Oregon: first king of epic Dance

As you watch Kentucky and Connecticut face off for the national title in a $1.5 billion stadium, consider this: This all had to begin somewhere.

The first NCAA title game was 75 years ago, in 1939, in a March when Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia illustrated the folly of British leader Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement. The players and their contemporaries wondered if events might lead to the U.S.— and them— becoming involved in another world war. The games went on. In 2011, I wrote an introductory note to the sole surviving starter on the first champions, the Oregon Webfoots. John Dick, a junior, scored 13 points in a 46-33 rout of Ohio State in Evanston, Ill., and the next year was an All-American and Oregon’s student body president. Hewas aNavy fighter pilot duringWorldWar II and the KoreanWar before switching to sea duty and served as captain of the supercarrier USS Saratoga. He retired as a rear admiral and returned to Eugene.

When we hooked up on the phone, I said that if I moved forward with a book project and he was amenable, I would travel to Oregon to interview him at length. I still have a recording of that conversation and listened to it for inspiration when I wrote “March 1939: Before the Madness.”

Rear Adm. Dick told me he recalled my late father— a former Oregon football coach who had been a fellow World War II fighter pilot— and was aware of my career, which had included a stint in Portland.

“I’m very favorably inclined to do whatever I can to help you,” he said.

But he explained that he recently had been hospitalized after a fall and was beginning rehabilitation.

“I’m more than willing to talk to you, but it’s just that I have to complete this other requirement,” he added.

Rear Adm. Dick passed away before we could meet. Later, when I forged on, his son, John

Michael, gave me invaluable help. So did other offspring, including those of coachHowardHobson and the four senior starters on the team known as the “Tall Firs”— Bobby Anet, Wally Johansen, SlimWintermute and Laddie Gale.

Itwas the second season following the elimination of the jump ball after every basket. Some coaches groused that the game— as played by the race-horse Oregon program— was becoming dangerously fast-paced. (Sound familiar?) The ball still had laces, goaltendingwas legal, and the one-handed shotwas becoming more commonplace.

TheNational Invitation Tournament atNewYork’s Madison Square Gardenwas in its second year. The six-team eventwas sponsored by the Metropolitan BasketballWriters Association, and the member scribes shamelessly hyped it. TheNational Association of Basketball Coaches responded, putting together the inaugural 1939 national tournament, with half-heartedNCAA sanctioning. The coaches divided the nation into eight districts and committees inwhich eachwas responsible for selecting one team for the field, whether through a simple bid or district play-in games.

Colorado, Kentucky and Missouri were among teams that turned down bids, but Oregon was the nation’s best by the end of the season— and proved it with decisive victories over Texas and Oklahoma in theWest Regional, then the easy title game win. Undefeated Long Island won the NIT, but its independent schedule— with one true road game— was laughable.

In Evanston, official attendance was 5,000. That was padded. Late in the game, Anet— theWebfoots’ captain — tried to save a ball from going out of bounds, dived across press row and knocked the championship trophy off the table, breaking it. So all of the postgame photos of Anet with the trophy show it in two pieces, without the player on top.

And 75 years after that first title game …

Look what they got started.