Coach to lead a New York City team to an NCAA men’s basketball title: Nat Holman
THE TIME March 28, 1950
THE BACKGROUND Back then, the NCAA Tournament included only eight teams and an East and a West region. CCNY wasn’t included in the regular season’s final AP top-20 ranking and was the last team invited into the NIT. After winning the NIT, CCNY was invited to the NCAA Tournament. THE SKINNY CCNY nipped Ohio State by a point in the first round, outlasted N.C. State in the semifinals and got by Bradley, 71-68, for the title, becoming the one and only school to ever win the NIT and NCAA Tournament in the same season. Irwin Dambrot was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, and Nat Holman appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
THE OTHERS WHO CAME CLOSEST
Two other coaches have led their teams to the NCAA Tournament title game, Frank McGuire and St. John’s in 1952, losing to Kansas, and Howard Cann and NYU in 1945, falling to Oklahoma State. The last city team to reach the Final Four was St. John’s and Lou Carnesecca in 1985. THE QUOTE “More popular than the Yankees and the Dodgers combined right now.”
— The Post’s Jimmy Cannon THE AFTERMATH A national pointshaving scandal was revealed that implicated several CCNY players, ruining their NBA hopes and leading to the team’s suspension in February of the following year. The program went from Division I to D-III and never was the same again.
THE LEGACY Holman was never directly linked to the scandal, but it still partially tarnished his legacy. A member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and New York Basketball Hall of Fame, he coached CCNY from 1919-52 and had two other short stints from 1954-56 and 1958-59. He compiled an overall record of 405-150 per SportsReference. Holman was a star player for NYU who played professionally for the original Celtics (no relation to the Boston Celtics) while beginning his coaching tenure at CCNY.