SWC75
Bored Historian
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The death of Louie Orr caused me to think back to the years when he and Roosevelt Bouie elevated the Syracuse University basketball program to the level of a national power. I decided to put my memories of that era, (1976-80), in a series of posts, a sort of sequel to the one I did several years ago, “From the Mists of Time” about the period from when I first became an SU fan to when the Jim Boeheim era began, (1966-76). I’ve augmented my own memories with whatever I could find on the internet and books by Bob Snyder (“Syracuse Basketball: A Century of Memories” and “Orange Handbook” ), Mike Waters (“Legends of Syracuse Basketball”) Scott Pitoniak (“Color Him Orange”, Slices of Orange” and “100 Things Syracuse Fans Should Know Before They Die”), Bud Poliquin, (“Tales from the Syracuse Orange’s Locker Room” – AKA “Tales from the Syracuse Hardwood”) and Jim Boeheim himself (“Bleeding Orange” with Jack McCallum), as well as what I could find from various internet sources, including SportsReference.com, Orangehoops and Newspapers.com.
First, the backstory. Syracuse was one the early collegiate powers in the sport, being retroactively awarded national championships by both the Helms Foundation and the Premo-Porretta Poll in 1917-18 and 1925-26, (our only undefeated team finished second in the 3P in 1913-14). We continued to be a respected program through the 1950’s. But this was not something that put Syracuse New York on the map the way college football and modern college basketball does. The sport was played in gymnasiums, not arenas. There was no ‘March Madness’. The NCAA tournament began in 1939 and was considered inferior to the NIT for some time afterwards. College basketball was popular in certain areas but didn’t really start to become “big time” until the UCLA-Houston game in the Astrodome in 1968 and really made it with the Magic Johnson- Larry Bird NCAA title game in 1979.
By the early 60s the SU basketball program had reached a low ebb. It became a way for SU football players to keep in shape in the off-season. Ernie Davis and John Mackey were in the starting line-up when the 1960-61 team went 4-19. The next year was even worse. We lost our first 22 games, to extend our losing streak to 27, then a national record. Two closing wins over Boston College and Connecticut was lipstick on a pig.
Archbold Stadium should have been replaced in the wake of our 1959 national championship but it wasn’t. Instead the University erected our first indoor football practice facility, Manley Field House. They also decided they could maximize the use of the facility and also make some money off it but having other sports compete there, including basketball. They decided they had better get an entertaining basketball team to bring the fans in. They hired Fred Lewis, who had been the head coach at Southern Mississippi, where he went 89-38, including 46-5 in 1959-61. Lewis brought along Roy Danforth, who had been one of his star players at Southern, to be part of his staff. They managed to convince Dave Bing, a star guard at DC’s Spingarn High, to come here. They also allowed a walk on from Lyons, NY named Jim Boeheim to become part of the team.
Freshmen weren’t eligible and Lewis’ first year, 1962-63, was a bumpy 8-13 ride. But the next year the team rose to 17-8, losing in the first round of the NIT to NYU, who had been a power in the sport. The NCAA tournament only had 24 teams so this was a fairly big deal, especially for a team that had been 2-22 just two years before. This created high expectation for 1964-65, especially when the team opened with a 127-67 win over American U. Reality hit hard as they lost 8 of their next 9 games, including a 64-67 loss to Louisville, before rallying to win 11 of 13 and finish 13-10. They carried that momentum over to the next season, using a full-court zone press similar to the one UCLA had used to win two straight national championships, and set a much better national record by scoring almost 100 points per game. They went 22-6, losing to Duke in the Elite 8.
But then Bing and Boeheim were gone. That’s when we had the team that really hooked me. My interest had been piqued during the 100ppg season. But this B-less team just kept going, scoring 99 in its first wo games with the same zone press. They started 5-0, lost to Bob Cousy’s Boston College team that would finish 21-3, then winning two more before facing #2 ranked Louisville with Wes Unseld in the Quaker City Classic. It was a late game and Mom sent me to bed but I snuck a transistor radio under my pillow to listen to the game. We would fall behind by 15-20 points and comeback to within 2-3 points, then fell behind by double figures again, then came back again. In the end we lost 71-75 and I cried myself to sleep. That’s when you know you’ve become a fan.
The team then won the next dozen games to go 19-2 and #8 national ranking – and heading in a confrontation with 18-3 St. John’s to determine who the best team in the east was. It was the first game I convinced by father to take me to. We led virtually the whole game but couldn’t pull away. Then in the final minute, 6-8 Sonny Dove rose above everyone to slam in two follow shots and the Johnnies took the lead. The pigeons who lived in the place fluttered all over the Dome, as if in tribute to man named after a bird. St. John’s pulled away to win 64-71 and everything seemed to come apart after that. We’d won 52 of 62 games going into the St. John’s game and would lose 46 of our next 79 games.
It shouldn’t have been that way. The ‘66-67 team once again last in first round of the NIT to finish 20-6, a very credible follow-up to the Bing era. That team had four starters coming back. The freshman team that year had gone 16-0, with two wins over Niagara’s Calvin Murphy, who had scored 50 points a game. 6-8 Wayne Ward had averaged 20 points and 16 rebounds a game and 6-0 Ernie Austin 30 points a game. The 67-68 team opened with a 108-68 win over George Washington that, like the blow-out of American U. four seasons earlier, was not a harbinger of things to come. Both Ward and Austin struggled at the varsity level and the team lacked chemistry, especially with their coach. I’ve never heard an explanation of what happened but there was a player rebellion against Lewis, resulting in his leaving and being replaced by his protégé, Danforth, after the season, which wound up a highly disappointing 11-14.
The ‘67-68 freshman team had been another strong one, (15-1), with 6-11 Bill Smith (21p 14r) and 6-7 Bob McDaniel averaged 25p, 16r. With Ward and Austin and 6-0 point guard Tom Green we should have a team that could have taken on anybody in the country. Except Ward and McDaniel were academically ineligible and Austin was the same for the first semester on the 1968-69. Ward later joined football player Oley Allen in a couple of robberies and wound up in jail, ending his basketball career. On top of that, some idiot had scheduled 10 of the first 11 games on the road. The result was a 4-14 start, which, with Austin returning was improved slightly to 9-16 by season’s end. No one could know that our next losing season would come 53 years later.
McDaniel was back for 1969-70 and he, Smith and Austin gave us one of our most exciting teams. Smith averaged 20.2p, 12.4r, McDaniel 17.8p, 10.6r and Austin 19.3p as the team scored 86.5 points per game. They got off to a 6-0 start and it seemed the good old days were back! Unfortunately nobody on that team wanted to play defense and they gave up 85.8 points per game, losing 12 of their last 18 to finish 12-12. The nadir came at Pittsburgh where they faced a team that came in averaging 65 points a game and we scored 71 in a half – still losing 108-127, the most points an SU team has ever given up. The season ended with a dismal 77-106 loss to Bowling Green.
McDaniel left the team after one game to open the 1970-71 season. A 5-0 start was followed by 4 losses in 5 games and we were still spinning our wheels. But with Smith scoring 22.7 inside and grabbing 14.5 rebounds per game and 6-1 Greg ‘Kid’ Kohls scoring 22.0 from outside with 6-3 Mike Lee scoring 13.5 with 8.0 rebs in the middle, the team rallied to win 13 of their last 16 games, once again losing in the first round of the NIT. It was the first of 51 straight winning seasons. Nobody else came close to that record in that time. In history, only UCLA has had a longer streak, with 54.
That team was known as ‘Roy’s Runts -Plus One’, the one being Smith, who was a senior, the next year they were just ‘Roy’s Runts’ – and actually improved to 22-6, as Kohls poured in 26.7 points per game, Lee 18.0 and a new star, 6-2 Dennis DuVal, averaged 15.8. Our ‘power forward’ was 6-1 Mark Wadach. A trip to New York to play Louisville in the Holiday Festival resulted in an 81-103 loss. We weren’t really big-time yet. But this team made it to the semi-finals of the NIT, (I remember listening to Bob Kostas do the game on WAER), where they lost to Lefty Driesell’s Maryland team, 65-71. The Terps front line averaged 6-10, ours 6-3.
The next year we lost Kohls- and improved some more. We got another +1 with 6-8 Rudy Hackett and Mike’s kid brother Jimmy Lee replaced Kohls as out outside guy. “Sweet D” DuVal averaged 19.6, Mike Lee, 17.0, Hackett 12.1p, 9.7r and Jimmy 8.9. We went 24-5 and finished third in the Eastern Regional, again losing to the Terps, 75-91, (almost the same score by which we’d lost to them in December, 76-91), in the Sweet 16 but stealing the consolation game with two steals for baskets to beat Penn 69-68. This was our best team, at least of the Danforth Era, better than the Final Four team. We wouldn’t win the final game of the season again for 30 years.
We took a small step back in ’73-74, finishing 19-7 and losing in the first round of the NCAA to Oral Roberts, (and four other guys). We seemed to be taking another step back the next year when we blew double-figure leads to Georgetown, (our first encounter with John Thompson), Rutgers and West Virginia. That last one was the worst. We had a 19 point half time lead, extended it to 21 and yet still somehow lost 81-84 in what was a still-rare televised game. Two games later, we lost to Canisius, our 5th loss in 8 games, reducing our record to 14-7. We then went off on a legendary 9 game tear, winning our last four regular season games, sweeping away Niagara and St. Bonaventure in something called the ECAC playoffs. That put us in the NCAA against LaSalle in Philadelphia, who we beat 87-83 in overtime after Jellybean Bryant, (Kobe’s Dad), went around and around and out with a shot at the buzzer that could have sent us home. They put us in Providence against mighty North Carolina where we hung in the game long enough for Jimmy Lee to hit the winner, 78-76. Then we beat Kansas State 95-87 in overtime after Bug Williams zoomed the length of the court and got the ball to Hackett for a hook that got us into overtime.
Then it was off to San Diego for our first Final Four. I was like me being in an elevator with a basketball team. Mighty Kentucky overpowered us 79-95 and then lost to UCLA for the title in John Wooden’s last game. We played Louisville again in the consy and lost 88-96 in OT after Jimmy Lee’s buzzer shot at the end of regulation took the tour a couple of times and fell off. But it had been an historical season that ended with a fine 23-9 record and raised hopes that great things were to come.
They didn’t happen in ’75-76 as we went 20-9, losing 5 in a row after an 18-4 start and ending the season with a dismal 56-69 loss to Texas Tech in the first round of the NCAAs. At that point, Roy Danforth decided head back down south for a job at Tulane. He played his games in the Superdome but his teams weren’t super, getting fired after going 45-90 over five years. Meanwhile Syracuse had to find itself a new coach.
First, the backstory. Syracuse was one the early collegiate powers in the sport, being retroactively awarded national championships by both the Helms Foundation and the Premo-Porretta Poll in 1917-18 and 1925-26, (our only undefeated team finished second in the 3P in 1913-14). We continued to be a respected program through the 1950’s. But this was not something that put Syracuse New York on the map the way college football and modern college basketball does. The sport was played in gymnasiums, not arenas. There was no ‘March Madness’. The NCAA tournament began in 1939 and was considered inferior to the NIT for some time afterwards. College basketball was popular in certain areas but didn’t really start to become “big time” until the UCLA-Houston game in the Astrodome in 1968 and really made it with the Magic Johnson- Larry Bird NCAA title game in 1979.
By the early 60s the SU basketball program had reached a low ebb. It became a way for SU football players to keep in shape in the off-season. Ernie Davis and John Mackey were in the starting line-up when the 1960-61 team went 4-19. The next year was even worse. We lost our first 22 games, to extend our losing streak to 27, then a national record. Two closing wins over Boston College and Connecticut was lipstick on a pig.
Archbold Stadium should have been replaced in the wake of our 1959 national championship but it wasn’t. Instead the University erected our first indoor football practice facility, Manley Field House. They also decided they could maximize the use of the facility and also make some money off it but having other sports compete there, including basketball. They decided they had better get an entertaining basketball team to bring the fans in. They hired Fred Lewis, who had been the head coach at Southern Mississippi, where he went 89-38, including 46-5 in 1959-61. Lewis brought along Roy Danforth, who had been one of his star players at Southern, to be part of his staff. They managed to convince Dave Bing, a star guard at DC’s Spingarn High, to come here. They also allowed a walk on from Lyons, NY named Jim Boeheim to become part of the team.
Freshmen weren’t eligible and Lewis’ first year, 1962-63, was a bumpy 8-13 ride. But the next year the team rose to 17-8, losing in the first round of the NIT to NYU, who had been a power in the sport. The NCAA tournament only had 24 teams so this was a fairly big deal, especially for a team that had been 2-22 just two years before. This created high expectation for 1964-65, especially when the team opened with a 127-67 win over American U. Reality hit hard as they lost 8 of their next 9 games, including a 64-67 loss to Louisville, before rallying to win 11 of 13 and finish 13-10. They carried that momentum over to the next season, using a full-court zone press similar to the one UCLA had used to win two straight national championships, and set a much better national record by scoring almost 100 points per game. They went 22-6, losing to Duke in the Elite 8.
But then Bing and Boeheim were gone. That’s when we had the team that really hooked me. My interest had been piqued during the 100ppg season. But this B-less team just kept going, scoring 99 in its first wo games with the same zone press. They started 5-0, lost to Bob Cousy’s Boston College team that would finish 21-3, then winning two more before facing #2 ranked Louisville with Wes Unseld in the Quaker City Classic. It was a late game and Mom sent me to bed but I snuck a transistor radio under my pillow to listen to the game. We would fall behind by 15-20 points and comeback to within 2-3 points, then fell behind by double figures again, then came back again. In the end we lost 71-75 and I cried myself to sleep. That’s when you know you’ve become a fan.
The team then won the next dozen games to go 19-2 and #8 national ranking – and heading in a confrontation with 18-3 St. John’s to determine who the best team in the east was. It was the first game I convinced by father to take me to. We led virtually the whole game but couldn’t pull away. Then in the final minute, 6-8 Sonny Dove rose above everyone to slam in two follow shots and the Johnnies took the lead. The pigeons who lived in the place fluttered all over the Dome, as if in tribute to man named after a bird. St. John’s pulled away to win 64-71 and everything seemed to come apart after that. We’d won 52 of 62 games going into the St. John’s game and would lose 46 of our next 79 games.
It shouldn’t have been that way. The ‘66-67 team once again last in first round of the NIT to finish 20-6, a very credible follow-up to the Bing era. That team had four starters coming back. The freshman team that year had gone 16-0, with two wins over Niagara’s Calvin Murphy, who had scored 50 points a game. 6-8 Wayne Ward had averaged 20 points and 16 rebounds a game and 6-0 Ernie Austin 30 points a game. The 67-68 team opened with a 108-68 win over George Washington that, like the blow-out of American U. four seasons earlier, was not a harbinger of things to come. Both Ward and Austin struggled at the varsity level and the team lacked chemistry, especially with their coach. I’ve never heard an explanation of what happened but there was a player rebellion against Lewis, resulting in his leaving and being replaced by his protégé, Danforth, after the season, which wound up a highly disappointing 11-14.
The ‘67-68 freshman team had been another strong one, (15-1), with 6-11 Bill Smith (21p 14r) and 6-7 Bob McDaniel averaged 25p, 16r. With Ward and Austin and 6-0 point guard Tom Green we should have a team that could have taken on anybody in the country. Except Ward and McDaniel were academically ineligible and Austin was the same for the first semester on the 1968-69. Ward later joined football player Oley Allen in a couple of robberies and wound up in jail, ending his basketball career. On top of that, some idiot had scheduled 10 of the first 11 games on the road. The result was a 4-14 start, which, with Austin returning was improved slightly to 9-16 by season’s end. No one could know that our next losing season would come 53 years later.
McDaniel was back for 1969-70 and he, Smith and Austin gave us one of our most exciting teams. Smith averaged 20.2p, 12.4r, McDaniel 17.8p, 10.6r and Austin 19.3p as the team scored 86.5 points per game. They got off to a 6-0 start and it seemed the good old days were back! Unfortunately nobody on that team wanted to play defense and they gave up 85.8 points per game, losing 12 of their last 18 to finish 12-12. The nadir came at Pittsburgh where they faced a team that came in averaging 65 points a game and we scored 71 in a half – still losing 108-127, the most points an SU team has ever given up. The season ended with a dismal 77-106 loss to Bowling Green.
McDaniel left the team after one game to open the 1970-71 season. A 5-0 start was followed by 4 losses in 5 games and we were still spinning our wheels. But with Smith scoring 22.7 inside and grabbing 14.5 rebounds per game and 6-1 Greg ‘Kid’ Kohls scoring 22.0 from outside with 6-3 Mike Lee scoring 13.5 with 8.0 rebs in the middle, the team rallied to win 13 of their last 16 games, once again losing in the first round of the NIT. It was the first of 51 straight winning seasons. Nobody else came close to that record in that time. In history, only UCLA has had a longer streak, with 54.
That team was known as ‘Roy’s Runts -Plus One’, the one being Smith, who was a senior, the next year they were just ‘Roy’s Runts’ – and actually improved to 22-6, as Kohls poured in 26.7 points per game, Lee 18.0 and a new star, 6-2 Dennis DuVal, averaged 15.8. Our ‘power forward’ was 6-1 Mark Wadach. A trip to New York to play Louisville in the Holiday Festival resulted in an 81-103 loss. We weren’t really big-time yet. But this team made it to the semi-finals of the NIT, (I remember listening to Bob Kostas do the game on WAER), where they lost to Lefty Driesell’s Maryland team, 65-71. The Terps front line averaged 6-10, ours 6-3.
The next year we lost Kohls- and improved some more. We got another +1 with 6-8 Rudy Hackett and Mike’s kid brother Jimmy Lee replaced Kohls as out outside guy. “Sweet D” DuVal averaged 19.6, Mike Lee, 17.0, Hackett 12.1p, 9.7r and Jimmy 8.9. We went 24-5 and finished third in the Eastern Regional, again losing to the Terps, 75-91, (almost the same score by which we’d lost to them in December, 76-91), in the Sweet 16 but stealing the consolation game with two steals for baskets to beat Penn 69-68. This was our best team, at least of the Danforth Era, better than the Final Four team. We wouldn’t win the final game of the season again for 30 years.
We took a small step back in ’73-74, finishing 19-7 and losing in the first round of the NCAA to Oral Roberts, (and four other guys). We seemed to be taking another step back the next year when we blew double-figure leads to Georgetown, (our first encounter with John Thompson), Rutgers and West Virginia. That last one was the worst. We had a 19 point half time lead, extended it to 21 and yet still somehow lost 81-84 in what was a still-rare televised game. Two games later, we lost to Canisius, our 5th loss in 8 games, reducing our record to 14-7. We then went off on a legendary 9 game tear, winning our last four regular season games, sweeping away Niagara and St. Bonaventure in something called the ECAC playoffs. That put us in the NCAA against LaSalle in Philadelphia, who we beat 87-83 in overtime after Jellybean Bryant, (Kobe’s Dad), went around and around and out with a shot at the buzzer that could have sent us home. They put us in Providence against mighty North Carolina where we hung in the game long enough for Jimmy Lee to hit the winner, 78-76. Then we beat Kansas State 95-87 in overtime after Bug Williams zoomed the length of the court and got the ball to Hackett for a hook that got us into overtime.
Then it was off to San Diego for our first Final Four. I was like me being in an elevator with a basketball team. Mighty Kentucky overpowered us 79-95 and then lost to UCLA for the title in John Wooden’s last game. We played Louisville again in the consy and lost 88-96 in OT after Jimmy Lee’s buzzer shot at the end of regulation took the tour a couple of times and fell off. But it had been an historical season that ended with a fine 23-9 record and raised hopes that great things were to come.
They didn’t happen in ’75-76 as we went 20-9, losing 5 in a row after an 18-4 start and ending the season with a dismal 56-69 loss to Texas Tech in the first round of the NCAAs. At that point, Roy Danforth decided head back down south for a job at Tulane. He played his games in the Superdome but his teams weren’t super, getting fired after going 45-90 over five years. Meanwhile Syracuse had to find itself a new coach.
