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Post by Commissioner on Jun 7, 2019 8:12:29 GMT -5
I noted the line in the recent SI article on Antoine regarding Detroit's considerable basketball history. I appreciate them including that. But it points up how ancient that history is to today's high school kids. I mean, we shouldn't kid outselves--we were never a top tier national power. But we were a player, and at times an important one. For a good 3 decades we mattered--we had first and second team All Americans (Ebben, DeBusschere, Haywood), made the post-season with some regularity ('60, '61, '62, '65, '77, '78, '79--and would have made a lot more with today's expanded tournaments), in good years we were nationally ranked in the top 20 at some point ('60, '61, '69, '72, '77, '78, '79) as high as 3rd in the nation one year. We regularly hosted schools including Notre Dame, Indiana, Michigan State, North Carolina, Villanova and more. We beat ranked teams, top 10 teams--in 1951 we beat #1 Bradley and then beat #1 Oklahoma State (we also beat top 5 ranked teams in 1950, 1960--#4 Utah State and #3 Indiana in that year--, 1968, 1972, and 1985. In the 1950s, Memorial Hall was considered one of the top arenas in the country, and well into the 1960s the Motor City Tournament each Christmas was a major event on the college basketball calendar.
So there's a brief recap. Now, what are some other schools--one time powers-- that have fallen as far as our Titans? Here are some that come to mind:
Long Island -- from 1934 to 1942, Long Island, under the legendary Clair Bee, went 219-20. They remained a power in the early post-war era, being ranked as high as 3rd in 1950 (a 20-5 season in which they played in the then very meaningful NIT) and as high as 2d in 1951 (a 20-4 season). But the reason for LIU's demise is obvious: in 1951 they were caught up in the basketball game-fixing scandal. They abolished the program for 14 years, returning in 1966, and joining the major college ranks again in 1969. They've never recovered--or really tried to recover--a spot in the higher echelons of the game. They play now in the "who cares Northeast Conference," and most seasons average fewer than 1000 home attendance.
San Francisco -- Two national titles with Bill Russell in the 1950s, and a major national player into the early 80s (they were ranked as high as 6th in 1982, and ranked #1 for much of the 1977 season). They, too, were destroyed by a massive cheating/game fixing scandal, and axed the program for three years (1983-1985 seasons). When they re-started the program in 1986, it was intentionally much lower key. In recent years they've begun getting serious again--they've had 3 straight 20-win seasons, and this past year turned down CIT/CBI bids as now beneath them. Their comeback is helped by being in a solid conference (the WCC). It will be interesting to see if they make it back on to the national scene.
Holy Cross -- Holy Cross's situation seems much more like Detroit's than do USF or Long Island. No scandal, no one event that crushed the program, just a series of poor decisions over a long period of time. Like UD, Holy Cross is a bit cash-strapped and that often influenced those decisions. The Crusader, of course, won the national title with Bob Cousy in 1947, and also reached the Final Four in 1948 and the final 8 in 1953. Between 1946 and 1983 they had just 3 losing seasons, and had a sort of last hurrah under George Blaney in the late 1970s, making NCAA appearances in '77 and '80 and getting nationally ranked (for the last time) in 1978 (as high as #12). They've had intermittent success since then, with 5 NCAA appearances as Patriot Conference tournament champs in this century (one of those their 15-20 team of 2016). A few people still believe--against all evidence--that UD turned down an opportunity to join the Big East when it was forming. We didn't. But Holy Cross actually did, so the Big East went with BC instead. Big mistake. The Crusaders have had 5 straight losing seasons, and I think--though this may be hometown perspective--that they rank behind us in the college basketball hierarchy these days. Having said that, they have nabbed a couple of Michigan recruits in recent years.
I'll add some others when I have a bit more time. Any other suggestions for fallen powers, though, are welcome.
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Post by calihanmole on Jun 7, 2019 8:55:14 GMT -5
Some other fallen powers IMO:
Seattle University — pretty solid history. Runner up in 1958 and a bunch of sweet 16s in the 50s. Then the program declined to a point that in 1980 the school decided to quit D1 and go NAIA. Dumb move in hindsight. I think they used the same higher ed consultants that encouraged us to go with Detroit-Mercy. Of course, Seattle rejoined the D1 big boys in 2008. They’re making some strides but it’s still a long road back. Having Gonzaga in their state probably isn’t helping.
Drake — OK, they were never a powerhouse but there’s some history there in the 60s and 70s with elite 8s and even a final 4. I don’t know what happened to the program. All I know is the school runs one hell of a track meet.
Princeton — Most of the Ivies had some basketball success at some point. But Princeton probably had the most success. Things unraveled as the Ivies quit pursuing football championships and I assume their athletic departments overall were just cut when it comes to funding. As other schools around the county gave away athletic scholarships like Halloween candy, the Ivies decided not to give scholarships and thus had a few decades of being out of true national contention. But now virtually every student at every Ivy except Cornell gets a full ride due to massive endowments. And the schools are playing good ball. Maybe a Princeton can come back but they have to compete with good programs at Harvard and Yale now.
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Post by Commissioner on Jun 7, 2019 9:31:27 GMT -5
Another program that has fallen on hard times since the days of my youth:
La Salle - The Explorers won the NCAA tournament in 1954 and returned to the title game in 1955 under Ken Loeffler. They also won the NIT in 1952 and were ranked #1 during the 1953 season. (Side note: Loeffler has one of the more interesting coaching lines you'll ever see. He left La Salle after the 1955 season for Texas A&M, where he went 13-35 in two seasons, was canned at age 55, and never coached again. Loeffler was 144-28 in six seasons at La Salle; in ten seasons at Yale, Denver, and Texas A&M, he was 83-132, with just 2 winning seasons, one of them with 12 wins and the other with 13). La Salle remained a solid player on the national scene through the late 1950s and 1960s, with 11 winning seasons in the 12 years after the 1955 Final 4 appearance, though no 20-win seasons or NCAA appearances. But they did play twice in the NIT (1963 and 1965, losing to Detroit in the first round the latter year). The Explorers then had another hurrah in 1968 (20-8 under future Titan coach Jim Harding) and 1969 (23-1 and ranked #2 in the nation under Tom Gola, the star of the '52-'55 teams), though they were ineligible for the NCAA because of violations of rules under Harding. That 1969 team included one of the great Titan games of all time--indeed, one of the great college basketball games of all-time-- a 98-96 La Salle win in which Spencer Haywood had 41 points and 32 rebounds.
La Salle remained competitive but unexceptional through the 70s and 80s. They got passed over by the Big East in favor of Villanova, and played in an aging facility. They joined the MAAC in 1984 and had a final bit of real national prominence late in the decade with Lionel Simmons, putting together 3 straight NCAA appearnaces culminating with a 30-2 record and a #11 national ranking in 1990. They made 1 more NCAA appearance in 1992, and then joined the Midwest Collegiate Conference, as the Horizon was then known. But they fell on hard times--they had 15 losing seasons in 18 years between 1994 and 2011, and average home attendance dwindled to where it remains regularly below 2000. However, they did manage to get an invite to the Atlantic 10, which they joined in 1996 as the MCC was falling apart. That move--and the subsequent ascendance of the A10 on the college basketball scene--has kept La Salle afloat as a meaningful player in college hoops. They had a couple of 20 win seasons in 2012 and 2013, with a Sweet 16 appearance in the latter. In the last 6 years, they've had just 1 winning season (17-16 in 2015). But as long as they're in the A10, they can get meaningful home conference games and have the potential to rise quickly. That's a huge advantage, and why it is so unfortunate that we are stuck in a Horizon league that has lost all its best programs.
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Post by Commissioner on Jun 7, 2019 9:40:32 GMT -5
Some other fallen powers IMO: Seattle University — pretty solid history. Runner up in 1958 and a bunch of sweet 16s in the 50s. Then the program declined to a point that in 1980 the school decided to quit D1 and go NAIA. Dumb move in hindsight. I think they used the same higher ed consultants that encouraged us to go with Detroit-Mercy. Of course, Seattle rejoined the D1 big boys in 2008. They’re making some strides but it’s still a long road back. Having Gonzaga in their state probably isn’t helping. Drake — OK, they were never a powerhouse but there’s some history there in the 60s and 70s with elite 8s and even a final 4. I don’t know what happened to the program. All I know is the school runs one hell of a track meet. Princeton — Most of the Ivies had some basketball success at some point. But Princeton probably had the most success. Things unraveled as the Ivies quit pursuing football championships and I assume their athletic departments overall were just cut when it comes to funding. As other schools around the county gave away athletic scholarships like Halloween candy, the Ivies decided not to give scholarships and thus had a few decades of being out of true national contention. But now virtually every student at every Ivy except Cornell gets a full ride due to massive endowments. And the schools are playing good ball. Maybe a Princeton can come back but they have to compete with good programs at Harvard and Yale now. Good examples. Seattle dropped from D-1 for financial reasons--the type of move we would make. Before that they had produced players like Elgin Baylor and former Pistons Eddie Miles and John Tresvant. I wouldn't put Princeton in this group, though. The Ivies are just, well, we might say "different." By the start of the post-war period they were already pretty much self-regulating themselves out of the high major ranks. Meanwhile, PU remains one of the best Ivy programs (9 winning seasons, six 20-win seasons, 2 NCAAs, and NIT, and 3 minor tournament appearances in the last 10 years). They're just not dominating like they did for 20 years under Pete Carrill and Bill Carmody. Drake gave us Willie McCarter! . reminds me of another, somewhat similar program that had even more success - Bradley. Maybe I'll write a note on Bradley later.
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Post by calihanmole on Jun 7, 2019 10:16:22 GMT -5
Others that somewhat fit the mold but I don’t have time to write about in detail: Santa Clara, UTEP, Canisius, Duquesne.
Then there’s Wyoming. They had a lot of success during the WWII years and shortly after. Maybe that was just an anomaly due to the war.
I think UDM should host a “Once and Glorious” basketball tournament. Us plus 7 other teams that are haunted by the ghosts of our former selves. We can all wear wool cardigans and flat caps to the games.
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Post by Commissioner on Jun 8, 2019 8:58:36 GMT -5
Bradley - The Braves were true basketball royalty of the first rank through the 1950s. Bradley first emerged as a national power shortly before WWII, under legendary coach Al Robertson. The 1938 squad went 18-2 and participated in the first NIT (this was before the first NCAA tournament). They were 19-3 the next year and again in the NIT. After the war they quickly re-emerged as a dominant national team, going 25-7 (another NIT) in 1947, and 28-3 the following year. AP rankings began in the 1949 season, and Bradley was ranked 16th in the very first AP poll, finishing the year at #7. In 1950 they ended the season ranked #1 before losing in the NCAA final. They also lost the NIT final that year. (The Titans upset Bradley, then ranked #4, in January of 1950.) The following year, Bradley was ranked #1 when the Titans upset them in Peoria, 70-65. They finished the year at #6. In 1954 Bradley lost in the NCAA title game for the second time. The 1955 team made the final 8. From 1957 to 1962 Bradley was ranked in the top 5 at some point every year, finishing 19, 14, 4, 4, 6, and 5 in the rankings. With the NIT and the NCAA still roughly on par, Bradley regularly played the NIT, winning it in 1960 and 1964--the continued to make regular appearances in the national rankings through the mid-1960s, though without the tournament success.
After 1968 (19-9, NIT) things began to deteriorate more rapidly. In 1969 Bradley took on double figure losses for the first time since 1956, and in 1972 suffered its first losing season in a couple decades. In the late 70s Bradley went 4 straight seasons without a winning record for the first time in 60 years. They bounced back under Dick Versace in the 1980s, making an NCAA appearance in 1981 (their first since 1955) and going 32-3 and cracking the Top 10 behind sophomore Hersey Hawkins in 1986. Stan Alback then took over from Versace. The 1988 team finished the year ranked #11, and included the famous Hawkins/Archie Tullos shootout in Calihan Hall, with Bradley winning 122-105. But immediately after Hawkins' graduation, Bradley went through 5 straight losing seasons. Since then Bradley has had periodic revivals, but never approached its former glories.
Bradley suffered through some cheating and other scandals, but those never really impacted the program as they did for Long Island and San Francisco. Rather, it may simply have been inevitable that a no football,mid-sized private university in Peoria simply wouldn't be able to keep up as the game's popularity grew, huge state universities poured more money into it, and national recruiting began. The slow deterioration of the Missouri Valley Conference in the 1970s and 1980s also hurt. Indeed, Bradley almost left the Valley for the MCC (Horizon) in the late 1980s. Although attendance has slowly dropped over time, Bradley still draws an average of 5500 or more to its games in Peoria. It has a good facility, and a good budget. The idea of Bradley again becoming a Top 10 fixture is probably far-fetched, but it wouldn't take a whole lot for the Braves to return to the level of prominence now held by schools like Butler and Creighton. Brian Wardle got Bradley to the NCAAs last year with an upset win the MVC's Arch Madness tournament, their first appearance in 13 years. Perhaps he can build on that.
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Post by Commissioner on Jun 8, 2019 13:48:26 GMT -5
The Mole mentioned Duquesne. Good one.
Duquesne, like disproportionate number of schools on this growing list, is an urban, Catholic institution. Up through about 1960s, these schools were hotbeds of basketball, and also had an edge in that they were earlier than many schools (and not just southern schools) in accepting blacks and Catholic kids. Duquesne became a power under Chick Davies, who took over the head coach position in the fall of 1924. Under Davies and his successor, Dudey Moore, the Iron Dukes had 33 winning seasons in the next 34 years, including a 66-7 stretch from 1933 through 1936. In 1940 they played in both the NIT (losing in the final) and the NCAA (making the final 8). Like a lot of schools, they dropped basketball during the War, but resumed in 1947, with Davies still at the helm. They went 20-2, losing to eventual champ Utah in the NIT. 1949 was the the first year of AP polls, and the Dukes were ranked at some point every year through 1956, attaining a #1 ranking in 1954 and 5 times finishing the season in the top 10. In 1952, another season in which they played both the NIT and the NCAA, they again reached the NCAA's final 8. Sihugo Green and Dick Ricketts were first team All-Americans in those years. The Dukes began slipping in late 1950s, but their 1962 NIT team was ranked as high as 3rd before dropping out of the top 10 late in the year (the AP only ranked 10 teams that year). The Dukes had a final blitz of glory at the turn of the next decade, going 97-28 with 2 NCAA appearances and 2 NIT appearances from 1968 to 1972, cracking the top 10 in 3 of those seasons. Duquesne went 16-8 the next year, and then began a deep slide. In 1977 the Dukes, featuring future NBAer Norm Nixon, went just 15-15, but closed strong--it was Duquesne that snapped our Titans' 21 game winning streak in late February, and they then won the East Coast Tournament to reach the NCAAs.
But they've never been back to the dance. After NIT appearances in 1980 and 1981, the Dukes suffered through 24 losing seasons in the next 26 years. A new university president in the mid 2000s--who came to Duquesne from another urban, Catholic school that had used basketball with success, Creighton, put a renewed emphasis on the sport. But though the Dukes have been reasonably competitive for the last decade plus--they've reached .500 in 8 of the last 12 seasons--they've not broken out, reaching 20 wins just once, in 2009, when they got an NIT bid.
Duquesne's story is a bit like Detroit's, though starting from a higher peak. They didn't really do much overtly wrong, they just didn't do much right. They were slow to get to a conference. They didn't make the best hiring decisions. A relatively small university without a huge endowment, they were reluctant to invest in facilities, marketing, or recruiting. As the rust-belt city around them declined, especially in the 1970s, and state schools began to emphasize basketball more, kids no longer saw Duquesne as a top destination, and fans didn't want to go downtown, into a relatively dangerous part of Pittsburgh, to watch them play. Like Detroit, their undergrad population isn't huge, and contains a large percentage of commuters.
Duquesne now seems to want to return to the top. Like La Salle, Duquesne's quest to retain or return to relevance is helped by membership in the A10 (oddly, Duquesne jumped from the A10 to the Horizon's predecessor, the MCC, for one season, largely at the urging of Dayton; when Dayton left the MCC the next year for the Great Midwest, Duquesne scurried back to the A10, and was fortunate to be taken back in). They've also been helped by a longstanding rivalry with cross-town ACC rival Pitt, which is played each year in the Consol Center in Pittsburgh, and which Pitt has been willing to continue as an annual, neutral site game. As noted, Duquesne has also been devoting resources to the sport. They hired Keith Dambrot two years ago, apparently with a promise of paying for home guarantee games in the non-conference season--in 2017-18, they played 10 home and 3 neutral site games in non-conference, and last year played 9 home, 3 neutral, and 1 road game (Notre Dame). This easy schedule has given them some wins, and building a winning culture in that way isn't the worst idea. Last year they topped .500 in A10 play for only the 4th time in 36 years in the conference.
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Post by kevinudm on Jun 8, 2019 15:30:24 GMT -5
Oklahoma City is another MCC alumnus that was once a basketball powerhouse, although the luster was gone by the 1980's when conference games brought them to Calihan Hall every year. From 1952 to 1973 they went to the NCAA tournament 11 times and the NIT twice, and got to the Elite Eight in '56 and '57. OCU remains a major athletics power, but just at an NAIA level now.
It's also interesting how many strong programs were in metro NYC in the 1950's and 60's. LIU is detailed above but NYU and CCNY also had their moments in the sun. Manhattan and Fordham too. St. Johns had some good squads but they've never really fallen off the map, so may not belong in this category.
In the 50s and 60s there was no ESPN, no cable TV. The only way to watch a basketball game was to do so in person at the arena. Urban schools drew a lot of basketball fans who felt no particular affiliation to the university, but just wanted to see a good game. City universities like NYU, LIU and even UD had easy access to elite high school athletes, large pools of potential fans and the major media outlets. Mass transit made the arenas readily accessible and the cities were still viewed as reasonably safe.
Times have certainly changed. Some urban schools have remained top tier programs but they face tough road, particularly small schools lacking a large inbuilt fanbase. Once you fall off the cliff, it's a steep climb back up.
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Post by Commissioner on Jun 8, 2019 18:46:41 GMT -5
Oklahoma City is a good one.
I'm glad you mentioned CCNY and NYU (and Manhattan) -- I was going to add a post on the two of them. CCNY was cut down in the same scandal that ruined Long Island's program (see 1st post in thread). In the summer a lot of these college players got jobs in the Catskills. They'd work a couple hours a day in the kitchen doing dishes or something, but mainly played basketball. Some of these games had incredible talent (Wilt Chamberlain was a regular for a time). One such player was Eddie Gard, a guard for Long Island. Another group that used to vacation in the Catskills were New York Mafiosi. Gard began discussing throwing games with the Mafiosi, and would do so in some of these Catskills' pick up games that would be bet on by customers and staff. Then they moved it into the regular season. Gard convinced players that it didn't really matter if they won by 5 points or 10--it's not like they would lose on purpose. It was all harmless, and easy money for the players. So the scandal started at LIU. But it really took off at CCNY.
CCNY was a super powerhouse--under legendary coach Nat Holman they reached the NCAA final 8 in 1947 and won both the NIT and the NCAA in 1950. Interestingly, they beat Bradley in both finals. They opened the 1951 season ranked 6th in the country. But in late January the arrests began with Manhattan's Ken Poppe, who was the Jaspers' first ever 1000 point scorer. Arrests began picking up in February. There were some really good players involved. Long Island's Sherman White was named Sporting News Player of the Year on February 19. On February 20 he was arrested. Some still say he was the best New York city area player ever. He was just 77 points away from setting a new NCAA career scoring record when arrested. Arrested with White was an LIU player named Adolph Bigos, who had won a Bronze Star in WWII. Bradley's Gene Melchoirre, a 1st team All-America, was caught, but managed to plea bargain out of jail time. Kentucky's all-america center Bill Spivey got a hung jury, but he was later convicted of perjury. Almost all of these guys were banned for life from the NBA. The main schools involved were Kentucky (which had to drop its program for a season, CCNY (7 players), LIU (6), and Bradley (7), but players from Manhattan, NYU, and Toledo, were also involved (the charges were dropped against all 4 Toledo players).
It's interesting that it didn't derail Kentucky at all--after their year suspension, they went undefeated the next season and are still a relatively strong and well-known program today. Bradley would later fade from basketball's top ranks, but it wasn't this scandal that derailed them. But the New York schools all suffered quite a bit. CCNY dropped completely out of the major college ranks after the 1953 season, and Holman (who didn't know about all this) retired. Long Island, as discussed above, dropped out of the major college ranks for a quarter century and has never moved beyond the low-major ranks since returning. Although Manhattan and NYU continued to play good ball-- Manhattan made NCAA appearances in 1956 and 1958, and NYU made the Final Four in 1960 and the Final 8 in 1962 and 1963--I think both were hurt long-term because the scandal reduced the role of New York as the capital of college ball. The NCAA finals, which before was regularly in Madison Square Garden, would never be there again, in part due to the scandal. The loss of CCNY and LIU from the top ranks hurt all area teams--imagine what it would do to the ACC today if Duke and UNC suddenly quit D1 hoops.
A word on NYU. As I noted, they were a minor player in the point shaving scandal and remained a big player in college hoops in the early 1960s (they had also reached the Final 4 in 1945). They were ranked as high as #2 nationally in the 1964 season, and reached the NIT final in 1966, losing to BYU. They regularly sold out Madison Square Garden for a weekly Thursday night game. But they also had players caught up in another fixing scandal in 1961, a scandal involving 37 players from 22 colleges. In fact, the conference they were in--the Metropolitan New York Conference--as ultimately disbanded in 1963 because it was so regularly penetrated by the mob. That hurt, too. Then came budget woes. They were running huge deficits--in 1973 they would sell off part of the campus to pay the bills (hard to believe, given that today they have a $2.1 Billion endowment). So in 1971 they abruptly dropped basketball. But while budget and scandal did a play a role in their dropping hoops, it was also consistent with their long-term program. NYU, like University of Chicago--made a conscious decision to de-emphasize sports. As part of that, they dropped football in 1953, and then basketball in 1971, and in 1981 they dropped all their remaining sports from D1 to D3. They reinstituted basketball in 1983 and have been a Division III power since. Every now and then alumni make noise about wanting to return to D1, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards.
Manhattan, never as strong a program as the others, was also hurt by the demise of the MNYC. They made a couple NIT appearances in the early 1970s, but from 1976 to 1991 had just 1 winning season (15-13) and at one point went 6 straight years without winning 10 games. It's the story of so many of these schools: small school, small alumni base, and a time when people felt unsafe venturing into the city for night games. Steve Lappas and Fran Frachilla got the program going again in the 1990s, and they've been up and down since. A member of the MAAC, they play home games in the 2345 seat Draddy Gymnasium and are typically lucky to break 1200 in average attendance.
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Post by kevinudm on Jun 9, 2019 11:17:51 GMT -5
Excellent insights as always, Commish. But you may be undervaluing Manhattan College by focusing on the era from the 1970s onward. From 1949 to 1959 the Jaspers went to the NCAA Tournament twice and the NITs six times. Of course back then the NIT was on a par with the NCAA, and a trip to MSG was especially appealing to an NYC school. Manhattan only notched two victories in those tournament appearances, so perhaps they fell short of being "glorious." But eight bids in 11 years is still a big achievement for a little school.
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Post by calihanmole on Jun 9, 2019 11:52:21 GMT -5
Don’t forget the University of Detroit. As I understand it, there was a D1 school in Detroit before Detroit Mercy was founded in the 90s. I guess they won a few games or something; I don’t know, I’m not an expert in city history.
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Post by motorcitysam on Jun 9, 2019 15:36:54 GMT -5
Bradley - The Braves were true basketball royalty of the first rank through the 1950s. Bradley first emerged as a national power shortly before WWII, under legendary coach Al Robertson. The 1938 squad went 18-2 and participated in the first NIT (this was before the first NCAA tournament). They were 19-3 the next year and again in the NIT. After the war they quickly re-emerged as a dominant national team, going 25-7 (another NIT) in 1947, and 28-3 the following year. AP rankings began in the 1949 season, and Bradley was ranked 16th in the very first AP poll, finishing the year at #7. In 1950 they ended the season ranked #1 before losing in the NCAA final. They also lost the NIT final that year. (The Titans upset Bradley, then ranked #4, in January of 1950.) The following year, Bradley was ranked #1 when the Titans upset them in Peoria, 70-65. They finished the year at #6. In 1954 Bradley lost in the NCAA title game for the second time. The 1955 team made the final 8. From 1957 to 1962 Bradley was ranked in the top 5 at some point every year, finishing 19, 14, 4, 4, 6, and 5 in the rankings. With the NIT and the NCAA still roughly on par, Bradley regularly played the NIT, winning it in 1960 and 1964--the continued to make regular appearances in the national rankings through the mid-1960s, though without the tournament success. After 1968 (19-9, NIT) things began to deteriorate more rapidly. In 1969 Bradley took on double figure losses for the first time since 1956, and in 1972 suffered its first losing season in a couple decades. In the late 70s Bradley went 4 straight seasons without a winning record for the first time in 60 years. They bounced back under Dick Versace in the 1980s, making an NCAA appearance in 1981 (their first since 1955) and going 32-3 and cracking the Top 10 behind sophomore Hersey Hawkins in 1986. Stan Alback then took over from Versace. The 1988 team finished the year ranked #11, and included the famous Hawkins/Archie Tullos shootout in Calihan Hall, with Bradley winning 122-105. But immediately after Hawkins' graduation, Bradley went through 5 straight losing seasons. Since then Bradley has had periodic revivals, but never approached its former glories. Bradley suffered through some cheating and other scandals, but those never really impacted the program as they did for Long Island and San Francisco. Rather, it may simply have been inevitable that a no football,mid-sized private university in Peoria simply wouldn't be able to keep up as the game's popularity grew, huge state universities poured more money into it, and national recruiting began. The slow deterioration of the Missouri Valley Conference in the 1970s and 1980s also hurt. Indeed, Bradley almost left the Valley for the MCC (Horizon) in the late 1980s. Although attendance has slowly dropped over time, Bradley still draws an average of 5500 or more to its games in Peoria. It has a good facility, and a good budget. The idea of Bradley again becoming a Top 10 fixture is probably far-fetched, but it wouldn't take a whole lot for the Braves to return to the level of prominence now held by schools like Butler and Creighton. Brian Wardle got Bradley to the NCAAs last year with an upset win the MVC's Arch Madness tournament, their first appearance in 13 years. Perhaps he can build on that. Wow, Dick Versace and Stan Alback. Haven't thought about those guys in a while. I think Bradley has a good chance at resurgence.
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Post by motorcitysam on Jun 9, 2019 15:44:29 GMT -5
The Mole mentioned Duquesne. Good one. Duquesne, like disproportionate number of schools on this growing list, is an urban, Catholic institution. Up through about 1960s, these schools were hotbeds of basketball, and also had an edge in that they were earlier than many schools (and not just southern schools) in accepting blacks and Catholic kids. Duquesne became a power under Chick Davies, who took over the head coach position in the fall of 1924. Under Davies and his successor, Dudey Moore, the Iron Dukes had 33 winning seasons in the next 34 years, including a 66-7 stretch from 1933 through 1936. In 1940 they played in both the NIT (losing in the final) and the NCAA (making the final 8). Like a lot of schools, they dropped basketball during the War, but resumed in 1947, with Davies still at the helm. They went 20-2, losing to eventual champ Utah in the NIT. 1949 was the the first year of AP polls, and the Dukes were ranked at some point every year through 1956, attaining a #1 ranking in 1954 and 5 times finishing the season in the top 10. In 1952, another season in which they played both the NIT and the NCAA, they again reached the NCAA's final 8. Sihugo Green and Dick Ricketts were first team All-Americans in those years. The Dukes began slipping in late 1950s, but their 1962 NIT team was ranked as high as 3rd before dropping out of the top 10 late in the year (the AP only ranked 10 teams that year). The Dukes had a final blitz of glory at the turn of the next decade, going 97-28 with 2 NCAA appearances and 2 NIT appearances from 1968 to 1972, cracking the top 10 in 3 of those seasons. Duquesne went 16-8 the next year, and then began a deep slide. In 1977 the Dukes, featuring future NBAer Norm Nixon, went just 15-15, but closed strong--it was Duquesne that snapped our Titans' 21 game winning streak in late February, and they then won the East Coast Tournament to reach the NCAAs. But they've never been back to the dance. After NIT appearances in 1980 and 1981, the Dukes suffered through 24 losing seasons in the next 26 years. A new university president in the mid 2000s--who came to Duquesne from another urban, Catholic school that had used basketball with success, Creighton, put a renewed emphasis on the sport. But though the Dukes have been reasonably competitive for the last decade plus--they've reached .500 in 8 of the last 12 seasons--they've not broken out, reaching 20 wins just once, in 2009, when they got an NIT bid. Duquesne's story is a bit like Detroit's, though starting from a higher peak. They didn't really do much overtly wrong, they just didn't do much right. They were slow to get to a conference. They didn't make the best hiring decisions. A relatively small university without a huge endowment, they were reluctant to invest in facilities, marketing, or recruiting. As the rust-belt city around them declined, especially in the 1970s, and state schools began to emphasize basketball more, kids no longer saw Duquesne as a top destination, and fans didn't want to go downtown, into a relatively dangerous part of Pittsburgh, to watch them play. Like Detroit, their undergrad population isn't huge, and contains a large percentage of commuters. Duquesne now seems to want to return to the top. Like La Salle, Duquesne's quest to retain or return to relevance is helped by membership in the A10 (oddly, Duquesne jumped from the A10 to the Horizon's predecessor, the MCC, for one season, largely at the urging of Dayton; when Dayton left the MCC the next year for the Great Midwest, Duquesne scurried back to the A10, and was fortunate to be taken back in). They've also been helped by a longstanding rivalry with cross-town ACC rival Pitt, which is played each year in the Consol Center in Pittsburgh, and which Pitt has been willing to continue as an annual, neutral site game. As noted, Duquesne has also been devoting resources to the sport. They hired Keith Dambrot two years ago, apparently with a promise of paying for home guarantee games in the non-conference season--in 2017-18, they played 10 home and 3 neutral site games in non-conference, and last year played 9 home, 3 neutral, and 1 road game (Notre Dame). This easy schedule has given them some wins, and building a winning culture in that way isn't the worst idea. Last year they topped .500 in A10 play for only the 4th time in 36 years in the conference. Duquesne's story shows how a little luck never hurts. They left the A10 for the MCC, then were fortunate enough to get back in after one season. That was a huge blessing for them, in retrospect. I was a big Norm Nixon fan during his NBA games. Didn't remember that he was part of the crew that broke the Titans winning streak in 1977. It is crazy that they haven't gotten back to the dance since then.
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Post by motorcitysam on Jun 9, 2019 15:45:17 GMT -5
Lots of good stuff in this thread from a historical perspective. Thanks to everyone for the contributions.
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Post by motorcitysam on Jun 13, 2019 0:09:46 GMT -5
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