I've thought for some time that they should scrap the post season NIT that nobody cares about and turn the pre-season NIT into a tournament for catholic schools with the proceeds going to Catholic Charities.
Here's an update of a post I made a few years ago on "Catholic National Champions"
I’ve always been fascinated with the number of Catholic Universities that have had success in basketball over the years. I wish the church would set up a tournament to determine the bat of them, perhaps as a fund raiser for Catholic Charities. It obviously wouldn’t be a post-season tournament but the pre-Season NIT could be used for that. Or maybe they could revitalize the old Holiday Festival as a Christmas tournament with all the top Catholic school teams.
Absent that, I wondered what teams over the years could be retroactively declared the “Catholic National Champions”. Maybe those teams would have won such a tournament. I decided to look at the polls as listed in the ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia, which came out in 2009 and their Website for the years afterwards. I thought of looking at which Catholic team had gone the farthest in the NCAA tournament but for many years the Catholic schools preferred to send their teams to New York to play in the NIT. Rather than figure out how to value an NIT victory, (or 2nd place, third place, etc.) vs. an NCAA finish, I’ll go with the polls. The regular season is actually a better test of a team’s strength than a single elimination tournament where a bad night can end your season anyway.
The writer’s poll goes back to the 1948-49 season and the coach’s poll started two years later. For the years before that we have the Premo-Poretta Polls, which is in the ESPN encyclopedia. They retroactively rated the top 20 college teams going all the way back to 1895-96, just five years after Naismith invented the game:
Premo-Porretta Power Poll - Wikipedia
Those guys did a lot more research than went into the Helms national champions and they gave us a top 20 each season. (Don’t worry, they still recognize our 1918 and 1926 titles).
I used this list of Catholic schools:
List of Catholic universities and colleges in the United States - Wikipedia
Some of them like Dayton, Creighton, Gonzaga and San Francisco, I didn’t realize were Catholic schools. They just made it all the more interesting. Some names I expected to see were missing: Temple was founded by a Baptist Minister, for example.
So here goes: the Catholic National champions since 1895-96. The “none” seasons had no Catholic teams in their top 20 and there was no post season tournament or even standings available for those years. To save some typing, the years are represented by the second calendar year of that season: 1895-96 is “1896”.
1896 None (no Catholic school in the Premo-Poretta top 20)
1897 Notre Dame
1898 Notre Dame
1899 Notre Dame
1900 None
1901 None
1902 None
1903 None
1904 Holy Cross
1905 Holy Cross
1906 Holy Cross
1907 Dayton
1908 Notre Dame
1909 Notre Dame
1910 Niagara
1911 St. John’s
1912 Notre Dame
1913 Dayton
1914 St. Mary’s
1915 Santa Clara
1916 None
1917 None
1918 Creighton
1919 Georgetown
1920 Georgetown
1921 St. John’s of Ohio
1922 Holy Cross
1923 Marquette
1924 Creighton
1925 Fordham
1926 Notre Dame
1927 Notre Dame
1928 Fordham
1929 Fordham
1930 St. John’s
1931 St. John’s
1932 Notre Dame
1933 Duquesne
1934 Duquesne
1935 DePaul
1936 Manhattan
1937 Notre Dame
1938 Notre Dame
1939 Loyola-Chicago
1940 Duquesne
1941 Duquesne
1942 Creighton
1943 Notre Dame
1944 DePaul
1945 DePaul
1946 DePaul
1947 Holy Cross
1948 St. Louis
1949 St. Louis
1950 Holy Cross
1951 St. John’s
1952 Duquesne
1953 Seton Hall
1954 LaSalle
1955 San Francisco
1956 San Francisco
1957 Seattle
1958 San Francisco
1959 St. louis
1960 St. Bonaventure
1961 St. Bonaventure
1962 St. John’s
1963 Loyola-Chicago
1964 Villanova
1965 St. Joseph’s
1966 St. Joseph’s
1967 Boston College
1968 St. Bonaventure
1969 Santa Clara
1970 St. Bonaventure
1971 Marquette
1972 Marquette
1973 Providence
1974 Marquette
1975 Marquette
1976 Marquette
1977 Marquette
1978 DePaul
1979 Notre Dame
1980 DePaul
1981 DePaul
1982 DePaul
1983 St. John’s
1984 Georgetown
1985 Georgetown
1986 St. John’s
1987 Georgetown
1988 Loyola Marymount
1989 Georgetown
1990 Georgetown
1991 Seton Hall
1992 Seton Hall
1993 Seton Hall
1994 Boston College
1995 Georgetown
1996 Georgetown
1997 Providence
1998 St. Louis
1999 St. John’s
2000 St. John’s
2001 Boston College
2002 Gonzaga
2003 Marquette
2004 St. Joseph’s
2005 Villanova
2006 Villanova
2007 Georgetown
2008 Xavier
2009 Villanova
2010 Xavier
2011 Marquette
2012 Marquette
2013 Gonzaga
2014 Villanova
2015 Gonzaga
2016 Villanova
2017 Gonzaga
2018 Villanova
2019 Gonzaga (nobody else is close)
The following schools have won these “Catholic National Championships”:
Boston College 1967, 1994, 2001 (3)
Creighton 1918, 1924, 1942 (3)
Dayton 1907, 1913 (2)
DePaul 1935, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1982 (8)
Duquesne 1933, 1934, 1940, 1941, 1952 (5)
Fordham 1925, 1928, 1929 (3)
Georgetown 1919, 1920, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1995, 1996, 2007 (10)
Gonzaga 2002, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 (5)
Holy Cross 1904, 1905, 1906, 1922, 1947, 1950 (6)
LaSalle 1954 (1)
Loyola-Chicago 1939, 1963 (2)
Loyola-Marymount 1988 (1)
Manhattan 1936 (1)
Marquette 1923, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 2003, 2011, 2012 (10)
Niagara 1910 (1)
(None 1896, 1900, 1901, 1902, 1903, 1916, 1917, 1921)
Notre Dame 1897, 1898, 1899, 1908, 1909, 1912, 1926, 1927, 1932, 1937, 1938, 1943, 1979 (13)
Providence 1973, 1997 (2)
St. Bonaventure 1960, 1961, 1968, 1970 (4)
St. Joseph’s 1965, 1966, 2004 (3)
St. John’s 1911, 1930, 1931, 1951, 1962, 1983, 1986, 1999, 2000 (9)
St. John’s-Ohio 1921 (1)
St. Louis 1948, 1949, 1959, 1998 (4)
St. Mary’s 1914 (1)
San Francisco 1955, 1956, 1958 (3)
Santa Clara 1915, 1969 (2)
Seattle 1957 (1)
Seton Hall 1953, 1991, 1992, 1993 (4)
Villanova 1964, 2005, 2006, 2009, 2014, 2016, 2018 (7)
Xavier 2008, 2010 (2)
