REMEMBER WHEN : For Aztecs, Third Trip Led to Top : Basketball: Quickness and tenacity helped San Diego State win a national basketball title in 1941 after falling short in ’39 and ’40.

This was a team with only No. 1 in mind, a team determined to make the third time the charm.

In 1939 and again in 1940, San Diego State had finished second in the National Assn. of Intercollegiate Basketball (NAIB) tournament in Kansas City.

But Coach Morris Gross had his best team ever in 1941, including five survivors of those two near-misses, and his battle-tested Aztecs brought home what still stands as the only national basketball championship in the school’s history.

To do it, the Aztecs had to win five games on successive days. They beat Montana State Teachers (now Western Montana), 46-29; Culver-Stockton of Missouri, 46-41 in overtime; Texas Wesleyan, 44-42; West Texas State, 43-40, and in the title game, Murray (Ky.) Teachers (now Murray State), 36-34.

This happened long before San Diego State was admitted to the major college set. The school didn’t join NCAA Division I until 1969 and didn’t become a university until 1971. It was San Diego State College in those days, and its enrollment of 2,100 was minuscule alongside the 36,000 of today.

Since the NCAA didn’t have a college division basketball tournament until 1957--it split into Divisions II and III in 1975--the NAIB was the only outlet for schools that played predominantly lower-level competition. The NAIB became the NAIA (National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics) in 1952, when it branched out into other sports.

Still, the Aztecs were national champions in their class, and those who contributed to their success look back with pride as they await next year’s golden anniversary of their title.

“It was our World Series,” said Dick Mitchell, 70, the center on the title team at a mere 6-2 and still a resident of San Diego.

Two other members of the starting five still live in the San Diego area, guard Harry Hodgetts in El Cajon and guard Kenny Hale in Tierrasanta. A fourth regular, forward Bill Patterson, lives in Long Beach. The fifth, captain and star of the team, forward Milton (Milky) Phelps, was killed in a plane crash during World War II.

All five starters attended San Diego high schools. Phelps, Hodgetts and Mitchell went to Hoover and Hale and Patterson to San Diego High.

Phelps was something special, the only small-college player named to the prestigious Helms All-American team in 1941. He is a member of the Breitbard Hall of Fame at the San Diego Hall of Champions, and his No. 22 has been retired by San Diego State.

Hodgetts, 72, and Hale, 70, talked about their late teammate when they visited the SDSU campus recently.

“Phelps and Hank Liusetti (Stanford) were probably the first players to use the one-handed shot,” Hodgetts said. “Milky introduced it to Kansas City when we were there in ’39. He was an outstanding all-around basketball player, with moves that were instinctive.”

Hale said of Phelps, “He was one of the best I ever saw at faking. The defensive man would turn one way, and he would go the other, and the defensive man would wind up out of bounds.”

Mitchell said Phelps could have started for any major college team if given the opportunity.

“The word that sticks in my mind about him is deception,” Mitchell said. “He wasn’t a real speed-burner, but he could go right by people.”

Phelps was only 5-11 but was just a half-inch short of the average height of the Aztecs’ first team. Hodgetts (6-1) was the only starter besides Mitchell over 6 feet. Patterson was 5-10, Hale 5-9 1/2.

The second team--10 players made up the tournament squad--averaged an inch taller. It consisted of Andy Echle, the giant of the lot at 6-3; Earle Allison, 6-1; John Sellwood and Herb Tompkins, 6 feet, and Jim Ahler, 5-11. Ahler, who was to lead the Aztecs in scoring the next two seasons, attended Compton High School and now lives in Escondido. Sellwood and Tompkins are deceased.

Phelps missed much of the season, including most of the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. games, because of a knee injury. He returned for the NAIB tournament but was heavily taped.

“The rest of us weren’t too bad, because we won the conference without him,” Hale said.

Phelps scored 1,043 points in his career, and only his knee problem prevented him from leading the team four years in a row, something no Aztec has done. Hale beat him out in the championship season by 49 points.

The Aztecs only shared the conference title with San Jose State with an 8-4 record but finished 24-7 overall. They were 3-1 against members of what was then the Pacific Coast Conference, beating UCLA twice and California once and losing to Stanford.

“The only comparison we had with major schools was the success we had against the Coast Conference,” Hodgetts said.

UCLA had the great Jackie Robinson, and Hodgetts, a defensive specialist, held the future Brooklyn Dodger Hall of Famer to nine points in the two games.

The Aztecs hit a slump at the end of the CCAA race, losing three of their last four games, but salvaged a tie for the title when San Jose State was upset by Fresno State. After that, it took an ambitious fund-raising campaign to get them to Kansas City.

“There was no money at all from the school,” Hodgetts said.

Even with financial aid, the traveling party couldn’t afford sleeping accommodations on the train.

“We rode in chair cars and sat up except for Hale and Patterson,” Hodgetts said. “They were small enough to fit into the luggage racks.”

The Aztecs even had to rough it after they reached Kansas City. Because the Municipal Auditorium didn’t have enough locker space for 32 teams, they suited up in their hotel rooms.

“Before each game, we gathered in one of the rooms,” Hodgetts said. “Morrie (Gross) would take a bar of soap and write the scouting report on a mirror.”

The Aztecs’ first-round game against Montana Teachers was the only one in which they had any breathing room, and even that score was misleading.

Hoping to give his injured players as much rest as possible, Gross started his second team, and San Diego State trailed at halftime, 16-14. Shortly after the regulars went in, they held Montana Teachers scoreless for 10 minutes. Hale led their offense with 13 points.

Things got stickier in the second round and stayed that way thereafter.

The Aztecs led through most of the game against Culver-Stockton, only to see the Missourians tie the score at 38 with 30 seconds left in regulation. In overtime, Hale made two baskets and Hodgetts one, and it was on to the quarterfinals. Hale was again the high scorer with 15 points.

Against Texas Wesleyan, the Aztecs let a 42-38 lead melt to 42-41 before Phelps clinched the victory with a left-handed shot, his only goal of the game, with 22 seconds to play. Echle came off the bench to top the scoring with 13 points.

“Andy had a real good night,” Hodgetts said. “None of the rest of us did anything.”

At that point, the stage was set for a confrontation with heavily favored West Texas State, the highest-scoring team in the country and also the tallest. The Buffaloes of Canyon, Tex., were led by 6-10 Chuck Halbert, who went on to play five seasons in the NBA, and 6-6 Price Brookfield. Their average height was 6-5 1/2, making them half a foot taller per man than the Aztecs.

“They were considered a shoo-in,” Mitchell said.

Gross put what height he could find into the lineup by starting the 6-3 Echle at center and moving the 6-2 Mitchell to forward in place of Patterson. His plan was promptly shot down when Echle landed on his head in a scramble for the ball after just 28 seconds of play.

Without Echle to cover Halbert, Gross had to turn to Mitchell, with 6-1 Hodgetts taking over Mitchell’s duties against Brookfield. Remarkably, Halbert and Brookfield scored only 13 and 11 points, and Mitchell and Phelps matched their total with 14 and 10.

The Aztecs built a 37-27 lead with seven minutes left, allowed it it to dwindle to 37-35, then hung on.

“We were quicker than they were,” Hale said, “and we worked real hard to keep the ball out of the middle. They would have beaten us nine out of 10 times, but this time they had to go home.”

Hodgetts added, “They always started their fast break in the same place, and we almost completely stopped it.”

Asked how he had kept Halbert under control, Mitchell said, “I didn’t use any special strategy. I was just tenacious.”

One might say that the Aztecs’ upset of West Texas was the real championship game, but they still had all they could handle with Murray Teachers. Whatever advantage they had on paper was neutralized when Mitchell’s back trouble forced him to sit out the game.

“They gave me a shot of Novocain the night of the West Texas game,” Mitchell said. “When I woke up the next morning, the Novocain had worn off.”

Echle was back, though, bandaged head and all, and supplemented Hale’s team-high 10 points by scoring nine.

The Aztecs opened a 20-10 lead before Murray cut it to 20-14 at the half. San Diego State then suffered through a 13-minute scoring drought before Patterson rescued them with his only three baskets of the game. This flurry made it 36-30, and it was just enough.

Surprisingly, in view of what goes on these days, there was no wild celebration on the floor at game’s end. The Aztec players didn’t even cut down the nets.

“They probably would have thrown us in jail,” Hale said.

It was the climax of an outstanding coaching career for Gross, who had captained San Diego State’s basketball, football and baseball teams in the ‘20s. He was to enter the Navy in 1942 after the Aztecs had gone to the national tournament for the fourth consecutive year, that time bowing out in the second round.

Gross, who died in 1973, had a record of 191-85-1 in 13 1/2 seasons, second only to C.E. Peterson in Aztec history, and won a school-record six conference titles.

“He was a guy you wanted to play for,” Mitchell said. “He commanded a lot of respect. I had trouble calling him Morrie like the other guys did. He was always Coach to me.”

Hodgetts said of Gross, “His forte was motivation. He was a master psychologist. He never looked excited, yet he would sit there and tear his program into little pieces.”

Added Hale: “To me, it wasn’t as much his coaching as knowing how and when to use his personnel. Still, I wouldn’t minimize his coaching ability.”

Gross also must have been a fine molder of men, because, as Hodgetts put it, “Every one of us on that team became extremely successful.”

Among the current San Diego-area residents: Hodgetts owned a metal-works company; Mitchell was co-coach of the 1942-’43 Aztec team, then thrived in both business administration and construction; Hale coached basketball at Hoover and Mission Bay high schools, then went into community college administration, and Ahler served as assistant superintendent of schools in Escondido.

Patterson topped them all in the education department, earning a doctorate in physical education from Cal State Long Beach in 1960. He later became chairman of the school’s’ P.E. department.

Yes, they were all winners, and that probably explains how they overcame such heavy odds in Kansas City 49 years ago.

“We had come so close twice,” Hodgetts said. “We knew we had to find some way to win.”