SWC75
Bored Historian
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This season has been frustrating and people are already speculating about next season. I thought it might be a diversion to look back at past seasons by re-posting something I first did a decade ago, a year-by year summary of the first decade of my experiences as an SU basketball fan. It's a good follow-up to the "Syracuse Wins World Series" series I recently re-posted on the "Other Sports" board in tribute to the 60th anniversary of the Syracuse Nationals NBA championship because this story picks shortly after the Nationals left town. (This first entry has some current relevance as we are about to play Louisville.)
From the Mists of Time
Reading Bud Poliquin’s book, “Tales from the Syracuse Hardwood”, I was reminded of my own early days of rooting for Syracuse University basketball and decided to write up some of my personal memories from that period. One of the players from that period, Bill Smith, says that he has been “lost in the mists of time”. Not to me, he isn’t. But the last part of what he said makes a pretty good title.
I was aided in withdrawing memories from those mists by the SU Media Guide, The SU Basketball Yearbooks, which I collected from 1968-73, (and then, for some inadequate reason not again until 1979), Street and Smiths’ Basketball yearbooks, which I collected from 1970 onward, NCAA basketball guides, which I have from the 50’s, (I collected them myself from the late 70’s: I got the rest off the internet), The Syracuse Post Standard and Herald Journal, which is on microfilm at the Onondaga County Public Library, (and now available from Newspaperarchive.com). Poliquin’s book, Zander Hollander’s “The Modern Encyclopedia of Basketball”, “The Classic” by Ken Rappoport, The Final Four by Joe Gergen, Rod McDonald’s “Syracuse Basketball 1900-1975”, and Bob Snyder’s two books, “Orange Handbook” and “Syracuse Basketball: a Century of Memories”. I will post a chapter a day for the next 11 days. This duration is subject to change as I proofread and re-edit this.)
From Curiosity to Passion
I was born 50 years ago last month. I didn’t pay much attention to anything beyond my backyard until 1961, (I have no living memory of the 1959 football season, unfortunately), when my Dad picked up a small pre-season NFL booklet at a bank and I somehow became fascinated with it. My Dad wasn’t all that much of a sports fan but we started watching NFL games together. The best player in the league was a Syracuse guy named Jim Brown. I began paying attention to the filmed highlights of SU games that appeared on the local news on Tuesday, (that was the state of sports media in those days). They had a guy named Ernie Davis who might be the new Jim Brown. I became an SU football fan. The first SU game I saw live on TV was the 1961 Liberty Bowl vs. Miami, where Ernie led a second half comeback to a 15-14 win. I was hooked.
SU Basketball? What was that? If I had been paying any attention to it, I would have found a vagabond sport eventually played in several places that finally wound up in Manley Field House, which had been built as a football practice facility. Syracuse basketball was to the Syracuse Nationals as LeMoyne is to SU today. The team had set a national losing streak record with 27 in a row in ’61-’62 (as Bud points out they broke that streak with a couple of surprising victories vs. pretty good Boston College and Connecticut teams- they were 0-22 before that). There were no SU players of note in the NBA. The only time Dad and I watched NBA games was when Chamberlain went up against Russell. That was interesting. SU basketball was not.
Then in 1965, the SU basketball team started to make headlines. The Nats were gone now. Through its first seven games, SU was averaging 102 points per game. No college team had ever averaged a century mark. Then they went out to Los Angeles to play in the Bruin Classic, hosted by the two-time defending national champs, UCLA, who had won the title with teams similar to SU- small but quick, using pressure defense for 40 minutes. What would happen when they played?
They didn’t. SU lost to Vanderbilt, which was then a national power, who beat the Orange 98-113, despite 46 points from Dave Bing. There was a consolation round and SU beat Northwestern 105-75 and St. John’s 113-97 and Bing was named MVP of the tourney. This put SU on the national map. But it was still frustrating they never got to play the Bruins. Syracuse has played just about everybody of note in college basketball since then but didn’t play the Bruins until an embarrassing blow-out in 1999. When SU beat the Bruins in the Carrier Dome the next year, it fulfilled a fantasy that had lasted for a third of a century.
I remember following that 1965-66 team through the season by reading what the newspaper said about them. It wasn’t a passionate thing. It was closer to my following Mike Hart’s career as he attempted to set the national high school rushing record. I followed the box scores to see if this team would be the first to average 100 points per game. As Poliquin says, they came up a basket short, scoring 2598 points in 26 regular season games, (I guess the record was for the regular season only). I recall losing interest at that point. I have no memory of the loss in the NCAA’s to Duke. I wasn’t really an SU basketball fan yet- someone who lives and dies with the team. I was just curious.
The next year, I was more concerned about the SU football team’s attempt to rebound from a disastrous 0-2, 24-66 start than I was with the photo in the paper of SU’s basketball players, posing for the team picture, without Dave Bing, who was now with the Pistons. I again looked at the box scores, but I was looking at the Piston’s box scores, seeing how Bing was doing. As with Carmelo Anthony, he struggled some at the beginning of the year. But he got better and better as the season went along and wound up becoming the NBA rookie of the year. For the next decade or so, we had an SU guy who was a prominent NBA player to root for. Unfortunately, he was never on TV and his team stunk, so they were never in the playoffs. I was able to see him play only in the all-star games.
But this SU basketball team was starting to become interesting as well. They didn’t have Bing but they were playing the same style of ball. They won their first five games by an average of 17 points, (there were no gimmies in those days- we didn’t have the clout to import “homecoming” teams), including an 86-63 win over Army, a team coached by a young Bobby Knight. After a loss to nationally ranked Boston College and a win over Manhattan, they went to Philadelphia for the prestigious Quaker City Classic. (Those 8 team Christmas tournaments were great things). After a win over hometown LaSalle, they took on the #2 team in the country, the Louisville Cardinals.
This was the game that got me hooked. Louisville had Wes Unseld at center and Butch Beard as well, giving them two All-America candidates. SU was a bunch of Dave Bing’s spear carriers. This was the first SU game I ever listened to on the radio. All I remember is the pattern of the game- the Cardinals would blow out to a big lead, 15-20 points and it would look like the Orange were going to get humiliated. But we would come back and get it within five or less, only to fall back again by double-figures. Just when it seemed hopeless, SU put on a final rush to get within 2 before losing 71-75. The excitement as they got closer and closer to a huge upset was overwhelming. Mom insisted I go to bed but I secreted a transistor radio under my pillow to hear the ending in the darkness. I was disappointed but I was more amazed and proud that this bunch could hang in there with such a team. They were “my” team now.
From the Mists of Time
Reading Bud Poliquin’s book, “Tales from the Syracuse Hardwood”, I was reminded of my own early days of rooting for Syracuse University basketball and decided to write up some of my personal memories from that period. One of the players from that period, Bill Smith, says that he has been “lost in the mists of time”. Not to me, he isn’t. But the last part of what he said makes a pretty good title.
I was aided in withdrawing memories from those mists by the SU Media Guide, The SU Basketball Yearbooks, which I collected from 1968-73, (and then, for some inadequate reason not again until 1979), Street and Smiths’ Basketball yearbooks, which I collected from 1970 onward, NCAA basketball guides, which I have from the 50’s, (I collected them myself from the late 70’s: I got the rest off the internet), The Syracuse Post Standard and Herald Journal, which is on microfilm at the Onondaga County Public Library, (and now available from Newspaperarchive.com). Poliquin’s book, Zander Hollander’s “The Modern Encyclopedia of Basketball”, “The Classic” by Ken Rappoport, The Final Four by Joe Gergen, Rod McDonald’s “Syracuse Basketball 1900-1975”, and Bob Snyder’s two books, “Orange Handbook” and “Syracuse Basketball: a Century of Memories”. I will post a chapter a day for the next 11 days. This duration is subject to change as I proofread and re-edit this.)
From Curiosity to Passion
I was born 50 years ago last month. I didn’t pay much attention to anything beyond my backyard until 1961, (I have no living memory of the 1959 football season, unfortunately), when my Dad picked up a small pre-season NFL booklet at a bank and I somehow became fascinated with it. My Dad wasn’t all that much of a sports fan but we started watching NFL games together. The best player in the league was a Syracuse guy named Jim Brown. I began paying attention to the filmed highlights of SU games that appeared on the local news on Tuesday, (that was the state of sports media in those days). They had a guy named Ernie Davis who might be the new Jim Brown. I became an SU football fan. The first SU game I saw live on TV was the 1961 Liberty Bowl vs. Miami, where Ernie led a second half comeback to a 15-14 win. I was hooked.
SU Basketball? What was that? If I had been paying any attention to it, I would have found a vagabond sport eventually played in several places that finally wound up in Manley Field House, which had been built as a football practice facility. Syracuse basketball was to the Syracuse Nationals as LeMoyne is to SU today. The team had set a national losing streak record with 27 in a row in ’61-’62 (as Bud points out they broke that streak with a couple of surprising victories vs. pretty good Boston College and Connecticut teams- they were 0-22 before that). There were no SU players of note in the NBA. The only time Dad and I watched NBA games was when Chamberlain went up against Russell. That was interesting. SU basketball was not.
Then in 1965, the SU basketball team started to make headlines. The Nats were gone now. Through its first seven games, SU was averaging 102 points per game. No college team had ever averaged a century mark. Then they went out to Los Angeles to play in the Bruin Classic, hosted by the two-time defending national champs, UCLA, who had won the title with teams similar to SU- small but quick, using pressure defense for 40 minutes. What would happen when they played?
They didn’t. SU lost to Vanderbilt, which was then a national power, who beat the Orange 98-113, despite 46 points from Dave Bing. There was a consolation round and SU beat Northwestern 105-75 and St. John’s 113-97 and Bing was named MVP of the tourney. This put SU on the national map. But it was still frustrating they never got to play the Bruins. Syracuse has played just about everybody of note in college basketball since then but didn’t play the Bruins until an embarrassing blow-out in 1999. When SU beat the Bruins in the Carrier Dome the next year, it fulfilled a fantasy that had lasted for a third of a century.
I remember following that 1965-66 team through the season by reading what the newspaper said about them. It wasn’t a passionate thing. It was closer to my following Mike Hart’s career as he attempted to set the national high school rushing record. I followed the box scores to see if this team would be the first to average 100 points per game. As Poliquin says, they came up a basket short, scoring 2598 points in 26 regular season games, (I guess the record was for the regular season only). I recall losing interest at that point. I have no memory of the loss in the NCAA’s to Duke. I wasn’t really an SU basketball fan yet- someone who lives and dies with the team. I was just curious.
The next year, I was more concerned about the SU football team’s attempt to rebound from a disastrous 0-2, 24-66 start than I was with the photo in the paper of SU’s basketball players, posing for the team picture, without Dave Bing, who was now with the Pistons. I again looked at the box scores, but I was looking at the Piston’s box scores, seeing how Bing was doing. As with Carmelo Anthony, he struggled some at the beginning of the year. But he got better and better as the season went along and wound up becoming the NBA rookie of the year. For the next decade or so, we had an SU guy who was a prominent NBA player to root for. Unfortunately, he was never on TV and his team stunk, so they were never in the playoffs. I was able to see him play only in the all-star games.
But this SU basketball team was starting to become interesting as well. They didn’t have Bing but they were playing the same style of ball. They won their first five games by an average of 17 points, (there were no gimmies in those days- we didn’t have the clout to import “homecoming” teams), including an 86-63 win over Army, a team coached by a young Bobby Knight. After a loss to nationally ranked Boston College and a win over Manhattan, they went to Philadelphia for the prestigious Quaker City Classic. (Those 8 team Christmas tournaments were great things). After a win over hometown LaSalle, they took on the #2 team in the country, the Louisville Cardinals.
This was the game that got me hooked. Louisville had Wes Unseld at center and Butch Beard as well, giving them two All-America candidates. SU was a bunch of Dave Bing’s spear carriers. This was the first SU game I ever listened to on the radio. All I remember is the pattern of the game- the Cardinals would blow out to a big lead, 15-20 points and it would look like the Orange were going to get humiliated. But we would come back and get it within five or less, only to fall back again by double-figures. Just when it seemed hopeless, SU put on a final rush to get within 2 before losing 71-75. The excitement as they got closer and closer to a huge upset was overwhelming. Mom insisted I go to bed but I secreted a transistor radio under my pillow to hear the ending in the darkness. I was disappointed but I was more amazed and proud that this bunch could hang in there with such a team. They were “my” team now.
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