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Legacies Surrond Two Big East Playoff Contenders
BY BERNIE BEGLANE
Having been on hand for all 11 games of the Big East Conference Tournament at Madison Square Garden last week, there was plenty of free time to learn a great deal about two of the 16 member schools.
Not from a basketball point of view, but rather from the very foundation of each institution.
And what better way to gain that knowledge than by reading the media guides published by each athletic department.
Space does not permit writing about all of the schools that participated in the11-game, four-day classic that was celebrating its 25th anniversary at “the world’s most famous arena.”
Thus we have selected Georgetown and Notre Dame for now, so here goes with Georgetown, which has overlooked the banks of the Potomac River for more than 215 years.
Construction began on the first building in 1788, but the first student, Willie Gaston of North Carolina, arrived in 1791 before the edifice was completed.
Two years later, the Dinnie brothers, Charles and George, of New York earned their degrees as the first graduates.
The Jesuit Fathers’ school, by 1871, had expanded to include two professional schools – medicine and law.
During that period of time, the school’s president was Father Patrick Healy, S.J., who is often referred to as its second founder.
Father Healy, the son of an Irish immigrant and a former slave, became the first African-American not only to earn a Ph.D., but to also head a predominantly white university.
Notre Dame’s Golden Dome
As president from 1874 to 1892, he is credited with guiding Georgetown from a small liberal arts college to a modern university.
The School of Nursing was founded in 1903, thus enrollment of women began. By 1952, they had been admitted to all schools except the College of Arts and Sciences.
By the end of the 1960s, the Jesuit school was totally coeducational.
As for athletics, 27 varsity sports are offered for men and women, most of them in the Big East. Seven hundred plus student athletes compete.
More than 10 percent of undergraduates are on a team.
Wondering what the very first sport was? The first documentation reveals that it was baseball, initiated on May 10, 1870.
Since we are putting the emphasis on academics in this column, the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service must be addressed.
With an enrollment of over 1,400 undergraduates, it is the largest such school in the U.S. and enjoys a worldwide reputation.
Before winding up about the Washington, D.C., institution, we must tell you the answer to a frequently asked question: What’s a Hoya?
It is the school’s nickname derived from the Greek and Latin phrase, “Hoya Saxa,” which, loosely translated, means “What Rocks!”
Some say it originated in a cheer referring to the stones that comprised the school’s outer walls.
Others say it began in the 19th century with the birth of Georgetown’s Stonewalls Baseball Club.
Still a third version has a “Hoya Saxa” cheer arising after a goal-line stand by the football team’s defense.
The name turned out to be popular and was eventually adopted for all teams.
Notre Dame’s Founding
When Father Edward Sorin started his school in the northern Indiana wilderness, he had only $300, three log buildings badly in need of repair and a vision of establishing a liberal arts institution to meet the growing educational needs of the frontier.
He dreamed of building a great university, and in 1842 he founded the University of Notre Dame.
The university itself has come a long way since its simple beginning – but few of its priorities have changed. Father Sorin’s dream has become reality, as the quality education he envisioned remains the lifeblood of the school.
Notre Dame makes only one promise to potential student-athletes – that they will have the opportunity to partake of that ingrained academic heritage. When Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., became the president in 1952, he aimed at making Notre Dame the nation’s leading Catholic university. When he retired in 1987, his dream also had become a reality. Father John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., in his first year as president, now leads Notre Dame into the front rank of American institutions of higher learning.
Georgetown's Healy Hall
Annually, Notre Dame, ranked among the top 20 universities in the nation, graduates 94% of all students who enroll, a standard surpassed by only Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
That degree of success has been matched by student-athletes in general and the basketball program in particular. Since 1962, all 119 student-athletes who have been awarded basketball scholarships at Notre Dame and remained in school for four years have graduated, for a remarkable 100% rate.
Overall, student-athletes have combined to earn 172 Academic All-America honors – second most in the nation – including a school-record 14 in 2005-06. The basketball program alone has produced 10 Academic All-America selections, among them two-time honorees Pat Garrity and John Paxson.
Additionally, four Irish basketball players have earned NCAA post-graduate scholarships. The NCAA annually selects a team of former student-athletes who have achieved at the highest level in the 25 years since their graduation from college and Notre Dame’s list of Silver Anniversary honorees includes basketball All-America Dick Rosenthal.
Notre Dame’s institutional mission is to attain the highest standards of excellence in teaching, scholarship and selected fields of research in a community of learning.
Women comprise approximately half of the student body. Athletes live, eat and attend classes in the same dormitories, dining halls and classrooms as every other student.
The camaraderie produced by the residence halls is key to life at Notre Dame. Almost all social, intramural athletic and other activities revolve around the dormitories – with most students remaining in a hall for all four years. The campus itself basically is closed to traffic, making it a village unto itself.
The overwhelming majority of student-athletes meet with success following their days as undergraduates. This is particularly true for the Irish basketball program, whose graduates have moved on to storied careers in such fields as professional basketball, business, medicine, and law.
One of the most visible links to past Notre Dame heroes is participation in the National Basketball Association. All told, 57 Notre Dame players have been selected in the NBA draft, 19 of them in the first round.
NBA Champions
John Paxson (’91, ’92 and ’93 with Chicago Bulls), Bill Laimbeer (’89 and ’90 with Detroit Pistons) and Bill Hassett (’50 with Minneapolis Lakers) all played on NBA championship teams.
Laimbeer won the NBA rebounding title in ’86 and Adrian Dantley led the NBA in scoring in ’81 and ’84. Dozens more players, such as Ken Barlow, David Rivers and Tim Kempton, have established themselves in European professional leagues.
In addition to distinguishing themselves on the courts, former greats such as LaPhonso Ellis, Paxson and Rivers have been instrumental in making contributions to their communities, local charities, and to the University.
Fighting Irish fans will recall the Blizzard of 1978. Notre Dame defeated West Virginia on Jan. 25 and snow began to fall in South Bend. In three days, 40 inches of snow blanketed the area, forcing much of the city to close down.
The Michiana Regional Airport opened only once – to let the plane carrying the Maryland basketball team land. The Irish were scheduled to play the Terrapins on Jan. 29 and, with South Bend still under a snow emergency, the Joyce Center became a general-admission ballpark. Anyone who could make it to the arena was admitted.
A national television audience and capacity crowd saw Notre Dame defeat Maryland, 69-54, behind player-of-the-game Tracy Jackson.
Bookstore Basketball
Despite the fact that it now includes 65 teams, the NCAA tournament is far from the world’s largest basketball tournament. That distinction belongs to Notre Dame’s annual spring phenomenon known as Bookstore Basketball.
Begun in 1972 as part of the University’s annual spring celebration known as An Tosia – the name comes from an ancient Gaelic festival. Bookstore Basketball annually attracts 600-700 teams for the men’s division and approximately 100 for the women’s.
The tournament’s games all are played outdoors regardless of weather conditions, and it is not uncommon to see at least a few games each year played in the snow. Team names are at least half the fun and they range from the hilarious to the obscure to the unprintable.
Varsity basketball players can play only after they have completed their college eligibility and teams can have no more than three varsity athletes apiece.
The Marquette Warriors carried an 81-game home-court winning streak into a Jan. 13, 1973 game with Notre Dame, but Dwight Clay hit a shot with :04 remaining to start two new traditions, Notre Dame-as-streakbreaker and Dwight Clay-as-last-minute-savior. Four days later Clay hit a shot to put the Irish into overtime against Pittsburgh in a game they eventually won by nine, earning him the nickname “The Ice Man.” Clay’s biggest shot, however, came a year later on Jan. 19, 1974, when he hit a baseline jumper with 29 seconds left to complete an 11-point Irish comeback and snap UCLA’s record 88-game win streak in a 71-70 Notre Dame win at the Joyce Center.
Golden Dome
The Administration Building, surmounted by a statue of Our Lady atop the world-famous Golden Dome (actually gold leaf periodically replaced), was at one time the entire University and in 1879 was rebuilt in five months after a devastating fire.
The building contains the primary administrative offices, including that of Father Jenkins. The exterior of the building was renovated and cleaned in 1996 and the interior of the building was renovated and reopened in August of 1999, after being closed the previous two academic years.
Former basketball player Father John P. Smyth, executive director of Maryville Academy (Des Plaines, Ill.) was awarded Notre Dame’s 2002 Laetare Medal, the oldest and most prestigious honor given to American Catholics.
Father Smyth graduated from Notre Dame in 1957, earning honorable mention All-America honors. Despite being drafted by the NBA’s St. Louis Hawks, the Chicago native decided to forgo pro basketball in order to pursue a vocation in the priesthood.
Ordained in 1962, he was assigned to Maryville, a residence for orphaned and homeless children, founded in 1883.
What better way to conclude Notre Dame’s team history than to refer to the Leprechaun, the mascot.
It was registered as an official trademark in 1965. In the spring of 2001 an organization known as the Leprechaun Legion, comprised of students, was formed to generate support at all home basketball games.
And they wear Kelly green shirts.
Would you expect anything else?
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