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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 2960668, member: 289"] 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: [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premo-Porretta_Power_Poll"]Premo-Porretta Power Poll - Wikipedia[/URL] 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: [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_Catholic_universities_and_colleges_in_the_United_States"]List of Catholic universities and colleges in the United States - Wikipedia[/URL] 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) [/QUOTE]

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