Remembering Special Era at City College of New York

Today, the school plays in anonymous Division III, far removed from the high-pressure games, more concerned with books than basketball, the way it was supposed to be all along.

There was a time, though, when the City College of New York had the best team in the country, a team that went on a mission and accomplished it at a troubled time in the sport.

A half-century ago, CCNY put together a unique group of New York kids, youngsters who learned their basketball on the concrete courts of the city’s schoolyards and playgrounds, where the rule was and is, “No blood, no foul.”

They were a hard-nosed bunch: some black, some white--a basketball melting pot brought together by coach Nat Holman, one of the game’s early geniuses. Together, they reached the top of the basketball mountain. And then they broke Holman’s heart.

They got mixed up with the wise guys who hung out around the sport like leeches, dangling a few bucks to kids who had none, payoffs to control the outcome of games.

That sad episode--the first revelation of point-shaving in college basketball--blurred what that CCNY team did in the NIT and NCAA tournaments in 1950, a unique sweep never accomplished before and never to be done again.

It was not a big team, but it had other assets. “We were a smart, unselfish club,” said Norm Mager, who was Holman’s sixth man. “We looked for the open man all the time.”

Mager, returning from 2 1/2 years in the Air Force, was a senior. So was Irwin Dambrot. They provided some stability to a team full of sophomores like Ed Roman, Ed Warner, Herb Roth and Floyd Lane. “We supplied a settling quality, toned them down,” Mager said.

Roman and Warner were best friends, one white, the other black, who had gone against each other throughout high school. “I was going to CCNY and when I found out Roman was going there, too, I thought, ‘Hey, this could really be good,”’ Warner said.

And it was.

Holman’s team played textbook basketball with a certain chemistry that made it special. Warner, now confined to a wheelchair after a car accident, recalls the camaraderie.

“It was an outstanding group of young men from various parts of the city,” he said. “There was no prejudice. We all loved one another, respected one another. We visited each other’s homes. It was a great group with so much talent.

“We were a good fastbreak team, moving the ball, always focused, knowing where the other guy was. There was no hot-dogging. We went to whoever we felt had a hot hand. There was no selfishness. It was remarkable. I felt so good in their company.”

In those days, Madison Square Garden was the showplace of college basketball, where two and sometimes three doubleheaders were played every week. It was a convenient hangout for the community of wise guys, doing business on the games. Each March, the National Invitation Tournament gathered the best teams in the country in the Garden at a time when the NCAA tournament was smaller and less prestigious.

In 1949, Kentucky’s defending NCAA champions came into the NIT at 29-1, averaging 70 points per game with a winning margin of 25 points per game. In the NIT opener, Adolph Rupp’s team suffered a shocking upset, losing 67-56 to Loyola of Chicago.

It was no surprise to the gamblers, though. The game had been fixed.

The next year, CCNY went 17-5 in a season when not every game was on the up-and-up. “Three of the five we lost, we should have won,” Mager said. No further explanation was necessary.

CCNY got the next-to-last invitation to the 12-team NIT and the players agreed there would be no postseason funny business. Their first game was against defending champion San Francisco, coached by Pete Newell. It was not close. The City kids, running at every opportunity, destroyed the Dons’ slowdown game 65-46 as Warner scored 26 points.

Next up was Kentucky. Rupp was contemptuous of the matchup, dismissing Holman’s melting pot team. After all, Kentucky had 7-foot Bill Spivey.

“We had been reading the papers and they were putting us down,” Warner said. “There was a deep hurt. We practiced hard. Leroy Watkins was a big guy and he was Spivey in practice. We worked on plays, boxing people out.”

Holman started three blacks against Rupp’s all-white team. The 6-foot-7 Watkins won the opening tip from Spivey, starting an 89-50 blowout. The loss embarrassed Kentucky so thoroughly that the state legislature passed a resolution calling for the capitol building’s flag to be flown at half-staff.

“They were talented, but from start to end, we were souped up,” Warner said. “We were so inspired. We surprised ourselves to the degree that we knew we could win but not by that margin.”

In the NIT semifinals, Duquesne refused to run with CCNY. The slowdown had not worked for San Francisco and it did not work for Duquesne. Final score: CCNY 62, Duquesne 52.

Bradley, tall and fast, faced the City kids in the NIT title game and raced out to a 27-18 lead. But Dambrot’s outside shots and Roman’s rebounding led a comeback. By halftime, Bradley’s lead was down to three points and CCNY went on to win 69-61 as Dambrot scored 23 points, Roman 19 and Warner 16.

The team was honored by Mayor William O’Dwyer with a City Hall reception, and three days later, began the NCAA tournament. “We had a great deal of confidence in ourselves,” Warner said. “We felt we could beat anyone. We were such a talented team.”

The NCAA opener against Ohio State was a taut, tight game. Trailing with three minutes to go, CCNY rallied behind Layne and Mager, whose outside accuracy finally broke down the Buckeyes’ zone.

Roman scored 21 in the next game, a 78-73 victory over North Carolina State. That set up a championship rematch with Bradley.

Just before the half, Mager went down with blood spurting from a cut over his eye. “Some guy’s teeth got into my forehead,” he said. “The doctor put a piece of balsa wood in my mouth and stitched me. I was a little dizzy, a little groggy but it looked worse than it was.”

The City kids led by six points with 57 seconds to play. Two baskets by Gene Melchiorre narrowed the lead to one point with 10 seconds to play. Now, Melchiorre drove the lane but the ball came loose. Dambrot spotted Mager at midcourt and looped a pass to him.

Mager took off with a Bradley defender in hot pursuit. “I could feel the guy’s breath on my neck,” he said. “I drove and gave the ball a little twist and it went in. I could tell by the roar of the crowd that it went in.”

The sweep was complete.

“We didn’t realize how important that was,” Mager said. “It didn’t seem like much at the time. Days later, it became more important to us.”

The celebration at CCNY’s campus was raucous with students skipping class to salute the double champs. It was a heady time for Holman’s kids.

A year later, the NCAA doubled its field to 16 teams and outlawed dual participation in the two tournaments. There would never again be a two-tournament sweep.

That same year, the point-shaving scandal was uncovered with seven CCNY players implicated. The basketball Grand Slam was tainted forever.