Georgetown Basketball History: Historical Narrative
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A narrative of the season-by-season story of Georgetown University is part of this historical project. Below is a work in progress on this narrative.

After a decade of mediocrity and nondescription in the college game, it was little wonder that Hilltop basketball fans welcomed their new coach with open arms. That "new" coach was actually an old friend to Georgetown athletics, Elmer Ripley.

Ripley, the 46 year old Brown basketball star who played for the "Original Celtics" and a host of professional teams before entering coaching in 1927, carried the Hoyas to a 24-6 record between 1927 and 1929 before leaving for Yale. After guiding the Elis and later Columbia for the past ten seasons, "the old master" returned to Washington in the fall of 1938 to breathe new life into the sport at Georgetown.With the departure of seven seniors from the 1937-1938 team, Ripley began his second stint at Georgetown with only four returning varsitymen and a host of newcomers. But under the leadership of senior captain Joe Murphy and the rising star of forward John Schmitt, Ripley found the potential that could carry Georgetown from the doghouse of the Eastern Conference to the penthouse.

The 1938-1939 Hoyas featured a starting lineup of Murphy, Schmitt, senior Ed Kurtyka, junior Irv Rizzi, and newcomer John McGowan. McGowan, pulled from the intramural ranks, would use his 6'3" frame at center in place of (Big) Mike Petrosky, relying on the experienced quartet around him to provide the defensive support which he would need. In Murphy and Schmitt, Ripley had forwards who could shoot; in Rizzi and Kurtyka, guards who could guard. Expectations were high but guarded, for only a year earlier a team with much greater experience fell victim to another losing season.

This opening five surprised even Ripley by beginning the season with five straight wins, the most for a Georgetown club since 1921. Western Maryland fell easily, 46-23, behind the scoring of Murphy and McGowan. Two much closer affairs the following week netted victories as well: a 36-34 triumph over Loyola, and a 51-35 win over cross-town rival American University, in the first meeting between the two schools. After the three wins, the Hoyas received their first real test at Madison Square Garden against NYU. After a 19-15 lead at the half, Georgetown increased its lead with a sudden 7-0 run at the start of the period, leading the favored Violet 26-15. Then, inexplicably, the Hoya offensive machine ground to a halt, as NYU clawed back while Georgetown was held scoreless for the next fourteen minutes. At the six minute mark, Johnny McGowan added a free throw, and this was the last Georgetown score of the evening. But even more amazing was the final: Georgetown 27, NYU 25--the Hoyas had held together despite a second half shooter's nightmare.

After a 36-28 upset of Temple, where McGowan and Joe Murphy combined for 19 points, the Hoyas found themselves at 5-0, with a big conference win already under their belts. As hopes rose, the team began a blistering road stretch whereby the Hoyas played 12 of their next 14 games away from home. Fred Mesmer-coached teams were well known for their "Jekyll and Hyde" routine away from home, but what of the new Ripley team?

Opening up the road trip was a game versus Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, where conference scoring ace Bob Stark scored 17 in a 37-34 Skibo win. Georgetown shot a dismal 6 of 18 free throws, a more likely cause for the loss than Stark's hot hand. Wins over West Virginia (37-31) and Loyola (39-30) followed, as the GU cause was buoyed by the play of John Schmitt. Schmitt, the last of the "Syracuse pipeline" that had produced such GU stars as Fred Mesmer, Don Dutton, and Ed Hargaden, scored 12 against the Mountaineers and led the Blue and Gray on a 14-0 spurt late in the Loyola contest. Schmitt's emergence could not thwart a four game losing streak against New York state teams which followed. Facing NYU at the 102nd Regiment Armory, the Violet connected on late free throws to avoid a second upset, 45-43. Traveling to Archbold Gym to meet Syracuse, the Hoyas rallied to pull within two with one minute left, only to see the Orangemen hold on by the very same count of 45-43. Twice in the last minute Syracuse was fouled intentionally to get the ball back for GU--twice Syracuse missed the free throw, but the Orange twice gained possession right back.

After these heartbreaking losses, the Hoya will to win was crushed. Fordham easily disposed of the sagging Hilltoppers, 43-34, while Army won in a walk, 36-17. A one game homestand was just what the doctor ordered, and "Doc" Ripley led his men back to Washington and saw them top West Virginia, 40-32. The win placed the Hoyas in a tie with Carnegie Tech for the EIBC lead at 3-1, but there was no time to celebrate--the team was back on the road.

As they headed north, the Hoyas proceeded to College Park, registering their ninth win in fourteen starts. The Terrapins were tabled, 39-25, behind a stellar performance by Joe Murphy before 4,000 at Ritchie Coliseum. On the way to meet Pitt, the Hoyas survived a series of last minute heroics by Johnny Schmitt in a 32-31 win over Penn State. All eyes pointed toward a battle with Pitt, hoping to stay with league-leading Carnegie Tech in the championship race. The Panthers, winners of just two of five conference games, upset the Hoyas and dampened their championship hopes, 43-41. In the team's first "big" conference game since it joined the circuit in 1933, GU rallied from a 10 point deficit with 7:00 to play to close to four, 41-37. The Pitt defense held Georgetown to two free throws in the final three minutes, however, escaping with the 43-41 win.

After the loss, the team's hopes for championship laurels appeared dim. But Carnegie Tech had been upset that evening by lowly West Virginia, setting up the February 15th battle at Tech Gym between the Hoyas and the Skiboes as a chance for GU to clinch at least a tie for the 1939 EIBC championship. As they readied for the game, however, conference news of a different kind was announced: the conference's deathknell. Officials announced on February 13th that the league would cease operations at the conclusion of the season, citing travel costs between the member schools. Despite having come six years to the threshold of the conference crown only to have the league disband, Ripley's Hoyas appeared to be within reach of the conference crown.

The showdown was set at Tech Gym before a capacity crowd of 3,000. The Georgetown- Carnegie matchup featured not only the two best teams in the conference, but the two leading scorers: Carnegie's Bob Stark, averaging 13.3 points per conference game, and Georgetown's Joe Murphy, averaging 12.6 points per conference game. The game was all that was expected--each team played at the height of their game and the two teams battled to a 40-40 tie at the end of regulation. Free throws were the order of the day in the extra period. Georgetown's Ed Kurtyka and Joe Murphy each scored one tally to lead, 42-40, soon answered by a toss from Stark to narrow the count to 42-41. As the Hoyas held the ball with time remaining, Hoya forward Johnny Schmitt connected on a basket and a free throw as a three point "insurance policy" against a Skibo comeback. Overtime ended with generous applause and a share of the 1939 Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball Conference title: Georgetown 45, Carnegie Tech 41. Johnny Schmitt scored 17 to lead all scorers while Carnegie's Bob Stark added 15 points in a losing cause.

The 11-6 Hoyas entered the final stretch of the season needing just one conference win among the two remaining to win the title outright. In the first of these two opportunities, a tough Temple outfit slammed the Hoyas, 32-25, in a game at Philadelphia's Convention Hall. With a week before the final EIBC game with Pitt, wins were registered over Yale (20-19) and Penn State (38-35). The wins were Pyrrhic, however, when scoring ace Johnny Schmitt broke his leg in the Yale encounter and McGowan was bruised following the Penn State game. A spirited performance by Ripley's men in these circumstances failed to avert a 44-39 loss to Pitt at Tech Gym, placing Georgetown in a tie with Carnegie Tech at 6-4 for the EIBC race. An anticlimactic game with George Washington yielded a 36-26 upset loss to the Colonials in the first meeting between the two schools in fourteen years.

There was much talk in the local press of a forthcoming playoff between Georgetown and Carnegie Tech to determine the 1939 conference champion. However, with the onset of spring sports and the general lack of interest the defunct Conference leadership had in continuing the member school agreements, the league simply designated both schools as co-champions. Nonetheless, the title was the first for Georgetown in a league since its 1912 South Atlantic Intercollegiate Association crown, and its last until the 1975 ECAC-South title that began GU's remarkable string of post-season appearances under John Thompson.

Despite the lackluster finish to the season, the 1938-1939 season was a season of accomplishment for the Hoyas and their new coach. Joe Murphy was named to the EIBC first team All-Conference team, followed by Johnny Schmitt on the second team. For coach Ripley, the season meant the turnaround of eight years of mediocre seasons and Georgetown's fading prestige within the college basketball community. If this season was any indication, the choice of Elmer Ripley meant a resurgence of Georgetown basketball that the school eagerly awaited.

During the fall of 1939, few would be faulted for ignoring Georgetown basketball. For the real story that year was the continuing glory that was Georgetown's football program. Over the past two seasons, Georgetown football was undefeated, with 11 shutouts and a defense that held opponents to an average of three points a game. The same, of course, could not be said for basketball.

While football flourished during the 1930's before crowds of 25,000 at Griffith Stadium, basketball took a distant back seat, playing in a high school gym most Georgetown students had never seen. Hoping to recover some of the court game's lost glory, Elmer Ripley returned in 1938, leading the Hoyas to their best record in a decade and its first league title since 1912. The 1939-1940 season, however, would not be as kind. After Ripley had coached the 1938-1939 team to a 13-9 record and an admirable 6-7 road record (admirable only when compared to the team's combined 22-78 road record during his interregnum), the problems GU would suffer on the road returned once again.

The first opening day loss in eight years marked the season, the first opening day game which was, not so coincidentally, played on the road. Baltimore University dealt the Hoyas a 40-34 loss, played amidst new glass backboards that one columnist described as "fine from the spectator's view, but it is like hitting a dime with a marble if you are not used to that equipment."

Ripley's men returned home to crush Western Maryland, 52-34, and in a local road game, topped American 44-30. Preparing to rest for the holidays, a sudden phone call from Philadelphia indicated that the team's scheduled January match with Temple was moved to that weekend, allowing the team little time to do anything but get up to Philadelphia's Convention Hall as soon as possible. Without much sleep, and even less practice, the Hoyas snoozed their way to a 38-28 defeat.

The sleepy Hoyas were ill-prepared the next evening, when they returned to Tech Gym, as a crisp George Washington team upset the home team 49-40 before a bewildered crowd of 2,500 at the school. The soon-to-be-legendary Arnold (Red) Auerbach led his scrappy bunch into Georgetown's den and ran away with it early, holding a 18-10 halftime lead and coasting to the win. So sluggish was the Georgetown offense that a local columnist at the contest did some rudimentary statistical work of his own, finding the Hoyas to have shot an embarrassing 17 for 77, a certain team record for poor shooting. John Schmitt's 4 for 9 was the best of the lot, while George Pajak (3 for 17), Irv Rizzi (4 for 19) and Russ Miller (1 for 10) settled for lesser acclaim.

A three game swing northward was of little help. Penn State dismissed the Blue and Gray early, 33-22, while Scranton's "Tommies" upset the Georgetown five 33-31. Finally, in another pride-swallowing affair, Maryland won only its second road game against Georgetown in thirty-two years, taking the Hoyas 28-27 at Tech Gym. The verdict was nearly averted as forward Don Martin sank a long range jumper late in the game to narrow the count to 28-27, and was promptly fouled. Stepping up to the line with two tries to send the game into overtime, Martin's first shot was off, while the final try spun around and around the rim, only to fall away as the whistle sounded. It wasn't as if the Hoyas only had one chance to win, however. The inability of the Hoyas to hit anything close to baskets was the big difference in this one. While the Terrapins shot a hardly inspiring 10 for 46, the Blue and Gray could do no better than 11 for 63. Buddy O'Grady's nine points led the way for the Hoyas.

The five game loss streak was broken a week later, in a 65-37 defeat of Loyola in a charity game for the Infantile Paralysis Fund, a favorite charity of President Roosevelt. George Pajak added a season high 17 points in the rout, while newcomer Jim Giebel added 13 for his season-high showing.

This was becoming a team that couldn't be figured out. A traveling game to Albany's State Armory yielded a predictable 39-34 road loss to the Colgate Red Raiders, but as the team traveled to West Point for an expected road loss, the loss turned instead into a 35-34 upset victory over the Black Knights. George Pajak scored a game-high twelve points in his duel with Army standout Woodrow (Arky) Vaughn, including the game winning shot. The game marked Pajak's third straight game of high scoring, as he was averaging a healthy 15 points per game for the series. Buddy O'Grady added seven, matching Army's Dick Reinbold point for point.

Splitting a pair of home games versus Temple and West Virginia, the red-hot Pajak was silended the hard way versus American. With the score tied at 27-all, Pajak dove for a loose ball and fractured his left elbow--a season ending injury for the team's leading scorer. Don Martin, off the bench for Pajak, added six points late in the contest to build GU a lead they would not relinquish, prevailing in a 42-32 pyrrhic victory over the Eagles. After topping Penn State 38-35, the Hoyas fell to NYU 50-27 at Madison Square Garden. The game, in retrospect, offered little for Georgetown fans to remember. But regardless of the outcome, the Georgetown-NYU game was a historical moment on college basketball: the first college game ever televised. It was on that night in 1940 that WX2BS, the experimental television station of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), broadcast the Garden doubleheader featuring GU, NYU, Pitt, and Notre Dame. The event was not saved on tape, and it unlikely that many were able to receive the signal, but the game remains a milestone of television sports--despite the Hoyas' performance.

Georgetown's season finale versus GWU was a crowd thriller, as Johnny Schmitt, in his last collegiate contest, brought the Blue and Gray back from a 23-19 halftime deficit to earn a 43-39 Tech Gym victory. Schmitt led all scorers with 11 points, as he paassed on the captain's mantle to Irv Rizzi for the 1940-1941 campaign.

But as the season drew to a close, amidst cries of "When will the new gym be built?" and "Will somebody bring back the Eastern Conference?", the sports news at Georgetown turned away from the hardwood. Six foot-six inch sophomore Al Blozis was making global headlines in his world record toss of 55 feet, 8 3/4 inches in the shot put. The baseball team was the scourge of the East, and talk was already starting that the 1940 football team was going to be even better than the undefeated squads of 1938 and 1939.

But basketball would be back, and in the midst of Georgetown's greatest sports year ever, the indoor game would make its presence well known.

In all respects, there has never been and will never be another year like 1940-1941 in the history of Georgetown athletiics. For notwithstanding the great accomplishments of the 1903 crew team, the 1922 baseball team, or any of the basketball teams of the 1970's and 1980's, 1940-1941 was a year which saw Hilltop teams nationally ranked in not one, not two, but four major sports: football, track, golf, and most surprisingly, basketball.

In Georgetown's thirty-odd years in basketball, no team had yet been nationally ranked. Even the great teams of 1908, 1919, 1920, and 1928 were hardly considered against the great teams of the Big Ten or the Eastern (Ivy) League. Yet 1940-1941 would be different, because after a decade of near-misses and "what might have been"'s, this was a year it all came together.

Ripley had brought back virtually his entire quint from 1939-1940, save captain John Schmitt. The emerging talents of Buddy O'Grady and Don Martin allowed Ripley an extensive array of backcourt talent, while Jim Giebel impressed many with his late-season flurry last winter. Ripley was so well endowed with talent that George Pajak, last year's firebrand who would have won the scoring title had it not been for an injury suffered late in the season, could get no closer than second string to the starting five of Frank O'Grady, Charley Schmidli, Bill Borhheimer, Irv Rizzi, and Jim Giebel.

High hopes appeared to have vanished in the season opener, a shocking 36-32 loss at Baltimore to Loyola College. The Greyhounds staggered the favvored Hoyas with three field goals in the last moments of play, erasing a 32-30 lead and casting doubts once again if this team could do no better than the last ten years' worth of Hilltop court men could accomplish.

Soon, though, those fears would be lessened. It began with a 41-29 walloping of Western Maryland, followed by a 41-35 win at American, then picked up speed as the Hoyas upset George Washington 50-42 at Riverside Stadium. The heavily favored Colonials were rolled aside by hot shooting Charlie Schmidli, netting sixteen points to earn GU the win. By the time GU had stunned Temple 46-45 the next evening at a Convention Hall doubleheader, "The Streak of '41" was on.

But was it for real, or was it destined to blow away at the first gust of a "road wind"? As the Hilltoppers traveled to Chicago for its most distant road game ever, the Hoyas proved that they were for real, attracting national attention in knocking off local power Loyola of Chicago, 38-35, behind Frank O'Grady's 13 points. Next, after a tiring train ride from Chicago to Buffalo, the Hoyas met Canisius. While countless GU aggregations had used the wear and tear of traveling as the reason for their defeat, this year's squad used it to its advantage in a surprising 53-36 rout of the Golden Griffins. Jim Kiernan, used sparingly in the Loyola encounter, put in a career high 22 points to race past the home team an en route to the Hoyas' fourth straight win.

In a nightmare of scheduling, the Hoyas would meet strong quints from Army, NYU, and Maryland, and even a 2-1 split would have been an admirable accomplishment. But instead, the Hoyas did something uncharacteristic of Georgetiown basketball teams to this date: they swept all three! Army was an easy surrender, 40-28, while before 3,000 at Riverside Stadium the Hoyas shocked the vaunted Violet, 36-27. Finally, a 51-34 topping of Maryland earned GU a #2 ranking in the eastern polls and a #5 ranking overall, the first such national recognition ever.

The NYU game, moved to the larger Riverside gym on the banks of the Potomac, was a battle of two great clubs. One one side was the experienced NYU five, led by Ralph Kaplowitz, Ben Auerbach, and the venerable Howard Cann as coach. Across the hardwood stood the young and confident Hoyas, eager to meet the nationally ranked Violets head to head. Leading at the half 19-14, Georgetown's Charlie Schmidli took control, hitting three clutch shots when it counted to earn Georgeown a commanding 33-25 lead. Jim Giebel and Buddy O'Grady, each with eight points, were leading scorers in the momentous affair.

Schmidli continued to shine against Maryland where, like their football brethren two months earlier, had little or no chance against the red-hot Hoyas. Schmidli's sixteen points and sophomore Bill Bornheimer's thirteen keyed a 51-34 win, the team's ninth straight. A streak of nine became one of ten, after Navy was unceremoniously dumped, 38-18, though for some unusual reason Georgetown fell from fifth to seventh in the polls. So potent was the Georgetown floor game that the traditionally tough Midshipmen found themselves down 24-1 at the half, the fewest points for one half in either school's history.

Another classic test soon followed, as Georgeotwn met Top Ten power Penn State in a game of national importance. In the game, Georgetown had plenty of chances to give up. Tied at the half, they soon fell behind and, at one point in the contest, missed an incredible seventeen straight field goal attempts. But through the passing of Jim Kiernan, the rediscovered shooting of Charlie Schmidli, and a renewed defense against the Nittany courtmen, Georgetown turned adversity into advantage, connecting on two clutch field goals in overtime to capture a 28-24 overtime win and break the school record for most consecutive wins set in 1920.

The streak ended unexpectedly in a 39-36 loss at Syracuse University. Though the Orangemen were a good club, they were not expected to beat the Hoyas, but this is excatly what they did. Led by Paul Kartlucke and Stan Kruse with a combined 34 points, the Orange tied the contest at 41 and proceeded to hold the Hoyas to just one field goal thereafter.

But there were new streaks to set, and the Hoyas set out to do just that. First was Colgate, beaten on the road by the count of 39-36. Facing Yale, it took a shot with three seconds left by Buddy O'Grady to earn the Hoyas a heart-stopping 41-39 decision at New Haven. And, in the home finale of the season, Georgetown eliminated Temple from the Sportswriter's Invitational Tournament (now referred to as the National Invitation Tournament, or NIT) selection chances, 57-49. Charlie Schmidli had 18 points in the romp, including nine straight late in the first half when the Hoyas tried desparately to keep within scoring distance in the second half.

With five games to go, the Hoyas could afford no more than one loss if they hoped to be selected to the SIT. That first loss came at the hands of Penn State, 45-38. PSU's stellar playmaker Johnny Barr took Georgetown for 21 points, while the zone defense, a longtime nemesis of Ripley-coached teams, brought nothing but trouble to the team. The Lions led 22-11 at the half and built a 32-15 advantage rallied to make the score close, but not close enough. The next evening, Georgetown met an unusually tough Scranton team, not considered a major college power but impressive nonetheless. Honored by local fans who rembered his exploits in Scranton years earlier, Ripley showed his appreciation somewhat discourteously by running over the home team, led by Irv Rizzi's seventeen points and Buddy O'Grady's fifteen.

The win set up the Georgetown-Fordham clash, with a Hoya win almost assuring them of a post-season bid. A scheduling conflict at Madison Square Garden had moved this contest to Fordham's Rose Hill Gym, and a snowstorm on the city didn't help travel, either. But as Georgetown entered the second half leading 22-20, they saw their dreams of national honors disappear into thin air. As Fordham's Max Loeffler began to get the Rams scoring, numerous Hilltop players were charged with fouls, perhaps from a realization that their time was running out. As Fordham scored nine straight points midway through the half, the New York SIT committee made their minds up on Georgetown: the 15-4 Hoyas were not coming back to New York this season.

In an anti-climactic finale, the Hoyas rolled past George Washington at Riverside Stadium, 41-34, behind a combined 21 points by Jim Giebel and Bill Bornheimer.

And so, after 15 of 20 games played on the road, winning eleven of them, Georgetown's basketball team returrned home not to get ready for the Garden, but to finish classes. A brilliant 16-4 record lay washed up against the shores of a New York press corps who felt that a team which lost to Fordham wouldn't "bring in the crowds."

For all of Georgetown's great teams, this year's club received perhaps the worst verdict any great team receives with a chance at a post-season invitation: no chance at all.

Just as the "war to end all wars" had cast a shadow on the fortunes of the 1917-1918 basketball squad, a similar shadow befell the 1941-1942 Hoyas. Returning three key starters from last season's record-breaking team, hopes of returning to the national spotlight were certainly warranted but ultimately unattainable.

The 1941-1942 team was the victim of circumstance more so than a victim of their opposition. Despite solid performances by team leaders such as Frank (Buddy) O'Grady, Charlie Schmidli, and junior Ken Engles, the Hoyas were befallen by a number of late rallies by opponents that could not be overcome.

The thought that the 16-4 team of a year ago could unravel so quickly was not evident in the early games of the season. GU opened its season with impressive wins over Western Maryland and American. Western's Terrors were routed, 66-43, behind 17 points from 6'5" center Bill Bornheimer and a combined 24 from the frontcourt tandem of O'Grady and Schmidli. Bornheimer added 23 two nights later in a 76-43 trouncing of American, outscoring the Eagles 46-25 in the final period. Coupled with a 60-13 win by the Hoya freshman team earlier in the evening, American's basketball fortunes were soundly pummeled by the Hoya scoring machine, a machine that ground to a halt two weeks later.

The Blue and Gray began a three game road trip in late December that signaled the kind of season the 1941-1942 season would become. Ripley's varsitymen met three legitimate national powers in Temple, Fordham, and Clair Bee's Long Island University team and seemed to be capable to win all three. In each, however, late rallies by the home team spelled defeat for the Washingtonians. At Philadelphia, a last minute free throw led Temple to a 35-34 win, while a late rally by Fordham erased a GU second half advantage en route to a 33-31 Ram triumph. Then, in the finale, the great LIU quint of 1942 pulled away in the final two minutes to win 46- 38 at Madison Square Garden. The magic of the 1940-1941 season appeared lost.

As 1942 arrived on the calendar, the Blue and Gray arrived at a new home for the season. Riverside Arena, home to George Washington University and various industrial basketball teams, welcomed the Hoyas to its facility near the Heurich brewery--the site of today's Watergate complex. The Hoyas inaugurated their stay at Riverside in a thrilling 42-40 win over Temple, before 1800 wartime spectators. Temple led 40-38 with under a minute to play, but a basket and a subsequent steal by Charlie Schmidli allowed Bill Bornheimer's winning toss with five seconds to play. Georgetown remained at Riverside but played the "road" team versus George Washington. This "road" team looked as if they had been run over early in the game, scoring only four field goals in the first twenty-nine minutes of play. Eleven minutes later, GWU coasted to a 45-36 victory, behind Matt Zunic's 18 points versus 13 from Schmidli. Later in the week, the "Riverside Blues" continued versus Maryland, where the Terrapins outscored GU 30-17 in the first half and prevailed, 51-42.

The major consequence of the move from Tech Gym to Riverside was the lack of availability of the court for home games. Riverside was used by George Washington, various federal and industrial teams, and the championship Heurich brewery semi-pro club. The newcomers from Georgetown found very few dates with which to build a home schedule. As a result, the Blue and Gray found themselves playing nine of their next ten games on the road. The team's 5-5 record can be considered rather successful in light of previous road trips over the years, but it did little to keep GU in the national rankings.

Victories were garnered in three of the first four games, in large measure to the scoring punch of Buddy O'Grady. Buddy's 12 points sparked a ferocious 13-0 run at the end of the game which turned a 32-31 deficit into a convincing 44-32 Georgetown triumph over Army. O'Grady followed up with twelve more to even the team's record at 5-5 with a 55-39 win at Colgate, but his 14 points failed to stop Syracuse, 55-44. The Orangemen were led by Gene Berger and Bob Shaddock, combining for 25 points.

As Ripley had done last year, the Hoyas traveled to Chicago to meet Midwestern teams and open up the area for recruiting, an idea that was years ahead of its time. Last year's trip spurred the interest of Chicago prep star Hank Hyde, now on the freshman squad, as he watched GU topple the tough Loyola Ramblers, 38-35. This year's trip featured a stirring win over Marquette at the Chicago Coliseum, 35-34. The Hoyas led 35-31 with 56 seconds remaining, then watched the Warriors connect on a free throw and a basket to near to within one. A foul on Bill Bornheimer set up two free throws to win the game by the Marquette team, but both tosses sailed wide of the rim to preserve the win. Bornheimer's nine points led the Hoyas in the low-scoring affair.

Losses to St. Joseph's (58-35) and Duquesne (40-35) led the traveling Hilltoppers to Baltimore, where Charlie Schmidli scored 12 to lead Georgetown in a 41-34 win. But in the up- and down ways of the club, the next night saw the unknown quint from the University of Scranton end an eight game losing streak by thumping the Hoyas, 51-38. Following this embarrassment, the on-again, off-again Hoyas erased a ten point lead with six minutes to play by upsetting Yale in New Haven, 55-53. Bill Bornheimer led the squad with 15, but it was rookie Dan Gabbianelli who sank the clutch basket with six seconds to go to send the game into overtime at 50-all. The final road game of the season saw Navy exact revenge over last year's twenty point loss to the Hilltoppers by winning 51-36, behind Navy forward (and All-American quarterback) Bill Busik, with 12 points.

The final two games of the season ended at Riverside, where the Hoyas split against DePaul (34-29, DePaul) and George Washington (52-42, Georgetown). The first-ever meeting with DePaul featured one of the more bizarre plays of the year. Trailing 31-29 with six minutes to play, the Hoyas went into a stall, even thought they were behind! Hoping to go for the last shot, Georgetown let the clock run down to three minutes...two minutes...then one minute...whereupon DePaul stole the ball and connected on a three point play to win, 34-29.

The 1941-1942 Hoyas finished this wartime campaign at 9-11, a far cry from last season's winning ways. However, the national emergency that was the Second World War made issues such as a winning college basketball record seem unimportant and superficial in the face of a war on two fronts, with classmates fighting and dying thousands of miles from that remote corner of the world known as 37th and O. Later in 1942, the University cancelled most intercollegiate sports due to the manpower needs of the armed services. However, basketball did return in the fall of 1942, but with only one returning player from the entire eleven man roster. From the ruins of that roster would come the greatest team to date in Georgetown basketball history.

As Georgetown continued on its way through the 1982 NCAA tournament en route to the Final Four, an entire generation of basketball fans had discovered a team with a rich and lasting basketball heritage. And alongside all the talk about John Thompson's NIT teams of 1977 and 1978, and his five previous NCAA teams of 1975, 1976, 1979, 1980, and 1981, there was always the footnote that the University "that came from the depths of college basketball" had actually been at the mountaintop once before.

That year was 1943, a most improbable time for Georgetown University to assert itself as the preeminent team in eastern college basketball. World War II had called all but one member of the previous year's squad to duty, and the campus itself was under a transformation from a center of higher learning to a army training center much like it had done in the Civil War. Furthermore, much of the school's base of athletic talent were among the first to join the armed forces, leaving most sports at the Hilltop suspended for the remainder of the war. Basketball was particularly hard hit. Captain-elect Ken Engles was called to military service because of the University's accelerated class schedule, and Charley Schmidli and Bill Bornheimer also missed their final year of eligibility under the new rule by graduating before the start of the new season.

Since the war had depleted men of many college teams, the NCAA waived its ban on freshmen eligibility, making this the first year since Georgetown joined the NCAA in 1926 that freshmen would be eligible. But critics had to wonder whether a team so inexperienced, and so prone to additional losses to the armed services could actually compete on the college level, much less earn a winning record against a prohibitive schedule. It was in this environment, therefore, that the legendary Elmer Ripley pulled together a dozen men who would carry the Blue and Gray among the elite teams of college basketball history. It was, in retrospect, Ripley's finest hour of coaching.

Who were the 1942-1943 Hoyas? The lone upperclassman with college experience (one year of varsity play) was Danny Gabbianelli, a junior from New York who had just missed graduation under the accelerated schedule. He was joined by a host of newcomers, all but two of whom were from the New York area.

As pointed out by the Kentucky basketball history site BigBluehistory.net, Ripley's coaching of these boys was a foreshadowing of their possibilities in college. The site quotes an article from the Associated Press (via the Lexington Herald-Leader) as follows:

WASHINGTON, D.C. Jan. 23 (AP) - Just as a joke, Elmer Ripley pitted a team of 11-year-old New York youngsters against Temple University's famed championship five at a basketball clinic in Madison Square Garden [in 1935]. The purpose was to demonstrate Temple's zone defense, which had baffled the best collegiate teams.

What Rip saw made him gasp. The kids passed the ball in, around and through the zone and scored with monotonous regularity. And Temple wasn't fooling.

That was some eight years ago, and Ripley's kept tabs on the kids ever since. When he left Yale, and moved to Georgetown as basketball coach, Ripley sold the young men the merits of higher education at Georgetown.

So today the rare combination of youth and experience is blended in the all-sophomore Georgetown five, a fact which qualifies the Hoyas as one of the two youngest quints in the East.

There's that combination of Danny Kraus and Billy Hassett as breathing proof of the success of the metamorphosis. Rip says Kraus is "the kind of a ball player who makes a team click." Danny, all-New York City selection in the 1939-40 and 1940-41 seasons while at DeWitt Clinton High, was incapacitated much of his freshman season by a bad knee, but he's in his old form now.

Hassett, a neighbor of Kraus in the Bronx, served his basketball apprenticeship at LaSalle Military Academy, Oakdale, Long Island, where he played baseball in addition to basketball. He was named the most valuable player in the 1940 Eastern State tournament at Glens Falls, N.Y.; in 1941 he was named on the all-Eastern team.

And there are many others of the same ilk on the hand-picked squad, many of them the same 11-year-olds who fooled Temple that night. Most are from New York and New Jersey, and all of them are top cream - guys like Lloyd Potilicchio, Don Gabbianelli and Meggs Reilly, to mention a few."

Joined by Henry Hyde,Georgetown's first prospect from the Chicago area, and New York native Andy Kostecka, these sophomores guided the 1941-1942 freshmen team to a school record 20-1, losing only to a all-star quint from the Aberdeen Army Proving Grounds. Among all the freshman teams from 1927 through the end of NCAA freshman squads in 1972, this remains the finest record ever by a freshman five at Georgetown.

And if those men weren't enough, two now-eligible freshmen were hoped to provide the height at center that Georgetown had lacked since the days of Bill Campbell and Jim Tormey thirty years earlier. And what height they had! 6-8 tall John Mahnken, another New York area all-city selection, was joined by Sylvester (Stretch) Goedde, an Ohio native standing an inch taller at 6-9. Both seemed equally capable of meeting a longstanding need of Hoya teams, that of a dominating center.

Ripley began the 1942-1943 campaign with what seemed to be his best recruiting class ever. Unfortunately, the starting five of Hassett, Kraus, Gabbianelli, Potolicchio, and Mahnken had a combined one year of varsity play between them. The "Kiddie Korps", as they came to be known, turned youth and inexperience into teamwork and championship play of the highest degree.

The season opened with Western Maryland, a traditionally easy win of ten or eleven points for Georgetown teams. This time, the Green Terrors were obliterated by not ten or eleven, but forty-one, 75-34, the largest margin of victory for a Georgetown team in twenty years. Even more awesome offensive fireworks awaited American University at Tech Gym on Dec. 10, 1942. Falling behind by fifteen at the half 39-24, Staff Cassell's Eagles witnessed an offensive whirlwind that, even today, strikes of epic proportions. After eight minutes of the second half, the Hoyas had outscored American 26-6, lifting the lead to thirty-five, 65-30. Four minutes later, the Hoyas added another 14-2 run, upping the count to 79-32. With five minutes to play the lead was fifty-four, 89-35, thanks to another 14-2 run. And when the dust had settled, including a final stretch that saw Georgetown's bench outshoot the Eagles 17-4, the final score made headlines nationwide. Georgetown had scored one of the first 100 point games in college history, obliterating the outmanned American team 105-39, a sixty-six point margin of victory that would stand for 44 years as the largest in Georgetown basketball history. Rookies Mahnken, Kostecka, Kraus, Reilly and Hassett each hit for double figures, with 29, 22, 14, 12, and 10 points, respectively.

The youngsters next earned some revenge on the only team to defeat last year's freshman five: the Aberdeen Proving Grounds were soundly "grounded", 48-33. Three college teams depleted by the war met a similar fate as the season moved into January. St. Bonaventure fell, 56-41; Scranton was beaten on the road, 58-43;, and George Washington was humbled before a vociferous Tech Gym crowd, 55-41, earning Ripley's men an enviable 6-0 record, the best start since 1921.

Three crucial matchups of the young season were games in which Georgetown met armed services teams. These squads, usually made up of all-stars from various colleges who were drafted or volunteered for service, comprised some of the best talent in the nation. Yet, the "Korps" held their own against what could legitimately be called "college all-star teams". Fort Lee, Va. was conquered, 49-31, before the Hoyas met their first defeat at the hands of the Navy base at Norfolk, Va. The Navy boys walloped the weary Hoyas, 57-42, but in the finale, Georgetown put on quite a show in a now-legendary matchup against the Marine Base at Quantico, Va.

The Marine unit had Georgetown's number through most of the game, and even a spirited Georgetown comeback late in the second half could cut the Leathernecks' lead to four, 52-48, with two minutes to play. At this point Ripley sent Danny Kraus back on the floor, after fouls sent him to the bench midway in the half. With the team's playmaker back in action, the Hoyas were ready to go. A John Mahnken head fake opened the way for the 6'8" center to pop a jumper, to close the gap to two. A Quantico misfire on their next possession offered Jim Reilly a set shot with time running down to tie the score. Then, preparing for the winning field goal, the Marines' play was picked off by Danny Kraus. With the clock about to turn over, Ripley yelled to Kraus: "Shoot!". As the gun sounded, Kraus' 15 foot jumper was aloft, sailing between the twines and earning Georgetown an improbable 54-52 win. Legend has it that the Marines were so angry at the college boys for the steal and eventual winning score that the Hoyas left the base under armed guard to prevent any hard feelings by the defeated Marines.

Turnabout being fair play, the Hoyas fell to some last minute heroics the next week at home versus the Temple Owls. Here, with Georgetown clinging to a one point lead, Temple snatched away Georgetown's ninth win with a last second prayer of its own with 0:10 to play, earning the Owls a 52-51 upset victory.

The Georgetown rooters of the day didn't mourn for long, though. Already, the team was eclipsing the number of wins all last season, and the promise of the young Hoyas seemed unbounding. Wins 9, 10, and 11 came swiftly, as Catholic, Loyola, and Army were handled by an average margin of 24 points. The scores (GU 71, Catholic 45; GU 68, Loyola 42; and GU 54, Army 35) helped spread the word that this was a team capable of defeating the best in the land.

Two more wins boosted the Hoyas to a #5 ranking in the East. Lew Andreas' Syracuse Orangemen suffered their first defeat at the hands of the Blue and Gray, 65-38, behind Kraus' 23 point performance. Next came a tough Penn State team, falling 51-35 behind a combined 33 from Kostecka and Mahnken. After losing to the "Kiddie Korps" by 27 and seeing Penn State fall by 15, it was little wonder that Syracuse's Lew Andreas showed no trepidation in calling Ripley's Hoyas simply "the best team in the East."

The Hoyas increased their record to 15-2 following a crucial 52-49 decision that kept the Hoyas alive for post-season consideration. Two years earlier, Fordham eliminated the Hoyas from the 1941 NIT consideration, but not this time. Danny Kraus came off the bench to pace the Hoyas despite a late Fordham rally.

The war effort, though, would not spare the Hoyas two key stars. Andy Kostecka and Ed Lavin, a starting forward and "sixth man", respectively, were called into military service at the end of January, 1943.Earlier in the month, Sylvester Goedde had left GU to pursue a pro baseball career, certainly one of the taller pitchers that the Toledo AAA franchise would ever field. The losses did not prevent Georgetown from taking Maryland, 46-36, but its effects were clear in a classic matchup to come.

The next opponents of Ripley's raiders were the St. John's Redmen, considered to be the #1 team not only in the East, but among the top two in the nation. With a full team, Georgetown would have given St. John's a fight to the finish. But the loss of Lavin and Kostecka, coupled with the loss of Billy Hassett to an injury, turned a fight to the finish into a fight to stay alive.

St. John's crushed the Blue and Gray, 65-43, and went on to the NIT championship that year. It is not too difficult to say whether Georgetown or St. John's was the better of the two teams that night in February, 1943, but in retrospect any college basketball fan of the day would concur that the ending finish of the 1942-1943 Hoyas would be worthy of any accolades that the NIT champions might have earned.

Georgetown continued its winning ways through the end of the season, with one notable exception. Penn State tripped up the Blue and Gray in the season finale, 55-37, at State College. It was the end of a seven game road swing and the Nittany Lions took advantage of a sluggish Georgetown offense to earn the win. Georgetown's fortunes prior to the finale, fortunately, made the Penn State game just a formality, as witnessed by scores over Temple, 46-40; George Washington, 53-30; Colgate, 73-59; and Syracuse, 47-46. Most impressive about this final string was that all four wins came on the road,where the University's basketball talent rarely earned one, much less than four straight road wins.

The Blue and Gray finished with a sterling 19-4 record, and was approached by officials of both the NIT and NCAA tournaments with regards to post-season play. Though the NIT offered more prestige at the time and a chance for a rematch with #1 St. John's, Athletic Graduate Manager Joe Gardner accepted the bid of the 1943 NCAA tournament. Georgetown was approached and ultimately selected by the NCAA over powerful teams as SEC champion Kentucky and Southern Conference titleist Duke. As Gardner put it, Georgetown accepted the NCAA tournament because the invited teams represented the best teams coast to coast (versus the heavily Eastern orientation of the NIT), and that the NCAA tournament would give the Hoyas a chance for national recognition.

The Hoyas opened NCAA tournament play on March 24, 1943 at Madison Square Garden, facing New York University. Though the two teams had not met in the regular season, NYU was a decided favorite. The New York area sportswriters, after seeing Georgetown's substandard performance against St. John's, could not have expected much from the Hilltoppers against a superb Violet team, and as such the Hoyas were underdogs by as many as three to one.

Howard Cann's NYU quint started out strong in the first half, opening a 7-4 lead. But NYU and the 16,491 Madison Square Garden enthusiasts were ill-prepared for the arrival of Big John Mahnken to the NCAA scene. The 6'8" sophomore blew past Violet center Stan Danto, and led the Hoyas on a 10-0 run that gave "Rip's" men the lead for good. By the end of the half, Georgetown had roared to a 32-19 halftime lead against the #2 ranked Violet, thanks to an unprecedented 18 first half points from Mahnken, the nation's tenth leading scorer entering the tournament.

Mahnken's scoring sprint was halted in the second half by Howard cann's defensive adjustments, limiting "Big John" to one field goal thereafter. The second half was an opportunity for the Hoya guards to shine. Billy Hassett and Danny Kraus combined for 15 points by the end of the contest, dazzling the Garden crowd with ball-handling and fancy passing that brought the partisan crowd to its feet time after time. Despite a slower tempo in the final twenty minutes, NYU could not narrow the lead closer to thirteen. The 55-36 final seemed an upset in every sense of the word, except that for Georgetown's emerging talent, it really wasn't an "upset" at all.

While the victory over #2 ranked NYU was to be savored, Ripley had no time to spare in analyzing the Eastern Regional's #1 ranked team, the DePaul Blue Demons. The Blue Demons were coached by rookie Ray Meyer, a former star at Notre Dame. His secret weapon was the first true "big man" in college basketball: George Mikan. Wearing his famous number 99 jersey, Mikan was an intimidator in every sense of the word. In the pre-goaltending era of college basketball, Mikan stopped every shot he could. In DePaul's 46-35 win over Dartmouth in the opening round of the regionals, the Green Indians missed their first thirty-four shots--no thanks to Mikan and his towering frame. DePaul was the heavy favorite to win the NCAA title, and for Ripley to figure out this frontcourt colossus would test every bit of Ripley's 30 years in the game.

As Ripley prepared his strategy for the next day's game, few if anyone in the New York area gave GU a chance against Mikan and the Demons. "DePaul will name its own score!" claimed one coach in the Washington Post, and local odds of 3:1 in favor of DePaul were not uncommon. Ripley went into his Manhattan hotel room and began to build the strategy. The coach was up all night plotting defenses to minimize Mikan's effectiveness under the basket.

The plan, as the game began before 14,085 on March 25th, involved setting Mahnken out on a wing, banking in the shots to prevent head-on blocks by Mikan. To keep the DePaul center from going out to block Mahnken, guards Hassett and Kraus would congest the middle where Mikan was at his best. The strategy was a double-edged sword of sorts: Mahnken hit the shots but no one could stop Mikan from doing the same on the other end of the court. The half ended with a 50 foot shot at the buzzer by Lloyd Potolicchio to narrow the DePaul lead to five at 28- 23--a basket that would later prove crucial in the final count.

The second half opened with Ripley moving the ball inside, to get Mikan (variously referred to as "Makin" or "Mahkin" by newspapers befuddled by the alliterative battle of Mahnken vs. Mikan) in foul trouble. Baskets by Potolicchio and Mahnken narrowed the count to 28-27, and four minutes later GU took the lead on a pair of Hassett free throws to lead, 33-32. The Hoya advantage had grown to four, 40-36, when John Mahnken fouled out with ten minutes to play. At this point, all appeared lost, as no one, it seemed, could stop Mikan now.

But Ripley stunned the crowd by sending in 6'3" guard Hank Hyde to guard the DePaul giant. Despite a good freshman year, Hyde was no more than a back-up through much of the season, and the thought of sending in a reserve guard to guard a 6'9" center seemed preposterous. But Hyde was from the Chicago area, and had played against Mikan in high school. He convinced Ripley that he could stop Mikan, and so, after a discussion with the coach, Hyde entered the game.

DePaul coach Meyer didn't pick up on the Hyde strategy, and when Mikan hit his two free throws to cut the lead to two, he sat Mikan down for a rest. Georgetown scored the next five points to lead 45-38, and when Mikan did return Hyde had his number. For the last nine minutes of the game, Mikan was held in check by the 6'3" reserve, astonishing the New York crowds. While Hyde was battling Mikan, Hassett and Kraus were dazzling the crowd with passing and assists to 5'11" Lloyd Potolicchio, who scored a career high 11 points in the game. DePaul closed to no fewer than seven points until the final minute, as the Garden crowd knew they were witnessing the upset of the year. DePaul scored on three foul shots to narrow the count to four, 53-49. But time was running out, and with Kraus dribbling to and fro amidst the desperate DePaul defenders, a Georgetown fan stood up and roared the quote of the year:

"Believe It Or Not, By Ripley!"

As the crowd surged on the floor, Georgetown fans truly believed--the old master had pulled the upset, 53-49. The Hoyas were NCAA Eastern Regional Champions and one game from the national championship.

Five days later, on March 30, 1943, GU met Western champ Wyoming for the title. A smaller than expected crowd of 13,206, many more attracted to St. John's NIT crusade that same week than the NCAA game, saw a classic battle of evenly matched teams. Georgetown, led by its towering John Mahnken and playmakers Danny Kraus and Billy Hassett, met a Wyoming team led by 6'7" Milo Komenich and his playmaking partners Kenny Sailors and Floyd Collins.

The game was tied at 2-2, 4-4, 8-8, 16-16, 20-20, and 22-22 before the Hoyas opened up a second half lead of 31-26 with six minutes to play. Georgetown had been unable to open a lead earlier in the contest because Kraus and Hassett were sidelined with three personal fouls (one short of the four-foul limit) midway though the first half by referees Pat Kennedy and Marty Begovich. Substitutes Bill Feeney and Lloyd Potolicchio performed admirably in a substitute role, but were not the equal of Georgetown's dynamic duo.

Ripley brought Hassett and Kraus back in at the eight minute mark of the half, and the GU offense began to move. The Hoyas led 31-26 with six minutes to a championship, when the Wyoming whirlwind began to blow across Madison Square Garden. Sailors and Komenich combined to outscore the Hoyas 9-0 to give the Cowboys a 37-31 lead with four minutes to go. Refusing to give up, Feeney connected on an assist from Kraus and Potolicchio added a free throw to narrow the lead to 37-34 with two minutes to go.

The last two minutes of the 1943 NCAA final were an eternity to GU fans who had seen the team come so far in what was practically a "rookie" season for the team. Sailors and Komenich ran right past the tired Hoya defenses, and scored the final nine points of the game while the Blue and Gray could not score a point. Wyoming went on to a 46-34 championship win, and the "greatest team yet" in Hilltop basketball fell two minutes short of a dream season.

Reserve Bill Feeney scored eight to lead the Hoyas, followed by below-average scoring performances by John Mahnken (6 points), Billy Hassett (6) and Dan Kraus (4). Wyoming's Sailors, with 16 points, was voted the Most Valuable Player of the title game.

Despite the end of the tournament, it was not the end of the Hoyas' season. The next night, the finalists of the NCAA and NIT squared off in a fund-raiser for the wartime Red Cross. In the opener, Georgetown defeated NIT runner-up Toledo, 54-40. Despite Toledo's fast style of play and a 17-11 lead midway through the half, Ripley's men returned to their championship form lost in the final two minutes against Wyoming. The Hoyas outscored Toledo 14-2 to end the half and never looked back. John Mahnken, completing a record-breaking scoring season, scored 20 points to end the season at 415 points, smashing Frank Schlosser's thirty year record of 247 points in a season. Mahnken earned first-team All-America honors over Mikan in at least one poll, making him the school's second A-A and the last first-team honoree until John Duren in 1980. Guards Billy Hassett and Danny Kraus also were among those in line for Honorable Mention All-America honors. And though there was no official honor, few would have disputed the recognition of Elmer Ripley as 1943 National Coach of the Year.

The potential of this young team seemed unbounded, but World War II brought an end to further hopes of NCAA glory. Georgetown University discontinued all athletic sports in late 1943, and as such basketball was suspended pending completion of the war. The "Korps" had served the cause of GU basketball honorably, but now they were headed for service of a different kind. The Hoyas were gone, but oh, what a season they had.

Believe it.

Narrative © 1987, 2003. All rights reserved.
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