Going Old School

More important than “Will it play in Peoria?” as it now pertains to Bradley basketball is the question: Will it play in Indianapolis?

A half a century has expired since the Peoria-based Braves ventured this deep into the NCAA tournament. Two more wins and Bradley is in the Final Four.

It has been so long you could forget Chet “the Jet” Walker starred at Bradley, Hersey Hawkins won a scoring title there, the Braves raised four National Invitation Tournament championship banners and twice finished second in the NCAA tournament.

Famed play-by-play announcers once fought for elbow room on Bradley’s press row: Jack Brickhouse, Bill King, Tom Kelly, Ralph Lawler.

Before he came west, Francis “Chick” Hearn worked Bradley games: Smith does the bunny-hop in the Peoria pea patch!

But that was a drive-in movie ago.

Not even current Bradley players remember it.

Daniel Ruffin, a Peoria-raised sophomore guard on this season’s team, said Wednesday he never attended a Bradley game until the school recruited him.

“When I was growing up, watching Bradley basketball wasn’t on the top of the list,” he said.

Ruffin would learn Bradley had heaps of hoop heritage -- it just sort of faded out about the time Elvis did.

That Bradley would reappear now as the lowest-rated team left in this year’s NCAA tournament, after finishing fifth in the Missouri Valley Conference, only to knock off Phog Allen’s Kansas and what-used-to-be Ben Howland’s Pittsburgh, makes it the best NCAA story this side of George Mason.

Tonight at the Arena, 13th-seeded Bradley faces top-drawer Memphis in a regional semifinal game.

It may not be saying much to say Bradley basketball is the best thing going in Peoria, headquarters to Caterpillar Inc., and king of the minor league sports towns.

The proof, though, may have come Sunday when an estimated 1,000 supporters greeted the school at the Greater Peoria Regional Airport.

Even Daniel Ruffin was starting to get it.

“Those fans at the airport were there when Bradley was 9-22,” he said. “For us to do that for them is a great feeling. I know they’re proud of us.”

From Peoria Regional to the Oakland Regional, well, that’s pretty heady stuff.

Jim Les is the fourth-year coach responsible for flipping this switch.

“Everyone’s walking around with a little dip in their hip,” he said this week, “and breaking out their red Bradley gear and pumping out their chest, so it’s fun to be a part of that.”

The NCAA tournament doesn’t get any more Middle-America than Peoria, now sprawling but once the small-town temperature gauge and test market for manufacturing and culture.

The origins of “Will it play in Peoria?” are not entirely clear -- some attribute it to a Groucho Marx vaudeville-act utterance -- but it evolved to evoke America’s middle-ground sensibilities.

If it was good enough for Peoria -- 154 miles from Chicago and 165 from St. Louis -- it was good enough for everyone.

“Bradley basketball is the centerpiece of this community,” Les said. “It’s the centerpiece of this university because we don’t have football [discontinued in 1970], so we’re blessed with some great attention.

“We draw nearly 10,000 a game. We’re the big show in town.”

Les calling the coaching shots is the cherry-on-top. He and his brother, Tom, played at Bradley; Jim teaming with Hawkins in 1986 for the Braves’ last NCAA tournament victory.

Tom Les, who played in the 1970s, said Wednesday he knew his kid brother was the man for this mission. “When Jim got the job, my feeling was it was just a matter of time,” Tom said.

Getting Bradley back on top was more than a steppingstone career achievement for Les, although he figures to be a hot coaching candidate once the Braves’ ride ends.

“I’ve looked at it as more of a responsibility,” Les said. “I’m part of the tradition and history. I’ve got relationships with people, alums, former players, former coaches, professors, business owners in the community that span decades.”

It’s almost as if Bradley basketball has been unearthed from a time capsule.

Bradley posted its first win, against the Invincibles, in 1902. There was the “Famous Five” outfit that went 37-5 in the late 1930s and led Bradley to its first two NIT appearances at a time when the NIT meant something.

In 1950, Bradley lost the NIT and NCAA championships to City College of New York. The NCAA defeat still irks Bradley followers who believe their man, Gene Melchiorre, was fouled on a drive to the basket late in the game and Bradley down by one. Both CCNY victories were later sullied by a point-shaving scandal that effectively took the school out of the basketball business.

Bradley returned to the 1954 NCAA finals (defeating USC in the semis, 74-72), but was no match for a La Salle team led by 6-foot-7 Tom Gola, who scored 19 points in a 92-76 win.

Bradley won two tournament games in 1955 yet had managed only one victory since before posting last weekend’s double.

There have been good years since -- the eras of Walker and Hawkins -- but Bradley slowly got swallowed by Basketball Big Brother as the Missouri Valley Conference slipped into “mid-major” status.

Some connect dropping football at MVC schools with a drop in stature.

It basically has been a credibility street fight since.

The MVC was lampooned by some for getting four schools into the NCAA tournament but has proved its worthiness by advancing Wichita State and Bradley to the round of 16.

“We didn’t set out to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to try to prove everyone wrong,’ ” Les said. “We just went out and did what we were doing all year long ... and that’s play good basketball. And this league prepared us for the tournament. Because it’s a tremendous basketball league. It’s a major basketball conference.”

Bradley appears a team America can wrap its arms around.

Seven-foot center Patrick O’Bryant, who scored 28 points in Bradley’s upset against Pittsburgh, is a budding chef, interning last summer at Johnny’s Italian Steakhouse in Peoria.

He has become a teammate’s dream.

“I just made a cheesecake one day, and everybody heard about it, so they asked for some,” O’Bryant said.

O’Bryant’s best dish?

“Top Ramen noodles,” his coach shot back.

If Bradley beats Memphis, and then the UCLA-Gonzaga winner, it’s going to be bananas.

Another plane trip back to Peoria.

Another outbreak of nostalgia.