MARCH MADNESS REWIND
Russell and the dominant Dons ushered in the Golden Age of college basketball
In its infancy, college basketball was low, slow and disjointed.
It goes without saying that there was no March Madness beaming college hoops to the four corners of the country. There were no ubiquitous brackets, and no killjoys telling people, “I don’t care about your brackets.”
There was no between-the-legs dribble, no 3-point line stretching the game almost to the shadow of half court. Dunks were neither competitive nor cultural statements.
The game was played on the floor, in short shorts. There was no shot clock. Because, why? There was no “One Shining Moment” with confetti wafting down from the ceiling after a championship game. The team manager packed away the uniforms and everyone headed for the bus. And that was that.
Then came the University of San Francisco Dons.
College basketball may have gotten off to a slow start, but it was always going to be the game we know now. You could argue USF was the transformative outfit that gave it a huge shove toward its manifest destiny.
Before USF, only three college teams had won back-to-back postseason tournaments — Oklahoma State and Kentucky in the NCAA tournament, and St. John’s in the NIT.
Only one, the 1938-39 Long Island University Sharks, posted a perfect record.
Almost no one played above the rim so frequently and insistently, as did the Dons. Give them credit, they warned a sea change
was in the offing.
During the 1953-54 season, coach Phil Woolpert promoted a certain Bill Russell from the school’s JV squad to the varsity. Russell, a sophomore from Oakland’s Mcclymonds High, had intended to get a job at the shipyards after high school. Fate intervened when USF alum Hal Dejulio, who had seen Russell playing basketball, recommended the lad to Woolpert.
Russell was still growing when he reported to the Dons’ varsity, from 6-foot-8 as a freshman to 6-9 as a sophomore and topping out at 6-10 as a senior. With Russell averaging 19.9 points and 19.2 rebounds, the Dons finished 14-7 in his first season on the big club.
The Dons’ 1954-55 season opened with optimism and back-to-back games in Southern California — a nine-point win over Loyola Marymount, followed by a seven-point loss to John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins.
In hindsight there are two developments that elevate this game. One, the mythmaking hype machine that went into overdrive so as to deliver Russell’s revelatory exploits to a breathless world. From the Oakland Tribune account for that game in Westwood:
“San Francisco’s towering 6-foot-9 center Bill Russell played a sort of one-man volleyball (game) under the basket, blocked innumerable Bruin shots and kept two Bruins occupied at a time most of the night. However, he was outscored by Bruin forward John Moore, 17 points to 15 points.”
And two, it was the last college basketball game Bill Russell would ever lose.
USF tore undefeated through the rest of the regular season, winning 19 of the 20 games by double digits. They eased through the two first postseason games. Then came a rematch with Oregon State. The two teams had met early in the season at Kezar Pavilion in Golden Gate Park, with USF winning handily, 60-34. The second game, in Gill Coliseum on the OSU campus, went down to the wire.
With 13 seconds left in the contest and USF up 57-53, Oregon State’s Swede Halbrook, at 7-foot-3 the tallest basketball player in the country, sank two free throws.
USF called a timeout. But the Dons’ K.C. Jones was assessed a technical foul for shoving before the ball was inbounded. Halbrook buried
the free throw to make it a 57-56 nailbiter.
Oregon State guard Ron Robbins misfired on a set shot. The rebound wound up in a jump ball between Halbrook and Jones. The tip was batted into the air. Russell directed the loose ball to USF team captain Hal Perry who secured it until the final horn.
The championship game figured to be a clash of titans — USF and its 19-game win streak against defending NCAA champion La Salle in Kansas City.
It wasn’t close. Russell came out firing, scoring 18 points in the first half. Kansas coach Phog Allen said at halftime that Russell’s performance was the most exciting he had ever seen in his career of 45 years.
Russell finished with 23 points. But it was Jones who led the Dons with 24 points and held La Salle’s 24-pointper game forward Tom Gola to six field goals.
After the 77-63 victory Russell said, “I played on the greatest team in the world, and we defeated the best team we ever played against.”
Back in the Bay Area a gala luncheon was quickly planned for the team in the Gold Room of the Fairmont Hotel. Tickets were $3.25.
The Dons’ breakthrough season: Priceless.
There was only one way for the USF basketball team to improve on its 1954-55 tour de force: Another title and an undefeated record.
That seemed to be the expectation. Prior the 1955-56 season, the Dons were picked by the United Press board of coaches to win the national title again. Russell was placed on Sports Magazine’s preseason ALL-NCAA team.
Their first test was a rematch of the 1955 title game against La Salle in the Holiday Festival Tournament in the heady environment of New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Woolpert assured reporters that his players were not overconfident. “As for winning another NCAA championship,” he said, “there are so many factors involved that you can’t forecast what will happen.”
What happened in the La Salle game was fairly predictable. Without the Gola — he had graduated — La Salle lost by 17. One game later, the Dons met UCLA, the only team to beat them. It was another 17-point romp for the Dons.
Sports Illustrated was in attendance during the Holiday Tournament and was dead impressed with the No. 1 player on the No. 1-rated team in the country dating to the previous Feb. 8.
“For almost a year college basketball has been dominated as never before by a man who, basically, cannot shoot,” wrote SI’S Roy Terrell. “His name is Bill Russell and if he ever learns to hit the basket someone is going to have to revise the rules.”
The Garden was packed to the rafters to see Russell. The crowds were cool to him at first. But:
“As the tournament progressed and San Francisco moved steadily ahead into the finals, the looks of doubt and derision changed into looks of incredulity and awe,” Terrell wrote. “For the things which Russell can do he does superlatively well, perhaps better than anyone in college basketball has ever done them before. All the words they had read had not really prepared the crowd for Bill Russell.
History was made on Jan. 28, 1956. USF was 39-0 and poised to break what Bay Area newspapers called the “modern collegiate” record of 39 successive victories. As fate would have it, the opponent was Cal, coached by Pete Newell. He took the air out of the ball. This was a feature of mid-century basketball. With no shot clock, underdogs would simply hold the ball. The strategy helped Cal build a 13-3 lead.
According to the Oakland Tribune, “USF fans booed and jeered.” The Dons put on a full-court press and took a modest lead. Even then, with USF ahead 26-21, Cal’s reserve center Joe Hagler held the ball, just stood there, for 7:40. USF played keepaway to record the 33-24 victory — the team’s 40th win in a row.
USF ran the table from there with a string of double-digit victories leading up to the NCAA championship game.
First they fell behind 15-4 to No. 4 Iowa, But Russell was too much for the Hawkeyes, scoring 26 points and grabbing 27 rebounds. The narrator called Russell “the Babe Ruth of basketball.”
Vanquished Iowa guard Bill Seaberg said, “You’d shoot, and here Russell would be knocking the ball down your throat.”
Echoed Hawkeye forward Bill Logan who, at 6-foot-7, was his team’s tallest player, “You can jump as high as you can and still you’re only high enough to tap Russell on the shoulder.”
And what were Russell’s feelings about his back-toback titles?
“The wheels kept turning,” he said, “and the band played on.”