Remembering 1st NCAA champions
Oregon’s return to the Final Four has shined a spotlight on the Tall Firs, the NCAA’s first champion.
The Oregon Webfoots won the inaugural NCAA Tournament in 1939 with a 46-33 victory over Ohio State in a game played at Northwestern University. The team would become known by the nickname the Tall Firs — a nod to both the Oregon landscape and the fact that the players loomed taller than most of their opponents.
The Webfoots’ front line included 6-foot-4 John Dick, 6-4 leading scorer Laddie Gale and 6-8 Urgel “Slim” Wintermute. Guards Bobby Anet, a 5-8 playmaker, and 5-10 Wally Johansen rounded out the starting five. Anet and Johansen grew up on the same street in Astoria, Ore., and had played together since junior high.
Coach Howard Hobson told the Associated Press in 1988 that Anet, who died in 1981, was the heart of the Tall Firs. “He was the greatest floor general I ever had,” said Hobson, who also coached at Yale and was enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1965. “He sparked the team. He was its leader.”
Dick went on to serve 32 years in the U.S. Navy, enlisting the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and rising to the rank of rear admiral. He was at the final game played at Oregon’s famed McArthur Court in 2011, and pumped his fist for the crowd when he was announced at halftime. He died later that year.
Reserve guard Ford “Moon” Mullen went on to play baseball in the majors for the Philadelphia Blue Jays (Phillies) in 1944. Wintermute worked at Boeing.
On the way to the first Big Dance , the Tall Firs won the Northern Division of the Pacific Coast Conference, then beat Southern Division champion Cal in a three-game series. The victory sent Oregon to the regional tournament on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, where the team beat Texas 56-41 and Oklahoma 55-37 before heading to Illinois for the title game via train.
The eight-team NCAA Tournament was founded by the National Association of Basketball Coaches to compete with the National Invitation Tournament in New York, which began in 1938.
Dick led all scorers with 13 points in the championship game against the Big Ten champions before maybe 5,000 fans, many of whom were given free tickets.
Fans in Eugene listened to the game on the radio and later descended by the thousands at the local train station to welcome back the team.