by William Cook
On March 20, in the opening round of the eight-team NCAA Tournament, Holy Cross, led by Joe Mullaney with 18 points and George Kaftan with 15, defeated Navy 55–47 to advance to the Final Four. Two days later, they advanced to the finals by defeating CCNY 60–45 at Madison Square Garden in a game witnessed by 18,470 fans.
The Holy Cross victory over the CCNY Beavers was quite surprising considering that after the first 7½ minutes of play the Crusaders had not scored a field goal and after 14 minutes were trailing by a score of 23–12. But then Holy Cross got hot and reeled off 13 straight points and, at the intermission, led by a score of 27–25.
Nine minutes into the second half the score was tied at 38–38. As the Crusaders began pulling away, the work around the basket by George Kaftan led the way. Ultimately, Kaftan scored 30 points to lead the Crusaders over CCNY. At that time the NCAA tournament single-game scoring record was 31 points set by George Giamick of North Carolina vs. Dartmouth in 1941.
George Kaftan, who grew up in Washington Heights and learned to play basketball on the streets of upper Manhattan, where there were no basketball courts, would be named a second-team All-American for 1946–47.
Bob Cousy, coming off the bench, scored 5 points. In his freshman year, Cousy shared playing time with another forward on the team, Joe Mullaney.
Joe Mullaney, a former All-City player in New York, had enrolled in Holy Cross after serving in the Army Air Corps and was captain of the Crusaders’ National Championship team. Holy Cross would be the first eastern team to win the NCAA Tournament. Later, Joe Mullaney would become a successful college coach at Providence, taking the program over in 1955 and coaching them to 12 straight winning seasons, including NIT championships in 1961 and 1963. After coaching for a while in the NBA, ABA, and at Brown, Mullaney would return to Providence in 1981 for a second stint. For 18 seasons as coach at Providence, Mullaney’s record was 319–164. Among the future stars that Mullaney recruited to play for him were Lenny Wilkens, John Thompson, Mike Riordan, Johnny Eagan, and Jimmy Walker.
A few days later, Holy Cross won the 1947 NCAA Tournament defeating Oklahoma 58–47. At the half, the Crusaders had been down 31–28. The Sooners featured two All-Americans, Alva Paine and Gerald “Old Rocking Chair” Tucker who was the center. Tucker was 26 years old, stood 6′4″, and was built like a tree trunk. Tucker attempted to intimidate the Crusaders 18-year-old, 6′2″ forward George Kaftan by telling him, “So you’re the young hotshot.” Kaftan quickly replied, “Gerry, this is a young man’s game. Time to hang ‘em up.”4
After Tucker pushed Kaftan around in the first half, Doggie Julian put the burly 6′5″ Bob Curran on him in the second half. Tucker would score 22 points in the game, but Curran held him to one field goal in the second half and with Kaftan freed-up, the Crusaders rebounded outscoring the Sooners 30–16 to win the championship. George Kaftan once again led Holy Cross with 18 points. Bob Cousy had 2 points both coming from free throws.
Kaftan was the Crusaders leading scorer for the year with 310 points, named the tournament’s MVP, and a second-team All-American.
In its national championship season of 1946–47 Holy Cross finished with a record of 27–3. When the Crusaders arrived back in Worcester’s Union Station the next day, they were greeted by 10,000 screaming fans.
During his freshman year, Bob Cousy gained a reputation as a slick, ball-stealing, magical-ball-handling, future star of the team. Cousy was not a fast runner, but with his quick reflexes, he just did things fast. In his sophomore year, Cousy would play ahead of Joe Mullaney and teamed up with George Kaftan; the two became the most well-known one-two punch in college basketball. Nonetheless, from time to time, Coach Julian became disenchanted with Cousy’s flashy play and his behind the back dribble and benched him. This bothered Cousy, and for a time he considered transferring to St. John’s but then reconsidered.
Entering the 1947–48 season, Holy Cross was ranked the third best team in the nation behind Kentucky and Notre Dame.
Holy Cross began the 1947–48 campaign with victories over Valparaiso and Willimantic. On December 13, the Holy Cross Crusaders broke the 100-point barrier for the first time, defeating Eastern Connecticut 104–43. In the first three games of the season, the Crusaders had scored 249 points. Going back into the previous season, Holy Cross had won 26 games in a row.
The Holy Cross winning streak came to an end on December 17 when they were defeated by Columbia 60–53 at Morningside Gym in upper Manhattan. Led by Walter Budko with 19 points and 12 by Bruce Gehrke, the Lions out-hustled the Crusaders on the way to their ninth win in a row as they stole Holy Cross passes and worked hard on the boards grabbing rebounds. Bob Cousy scored 27 points for Holy Cross.
A few days later on December 20, Holy Cross rebounded from the Columbia loss defeating Dartmouth 75–61 before 11,395 fans at Boston Garden. The first half ended with Holy Cross in the lead, 42–26, led by Bob Cousy’s 15 points. Cousy would end the game with 22 points made on eight field goals and six foul shots. George Kaftan and Bob McMullan each had 11 points for the Crusaders.
The Sugar Bowl basketball game had begun in 1936 as an added attraction to the Sugar Bowl football game held in New Orleans. In late December the Crusaders went to New Orleans to play in the Sugar Bowl Tournament.
By 1947, the Sugar Bowl basketball game had become a doubleheader and the presence of Holy Cross, the defending National Champion, in the event gave it increasing prestige. In the first game, 967 fans saw Pitt defeat LSU 52–47. Then, Holy Cross defeated North Carolina 56–51 in the event’s first overtime game with Bob Cousy scoring 21 points.
As a coach, Doggie Julian was all business. When Bob Cousy had a minor auto accident and missed a Saturday practice, Julian had no mercy on him. At that time, the next game on the schedule was February 28 when the Crusaders met Loyola of Chicago at Boston Arena. Julian kept Cousy on the bench the entire first half. Then, with 8 minutes left in the game and Holy Cross leading 42–38, he finally sent Cousy in. He proceeded to score 12 points in the last 5½ minutes to lead the Crusaders to a 62–46 victory.
By mid-March 1948, Holy Cross had an 18-game winning streak. On March 18, led by Bob Cousy and George Kaftan, the Crusaders defeated Michigan 63–45 at Madison Square Garden in the first round of the NCAA Tournament Eastern Quarterfinals. To advance, the Crusaders would have to conquer Kentucky who had upended Columbia in the quarterfinals.
That was not to be as the following evening the Kentucky Wildcats defeated Holy Cross 60–52. The 18,472 fans at the Garden were thrilled by the scrappy play and individual duels that occurred between the Crusaders and Wildcats players. Kentucky had entered the game as a five-point favorite. But as soon as it was realized that the Wildcats were going to contain Cousy and Kaftan, the outcome of the contest was not in question. Kentucky kept using both its speed on the fast break and size to drive against Holy Cross. The Crusaders could not control either. Bob Cousy had just one field goal and scored only 5 points as two Wildcats, Ken Rotina and Dale Barnstable, did a magnificent job of containing him. Prior to the Kentucky Game, Cousy had scored 472 points in the season. Alex Groza, the Wildcats big 6′7″ All-American center, led all scorers with 23 points while wearing down George Kaftan. The loss to Kentucky ended Holy Cross’ 19-game winning streak and the Crusaders finished the season with a record of 26–4. Kentucky went on to become the 1948 National Champions.
Despite his lack of brilliance in the Kentucky game, Wildcats coach Adolph Rupp was impressed with Cousy. Later Rupp would remark that Cousy was the best backcourt player he had ever seen and Rupp had seen some truly great ones, including his own Ralph Beard.
Still, it had been another fine season for junior center George Kaftan as he scored 468 points and became the first Holy Cross player to score 1,000 points in his career.
At the conclusion of the 1947–48 season, Doggie Julian left Holy Cross to become the head coach of the Boston Celtics in the Basketball Association of America (BBA). He was replaced as coach of the
Crusaders by Lester “Buster” Sheary.
Buster Sheary came into the head coaching job at Holy Cross through the back door. A native of Worchester, he had played college football at Catholic University and was selected as an All-South fullback. He then became a successful high school basketball coach. With the outbreak of World War Two, Sheary assumed scouting duties for the Naval ROTC basketball program. He then served as an assistant coach in the program for two years becoming a head coach in 1947–48.
Bob Cousy later stated that during his career on the hardwood he had played under two master coaches who helped shape his own coaching style. One was Boston Celtics coach Arnold “Red” Auerbach who would help him at the professional level to harness his talents, ultimately developing him into an NBA Rookie of the Year.
The other, at the college level, was Buster Sheary who was his coach at Holy Cross during his junior and senior years. Bob Cousy felt that he had come to college a hungry player, but being around Buster Sheary for a couple of years made him hungrier. Sheary’s philosophy was that if you wanted to win badly enough no one could stop you. According to Cousy, at the end of every practice, Sheary always rolled a basketball out of the door of the gymnasium. The gym sat on top of a hill and it was the players’ task to chase after it. The player who came back with the ball would be rewarded by being the first one to go to the showers. Cousy stated that he often came back with the ball. “When [Sheary] asked you to run through a wall,” said Cousy, “your only question was ‘Which wall?’”5
However, Cousy freely admits that he may have learned some bad habits from Sheary as well. According to Cousy, Sheary had a habit of smacking steel lockers with his bare fists to emphasize a point and once he even banged his head against a wall.
In the spring of 1973 when Cousy was asked by the AAU (Amateur Athletic Association) to coach a team of college All-Stars against a team of players from the Soviet Union, he accepted and appointed Buster Sheary as an assistant coach. This was the team that had won the Gold Medal in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, handing the American team its first-ever loss of the Gold in the games. At that time, Sheary was in his sixties and had been out of coaching for a while. There were critics who believed that Cousy’s appointment of his old college coach was nothing more than nostalgia. But the fact was that Cousy truly believed that Sheary would contribute heavily to the competitiveness of the team.
With Buster Sheary’s appointment as head coach, going forward the next seven years, Holy Cross teams would win no fewer than nineteen games in a season. In 1954, the Crusaders coached by Sheary would win the NIT, defeating Duquesne 71–62 in the championship game.
1948–49 was Bob Cousy’s junior year. That year the Sugar Bowl basketball event became a tournament. The tournament’s organizers solidified the legitimacy of the event by bringing both St. Louis, the 1948 NIT champion, and Kentucky, the NCAA tournament champion, to New Orleans. Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp even backed out of the Holiday Tournament at Madison Square Garden to play in the Sugar Bowl Tournament. Holy Cross and Tulane made up the other two entries.
Unfortunately for Holy Cross, they were beaten in the first round by St. Louis 61–52, the eventual winner of the tournament that went on to defeat Kentucky 61–52. Despite 28 points by Bob Cousy in the consolation game, the Crusaders finished fourth, defeated by Tulane 81–70.
In Buster Sheary’s first season as head coach, Holy Cross finished ranked 27th in the nation with a record of 19–8. One big pair of gym shoes were left unfilled for Holy Cross when just fourteen games into the season on January 22, the Crusaders lost All-American George Kaftan to graduation. Kaftan would score 162 points in his brief senior year play and wrap-up his career as the leading scorer in Holy Cross history at that time with 1,177 points.
Drafted by the Boston Celtics of the BBA, Kaftan would sign his contract the day after graduation. Actually, his father, a Turkish immigrant, would have to sign the contract as Kaftan was not yet 21 years of age. The contract called for $16,000, a huge sum for a professional player at that time.
With George Kaftan lost to graduation, the major scoring responsibility on the Crusaders now fell on the shoulders of Bob Cousy. In the fourth game of the year, Holy Cross had been unsuccessful in a rematch with Kentucky, this time losing 51–48. Bob Cousy scored 11 points in the game, the lowest total he would score in any game during the season. However, George Kaftan’s career record for points scored would be short-lived. By the end of the season, Cousy would take over as the all-time Holy Cross points scored leader with 1,193. Cousy finished the season tallying 480 points, just 6 shy of breaking his school season record of 486 points. In ten games Cousy scored 20 or more points, his highest total of 28 coming in a loss to Tulane, and he was named a second-team All-American.
On February 5, 1949, Holy Cross would defeat Boston College 46–39. Going forward, the victory would have special significance as it would be the start of a 47-home-game winning streak for the Crusaders that would continue until they were defeated on February 27, 1954, by the University of Connecticut 78–77.
1949–50 was Bob Cousy’s senior year and the Crusaders started strong, defeating formable opponents such as Bowling Green 71–70, and Kansas 57–53. On January 12, Holy Cross defeated St. Louis 69–55 at Boston Garden to increase their record to 13–0 and become ranked number one in the Associated Press poll. The Crusaders would remain the top-ranked college team for five weeks.
The Crusaders also played several non-NCAA contests on their schedule, and on March 3, the Crusaders would defeat the New York Athletic Club (NYAC) 58–56 to increase their overall record to 27–0 (20–0 NCAA games). At that time the Holy Cross Crusaders were leading the nation in offense with a scoring average of 74.4 points per game. Then they would hit a wall, losing the last four games of the season.
The following day Holy Cross would go up to Morningside Gym and take on a nemesis, the Columbia Lions. The game was widely anticipated in New York and with the Lions’ home court limited seating of 3,500, the game would be carried on both television (WOR) and radio (WKCR). So far in the 1949–50 season, the Crusaders had beaten five teams that had topped the Lions (Fordham 75–48, Harvard 102–71, Brown 83–39 and 70–45, Colgate 108–76, and Dartmouth 53–49). In 1947, Columbia had snapped a Holy Cross winning streak of 27 games, and now the Lions did it again, this time defeating the Crusaders by a score of 61–54 to snap their most recent 27-game winning streak.
Next up for Holy Cross was Yale, which defeated the Crusaders 66–62.
With a record of 20–2 (NCAA games) and 27–2 (overall), Holy Cross was invited to the 1950 NCAA Tournament. Bad luck continued for the Crusaders as they were defeated in the opening round at Madison Square Garden by North Carolina State 87–74 despite a strong effort by Bob Cousy with 24 points. The following night Holy Cross lost in a consolation game to Ohio State 72–52 as Cousy finished his collegiate career scoring 14 points.
After losing the final four games of the season, the Crusaders finished the season with a record of 27–4. Bob Cousy had an outstanding senior year averaging 19.4 points per game, was named a first-team All-American and the nation’s outstanding college player of the year by the Basketball Writers of America.
During his varsity career spanning four years, Bob Cousy had set the Holy Cross record for most points scored with 1,775. In the Colgate game played on February 7, Cousy had set the Holy Cross scoring record with 36 points, 14 field goals, and 8 free throws. In addition, Cousy had set another Holy Cross record in the Boston College game on February 21 when he sank 14 free throws in 14 attempts. A few years later Cousy’s number 17 jersey would be retired.
Several years later Bob Cousy’s Holy Cross career scoring record would be broken by Tom Heinsohn with 1,789 points. On March 1, 1956, Heinsohn would rewrite the Holy Cross record book when he scored 51 points and grabbed 42 rebounds as the Crusaders defeated Boston College 111–75.
But time marches on, even in the golden era of Holy Cross basketball, and it wasn
’t long before Heinsohns’ individual game scoring record would fall to Jack Foley. On February 5, 1960, Foley would score 55 points for Holy Cross vs. Colgate. He would follow up that effort by scoring 56 points vs. Connecticut on February 17, 1962, and finish his career with 2,185 points.*
Currently, Bob Cousy’s career mark of 1,775 points ranks seventh in the school’s history, and he ranks fifth all-time in field goals made with 709.
In June 1950, Bob Cousy graduated from Holy Cross with a Bachelor of Science in Business. Six months later, in December, Cousy would marry his college sweetheart Missie Ritterbach. The couple would have two daughters, Marie and Tricia.
Despite his detractors who pointed out that Holy Cross had not won a major tournament while the Cooz (as he would soon become known) was the school’s top star, he was picked in the first round of the NBA draft by the Tri-Cities Blackhawks then traded immediately to the Chicago Stags. When the Stags disbanded prior to the beginning of the 1950 season, Cousy was made available in a special player lottery.
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* The current all-time Holy Cross career points leader is Ronnie Perry with 2,524. In addition, Cousy’s 14 for 14 at the free throw line has been bested twice. John Wendelken vs. Massachusetts on February 18, 1965, and Ronnie Perry vs. Yale on December 9, 1978; both went 15 for 15 at the charity stripe.
2
A Brief History of the NBA 1946–1951 & the Rise of Bob Cousy and the Boston Celtics
In 2015, eleven NBA teams had a market value of a billion dollars each, due in most part to their lucrative TV contracts. The Los Angeles Clippers were sold in 2014 by embattled owner Donald Sterling for two billion dollars after his racist views were revealed. The sale price of the Clippers surpassed the estimate valuation put on the franchise by Forbes by four times.
In the early years, however, professional basketball had been struggling in its attempts to be recognized as a legitimate professional sport, going through a protracted evolution during the late 1930s and early 1940s with the National Basketball League (NBL). But the NBL was a backwater league with teams located in such cities as Hammond, Indiana; Oshkosh, Wisconsin; and Waterloo, Iowa. Playing in such remote communities just didn’t afford the league the publicity that it needed to be taken seriously when competing against Major League Baseball and professional football for fan interest.