The Holy Cross 1947 National Basketball Championship

The Holy Cross 1947 National Basketball Championship

The school was small. The program was an afterthought. The gymnasium was non-existent. That a team from the College of the Holy Cross should find itself in the championship game of the NCAA Tournament was a preposterous notion.

But there was Holy Cross, the product of a happy accident rather than a well-conceived plan, preparing to meet Oklahoma for the national title in New York. In March 1947, the team without a home court had appropriated Madison Square Garden.

The mecca of basketball rocked to the Crusaders' locomotive cheer: "Choo-choo-rah-rah!"

Although basketball traced its origins to New England, the region had been left behind in the development of the game. 0l' Doc Naismith would have been thoroughly familiar with the facilities, provided the institutions

he visited had bothered to build any. The success of Holy Cross was a triumph of spirit and an act of fantasy.

Instead of rising to basketball prominence, the Crusaders fell into it. Start with Alvin "Doggie" Julian, who was hired from Muhlenberg as an assistant football coach and told that among his duties was the supervision of the school's basketball team.

There was no gym on the Worcester, Mass., campus, only an old barn that had been converted for practice

use. Nor was there money in the budget for extensive recruiting.

Remarkably, the first class to report to Julian in that barn in the fall of 1945 included several outstanding

players from the New York metropolitan area. Gerry Clark, a Holy Cross alumnus and an assistant district attorney in the nation's largest city, took it upon himself to scout Catholic high school players and direct them to Worcester. Among those who accepted an invitation ...

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...a hook shot, cut the deficit to four points with three minutes remaining and Pryor's free throw chopped it to 48-45.

But that was as close as the Sooners would come. Holy Cross scored 10 of the last 12 points in the game for a 58-47 conquest.

The team without a campus gymnasium reigned over college basketball.

Tucker was the game's high scorer with 22 points, but no other Oklahoma player was in double figures. Kaftan finished with 18 points and was Holy Cross' rebounding tar, while O'Connell added 16 points and Oftring 14 for the Crusaders.

Cousy, the freshman substitute who would become the most famous player in school history and a great professional, contributed two free throws.

The implausible championship stimulated college basketball interest throughout New England, And it even

resulted in the construction of a practice gym on the Holy Cross campus.