. The Cleary family continued to operate the College, whose main campus today is in Howell, Michigan, until at least the 1950s, when Patrick’s son, Owen Cleary, served as president (Owen also served as Michigan Secretary of State from 1953-1955). The Board of Trustees stilI contains a Cleary Family Seat, currently held by Patrick Roger Cleary II, grandson of the founder. Great-grandson Patrick R. Cleary III also sits on the Board. I don’t know when Cleary originally quit playing sports, but the school reintroduced a limited intercollegiate athletic program in 2012.
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Post by Commissioner on Apr 2, 2023 20:08:16 GMT -5
Coast Guard.
The Titans edged the “Coast Guard” 36-34 in December of 1943. As you might guess, this was the Detroit Coast Guard Station.
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Post by Commissioner on Apr 2, 2023 20:44:59 GMT -5
Collegiate.
In the Record Book, the Titans’ first ever opponent is identified simply as “Collegiate.” I had zero clue as to who this was until stumbling across an article on the founding of Titan basketball in the Varsity News of February 9, 1927. That story reports that the opponent was “the Collegiate Institute of Windsor.” So, who was that? Some research reveals that from 1871 until 1973 there was a high school called the Windsor Collegiate Institute in our fair Canadian neighbor city. It was not uncommon for early teams, at UofD and elsewhere, to play high schools, and we know that year’s team played Detroit's Del Rey High School. I am guessing that the Collegiate Institute of Windsor was the Titans first ever opponent.
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Post by Commissioner on Apr 2, 2023 20:47:45 GMT -5
Colonials.
During the 1912-13 season, the Titans beat a team called “Colonials” by 53-18. I have no idea who this was. It is interesting that in a copy of the Spaulding Guide for the year, the game with the Colonials is not listed on the Titan schedule, and the Titan record is given as 12-0 rather than the 13-0 of the record book. Otherwise, the two books agree on the Titan opponents, except that the Record Book credits a game to Orchard Lake St. Mary’s that the Spaulding guide says was against Polish Seminary (see “Polish Seminary,” yet to come in this thread).
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Post by Commissioner on Apr 2, 2023 21:12:51 GMT -5
“Detroit Ind.”
Under the results for 1944 you’ll see a game against “Detroit Ind.” This puzzled me. Detroit Independent? Turns out that was Record Book shorthand for the Detroit Army Induction Center. During both WWI and WWII the Titans—like many college teams—regularly played teams from the various armed forces bases, teams that were often very, very good (the players were a bit older on average, often had been collegiate stars, were in excellent physical condition). Most of those are self-explanatory: Fort Custer, Selfridge Air Force base, Dearborn NTS (Naval Training School) etc. But “Detroit Ind.” I didn't immediately deduce was shorthand for the Induction Center. The Titans won, 37-21.
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Post by Commissioner on Apr 2, 2023 21:22:24 GMT -5
Detroit Tech and Detroit College of Law.
The Titans played crosstown Detroit Institute of Technology in 1935 (losing 25-23), 1936 (winning 50-15) and 1937 (winning 43-19). U of D had earlier played the Detroit College of Law nine times between 1914-15 season and 1921, winning 8 of the 9, usually by lopsided scores. Detroit Tech and Detroit College of Law both grew out of the YMCA educational movement of the early 20th century, with both being founded in 1891. Their relationship is a bit vague. The book Educational Work of the Young Men’s Christian Association by William F. Hirsch seems to clearly place Detroit College of Law within Detroit Tech. But Detroit College of Law usually liked to call itself the oldest independent law school in the country. The always dependable, never inaccurate Wikipedia merely reports that the two schools were “interrelated.” In any case, reporting by the Varsity News makes pretty clear that the games against Detroit College of Law were played against law students. It also seems clear that references in the general media to DIT Law and Detroit College of Law are the same, and that Detroit Tech and Detroit College of Law were both products of the YMCA, operating under one roof, although perhaps DCL wasn’t formally part of DIT. I’m sure there are better explanations of this relationship but I didn’t feel like researching further.
The Detroit College of Law’s lone victory over the Titans, played at the YMCA on January 13, 1921, is reported by the Varsity News to have set off wild celebration among the “lawyers” and their fans. The 18-17 DCL victory came after the Titans won the first 7 games in the series by an average of over 21 points (in an era in which teams usually averaged fewer than 30 points per game, and frequently less than twenty). The three previous games had been decided by scores of 61-33, 22-5, and 41-10. The series would not end on a winning note for DCL, however—the Titans won a rematch at the University Gym two weeks later, 37-12, in the final meeting of the programs.
As for Detroit Tech, it enrolled as many as 2600 students during the 1930s, and played football from 1928 until suspending the program with the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 (it had also suspended the program during WWII, but the Korean “suspension” turned out to be for good. Of course, I guess Korea is still divided, so maybe when the peninsula reunites...). By the late 1970s the school was relying on visiting Iranian students for nearly a quarter of its enrollment. Their loss of visas after the 1979 sack of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the ensuing hostage crisis crippled the college, and the 1982 recession sank it. In 1972 the school had moved into the former SS Kresge Building by Cass Park; it was taken over by Wayne State when DIT closed shop. The school’s records and alumni relations were transferred to Lawrence Tech. Detroit College of Law continued, became affiliated with Michigan State in 1995, and moved to East Lansing in 1997.
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Post by Commissioner on Apr 2, 2023 21:25:33 GMT -5
Flint Mutes. The first team representing the U of D played in the 1905-06 season. The squad beat what was probably the Intercollegiate Institute, a Windsor High School, by 18-7; Detroit’s Del Rey High School by 10-7; and then Cleary Business College by a whopping 36-9. But the string of successes was stopped in the next game, as the Titans lost 7-6 to the “Flint Mutes.” My assumption is that the Mutes were a team from the Michigan School for the Deaf, located then, as now, in Flint. The Michigan Asylum for Educating the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind was established by an act of the legislature in 1848, but it took until February, 1854, for the school to find a location, build, hire staff, and enroll its first student. In the meantime, Michigan’s new state Constitution of 1850 included a clause providing: "Institutions for the benefit of those inhabitants who are deaf, dumb, blind or insane shall always be fostered and supported." In 1879 the legislature authorized separating the school for the blind from that for the deaf, and at some point between then and 1887—it’s unclear even in the official history—the school for the blind moved to Lansing, and the name changed to Michigan School for the Deaf. Athletics has long been an important part of the program at MSD, and they still play full schedules of elementary, middle, and high school basketball. They also have a good spirit store for MSD-branded athletic gear, which is pretty sharp looking, IMHO. spiritstore.olinesports.com/index.php?school_url=msdsports.com And, I’m pleased to report, their teams are called the Tartars. It’s nice to know that unique name didn’t die with Wayne State’s ill-considered abandonment of it a few years back. According to a retro story in the Varsity News in 1927, the 1905-06 Titans played a second game with the “Mutes” after that 7-6 defeat, but “the score is not available.” Any such game is not listed in the Record Book.
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Post by Commissioner on Apr 2, 2023 21:38:36 GMT -5
Hawaiian All-Stars. In the Winter of 1936-37 and twice in 1937-38 the Titans played a team called “Hawaiian All-Stars.” The Hawaiian All-Stars were, well, a traveling team of Hawaiian and Asian All-Stars. Teams under that name barnstormed the U.S. in the early 1920s and again in the mid-to-late 1930s. According to some reports, they gradually increased their appeal with little stunts, a la the Harlem Globetrotters, such as replacing the ball with a deflated ball during time outs. Still, they were definitely legit competition in the late 1930s. The star of the team that played Detroit was a man named Ah Chew Goo. The 5’ 4” (5’3” by some accounts) Goo had led Hilo High School to three straight Hawaiian Territorial basketball championships from 1934 to 1936. Press Maravich, father of Pistol Pete and Head Coach for stints at Clemson, NC State, LSU, and Appalachian State, called Goo—whom he met in Hawaii during WWII—the best ball handler he ever saw. But the All-Stars were short—the 1937 version’s tallest players appear to have been Goro Moriguchi and Takeo Goya, who were 5’7,” although the 1938 version---largely the same group of players—added 5’11” center Tony Morse. According to the book “Asian American Basketball,” by Joel Franks, Goo was a “laborer,” and other members of the team were listed by occupation as “laborer,” “clerk,” “clerk,” and “bus operator” on the ship’s manifest. All were in their teens or early twenties. As a bunch of young, apparently working-class kids traveling the U.S. for several months, it suggests that this was probably a semi-pro team, that they were getting paid something from the gate receipts.
The team the Titans played in January, 1937 sailed from Hawaii in November of 1936, and started play in Oregon in December of 1936, against teams in Portland. They gradually worked their way a surprising distance east. I’ve found reports that they lost to New Mexico, but beat Trinidad College (I believe the same Trinidad where Spencer Haywood later played his freshman year) and Western Union College in Iowa, which later became “Westmar” College, before folding in 1997. They also beat a team from Simpson College (presumably the Iowa school) before reaching Detroit. In the January, 1937 game, won 54-39 by Detroit, Walter “Pudge” Cavanaugh led the Titans with 21 points. So far as I can tell (but my info is admittedly incomplete) this was the third highest individual point total for a Titan cager to that time.
I can’t quite figure out what was going on, but the All-Stars were “banned” the next year by the AAU for making a trip of over 30 days in 1936-37. I found multiple references to this, but don’t quite understand the exact charge or rule broken. In any case, the Varsity News of December 9, 1937, noted that Titan AD Gus Dorais, pointing out that Detroit played NCAA, not AAU ball, had decided to go ahead with two scheduled games in the 1937-38 season, and it appears most other teams did, too. The All-Stars began the year playing in the Southwest, and Franks reports that they beat the University of New Mexico, 52-45, behind Goo’s 11 points, and lost a close one to Hardin-Simmons, then also a major college team, by 33-29. The Titans won both games, however, with relative ease: 57-41 on January 21, and 61-42 the next night.
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