‘The surprise Team’ – San Diego State’s 1941 Basketball National Title
San Diego State’s 2010-11 basketball season has deeply memorable. The Aztecs emerged as a surprise national championship contender early within the season. however is that the program’s greatest season?
Perhaps not.
Eighty years have past since San Diego State’s last men’s school basketball national title. That team was thus exciting it garnered the nickname The surprise Team by fans of the National Association of Intercollegiate Basketball Tournament (the oldest school national championship). The Aztecs were arguably the primary Cinderella team in school basketball history.
While the NIT and NCAA tournaments were still within the early years of forming eight, and sixteen team tournament fields, the NAIB Tournament, founded by Emil Liston and Dr. James Naismith in 1937, was a 32-team, nonstop week of thrilling school basketball. In 1939 and 1940, San Diego State established a name for thrilling upsets and buzzer-beater victories. Each year, the Aztecs advanced to the national championship game, solely to complete as runners up.
But the charm finally came in San Diego State’s third national title try.
The Kansas town Star’s March nine, 1941, preview of the NAIB Tournament read:
San Diego, the surprise team that pulled out victories within the final seconds of play last year, is creating its third visit here, bringing back such favorites as “Milky” Phelps, the 1-handed push shot artist, [Andy] Echle and others. Twice the Californians have reached the finals solely to lose on each occasions.
‘It is also our flip to win that title this year,” wired Morris Gross, the San Diego coach. “I’m bringing the best team we’ve ever had at San Diego.”
Phelps was All-American boy each on and off the court. He was one among the foremost nimble guards within the nation. whereas most basketball players were still shoving the ball at the basket with 2 hands, Phelps’ leaping one-handed stroke was mesmerizing to basketball fans.
He worked at the campus malt shoppe and trained to become a military pilot.
At the 1941 NAIB Tournament, Phelps led the Aztecs through early rounds of the tournament and an upset of the West Texas “Giants,” the tallest team in school basketball of the day. By the top of the tournament, he was hobbling concerning on a sprained right knee thus swollen it had been laborious to tell apart it from his thigh. Despite his injury, Phelps gave everything he had to supply as San Diego State triumphantly battled Kentucky State for the national championship.
On March sixteen, 1941, the Kansas town Star reported:
Climaxing a 3-year drive to the championship, the “miracle men” of San Diego, Calif., State last night captured the National Intercollegiate basketball title with a smashing end that conquered the Thoroughbreds of Kentucky State school, 36 to 34, before 6,500 persons within the Auditorium.
Twice denied within the finals of this classic of the court, the California Aztecs engineered up a large lead within the 1st [*fr1], lost it midway through the closing amount and then, simply as they need done on many alternative occasions, turned on a robust drive to roar to victory.
The following year, the Aztecs came back while not the graduated Phelps. when an unsuccessful bid to defend their national championship, several fans who had grown to like the San Diego squad came along to form a special award. They were granted permission by tournament organizers to gift the Aztecs with a plaque to honor their “fighting spirit, outstanding play and sportsmanship,” per he March twelve, 1942, Kansas town Times.
The story of San Diego State’s surprise Team is one among several chronicled in “National Title” The Unlikely Tale of the NAIB Tournament.” The book demonstrates how the NAIB (now the NAIA) picked up on Dr. Naismith’s mission to use sports in an exceedingly method that might profit mankind. It is found at naibbook.com or for download on most ebook readers.
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