jerseyshorejohnny
Well-known member
‘Miracles on the Hardwood’ Review: Faith, Hoops and CharityFrom scruffy gym floors to massive arenas, Catholic-school basketball is a religion of its own.
John J. Miller
April 9, 2021
When Gonzaga University’s Jalen Suggs scored his buzzer-beating bank shot in the NCAA’s Final Four last week, fans of Catholic college basketball cheered: The team from the Jesuit school had created an indelible moment in one of America’s great pastimes. And although Suggs and the Zags went on to suffer a defeat in the championship game against Baylor on Monday night, they added to the lore of Catholic cagers.
In “Miracles on the Hardwood,” a history of Catholic college basketball, ESPN’s John Gasaway begins his story by observing a paradox about the origins of the game: “Basketball was invented to save Protestant men’s souls.” Its founding father, James Naismith, was “a pious Presbyterian” who worked at a YMCA in Springfield, Mass., where he sought to devise a sport that his co-religionists could play indoors. He borrowed the idea of a goal from hockey and lacrosse. His innovation was to orient the goal itself horizontally rather than vertically. Players didn’t throw a ball at an upright target but lofted it above their heads and hoped it would drop through a halo-like hoop.
Naismith probably never imagined how much his newfangled sport would mean to Catholics. “For many Americans, college basketball is the outward and visible sign of Catholicism in the United States,” observed the late Frank Deford in 1985, when Georgetown and St. John’s joined eventual champion Villanova in the Final Four. Mr. Gasaway chronicles this and just about every other significant Catholic moment in college basketball, but he avoids turning out a tale of triumphalism: “Catholic teams on the whole may be characterized more aptly as good or very good rather than as dominant or elite.”
That seems about right. Mr. Gasaway, who has made his reputation in sports journalism as a number cruncher, shows that Catholic schools constitute 12% of the NCAA’s Division I men’s basketball programs. They’ve also accounted for 12% of both national semifinalists and champions. More noteworthy may be the fact that they’ve done this in a field otherwise controlled by big state schools. Gonzaga, with a student population of about 7,000, won its dramatic victory in the Final Four over UCLA, which enrolls nearly 45,000.
Mr. Gasaway labels roundball “the perfect city sport,” and urban Catholics may have taken to it because it requires less physical space than football or baseball. It also needs fewer players, meaning that smaller schools have an easier time organizing teams. Whereas only Notre Dame has established itself among Catholic institutions as a football powerhouse, the NCAA’s basketball champions include Chicago Loyola, La Salle and Marquette.Priests who ministered to immigrants and their progeny also seem to have valued the game’s power to assimilate.
In 1932, Cardinal George Mundelein of Chicago praised basketball and other sports for “rescuing our boys from speakeasies, gangster hang-outs, street corners, and from the other temptations that lie in wait for discontented youth.”By the 1940s, Catholic schools were top contenders. Shot-blocking sensation George Mikan led DePaul to a title in the National Invitational Tournament in 1945, back when the NIT was at least as prestigious as the NCAA tourney. Two years later, Holy Cross won the NCAA championship with Bob Cousy, who recorded “what many believe to be major college basketball’s first-ever behind-the-back dribble,” according to Mr. Gasaway.Players always have enjoyed making flashy moves, and Mr. Gasaway describes a novel play in 1956.
Mike Farmer of the University of San Francisco (a Jesuit school) inbounded a pass over his own backboard to his leaping teammate Bill Russell, who caught the ball in flight and dunked it. Although much of basketball’s appeal derives from its airborne athleticism, winning still comes down to fundamentals.
After Frank McGuire left St. John’s to coach at North Carolina in 1952, Catholic players he recruited from New York would make the sign of the cross before shooting free throws. Too often, however, they missed. The coach delivered a warning from the area’s bishop: “You guys have to stop doing the sign of the cross or improve your foul shooting.”Mr. Gasaway pays special attention to racial integration.
One of the reasons why USF won back-to-back championships in 1955 and 1956 was because it suited up black players like Russell when other schools hesitated. During the 1962-63 season, Loyola Chicago became the first major college team to put five African-Americans on the court at the same time and perhaps not coincidentally won the NCAA title. Mr. Gasaway is careful to point out that Catholic schools weren’t alone in their barrier busting—Jackie Robinson played basketball at UCLA in the early 1940s—but he also believes that they helped erase the sport’s color line.
Despite this, Catholic colleges and universities have not always wrapped themselves in glory. When players at Seton Hall were implicated in a point-shaving scandal in the early 1960s, their school earned a nickname: “Cheatin’ Hall.” Other controversies have involved criminal behavior, drug use and low academic standards. It can seem as though the Catholics aren’t much different from the non-Catholics.As “Miracles on the Hardwood” progresses, this becomes a growing problem for Mr. Gasaway, who never figures out what distinguishes Catholic basketball programs from the rest.
Marquette coach Al McGuire once joked: “You can always tell the Catholic schools by the length of the cheerleaders’ skirts.”If there’s more to it, Mr. Gasaway doesn’t say. He writes virtually nothing about the role of faith, except to remark that players “have always professed all manner of evolving beliefs, agnosticisms, skepticisms, and disbeliefs.”
What he lacks in analysis he tries to make up for in description, and though he provides a portion of lively anecdotes, his story sometimes sinks into a chronicle of recaps. It’s one darn game after another, and stretches of the book are about as interesting as the old four-corners offense, used by teams to kill time before the advent of the shot clock. By the book’s final pages, Mr. Gasaway appears to have given up on the search for a deeper meaning.
He confesses: “If there is a specifically Catholic secret sauce for basketball success, it remains elusive.”A priest might suggest that God has something to do with it. James Naismith, for his part, would have been pleased to know that Mark Few, the celebrated coach of Gonzaga’s team for the past two decades, is the son of a Presbyterian minister.
John J. Miller
April 9, 2021
When Gonzaga University’s Jalen Suggs scored his buzzer-beating bank shot in the NCAA’s Final Four last week, fans of Catholic college basketball cheered: The team from the Jesuit school had created an indelible moment in one of America’s great pastimes. And although Suggs and the Zags went on to suffer a defeat in the championship game against Baylor on Monday night, they added to the lore of Catholic cagers.
In “Miracles on the Hardwood,” a history of Catholic college basketball, ESPN’s John Gasaway begins his story by observing a paradox about the origins of the game: “Basketball was invented to save Protestant men’s souls.” Its founding father, James Naismith, was “a pious Presbyterian” who worked at a YMCA in Springfield, Mass., where he sought to devise a sport that his co-religionists could play indoors. He borrowed the idea of a goal from hockey and lacrosse. His innovation was to orient the goal itself horizontally rather than vertically. Players didn’t throw a ball at an upright target but lofted it above their heads and hoped it would drop through a halo-like hoop.
Naismith probably never imagined how much his newfangled sport would mean to Catholics. “For many Americans, college basketball is the outward and visible sign of Catholicism in the United States,” observed the late Frank Deford in 1985, when Georgetown and St. John’s joined eventual champion Villanova in the Final Four. Mr. Gasaway chronicles this and just about every other significant Catholic moment in college basketball, but he avoids turning out a tale of triumphalism: “Catholic teams on the whole may be characterized more aptly as good or very good rather than as dominant or elite.”
That seems about right. Mr. Gasaway, who has made his reputation in sports journalism as a number cruncher, shows that Catholic schools constitute 12% of the NCAA’s Division I men’s basketball programs. They’ve also accounted for 12% of both national semifinalists and champions. More noteworthy may be the fact that they’ve done this in a field otherwise controlled by big state schools. Gonzaga, with a student population of about 7,000, won its dramatic victory in the Final Four over UCLA, which enrolls nearly 45,000.
Mr. Gasaway labels roundball “the perfect city sport,” and urban Catholics may have taken to it because it requires less physical space than football or baseball. It also needs fewer players, meaning that smaller schools have an easier time organizing teams. Whereas only Notre Dame has established itself among Catholic institutions as a football powerhouse, the NCAA’s basketball champions include Chicago Loyola, La Salle and Marquette.Priests who ministered to immigrants and their progeny also seem to have valued the game’s power to assimilate.
In 1932, Cardinal George Mundelein of Chicago praised basketball and other sports for “rescuing our boys from speakeasies, gangster hang-outs, street corners, and from the other temptations that lie in wait for discontented youth.”By the 1940s, Catholic schools were top contenders. Shot-blocking sensation George Mikan led DePaul to a title in the National Invitational Tournament in 1945, back when the NIT was at least as prestigious as the NCAA tourney. Two years later, Holy Cross won the NCAA championship with Bob Cousy, who recorded “what many believe to be major college basketball’s first-ever behind-the-back dribble,” according to Mr. Gasaway.Players always have enjoyed making flashy moves, and Mr. Gasaway describes a novel play in 1956.
Mike Farmer of the University of San Francisco (a Jesuit school) inbounded a pass over his own backboard to his leaping teammate Bill Russell, who caught the ball in flight and dunked it. Although much of basketball’s appeal derives from its airborne athleticism, winning still comes down to fundamentals.
After Frank McGuire left St. John’s to coach at North Carolina in 1952, Catholic players he recruited from New York would make the sign of the cross before shooting free throws. Too often, however, they missed. The coach delivered a warning from the area’s bishop: “You guys have to stop doing the sign of the cross or improve your foul shooting.”Mr. Gasaway pays special attention to racial integration.
One of the reasons why USF won back-to-back championships in 1955 and 1956 was because it suited up black players like Russell when other schools hesitated. During the 1962-63 season, Loyola Chicago became the first major college team to put five African-Americans on the court at the same time and perhaps not coincidentally won the NCAA title. Mr. Gasaway is careful to point out that Catholic schools weren’t alone in their barrier busting—Jackie Robinson played basketball at UCLA in the early 1940s—but he also believes that they helped erase the sport’s color line.
Despite this, Catholic colleges and universities have not always wrapped themselves in glory. When players at Seton Hall were implicated in a point-shaving scandal in the early 1960s, their school earned a nickname: “Cheatin’ Hall.” Other controversies have involved criminal behavior, drug use and low academic standards. It can seem as though the Catholics aren’t much different from the non-Catholics.As “Miracles on the Hardwood” progresses, this becomes a growing problem for Mr. Gasaway, who never figures out what distinguishes Catholic basketball programs from the rest.
Marquette coach Al McGuire once joked: “You can always tell the Catholic schools by the length of the cheerleaders’ skirts.”If there’s more to it, Mr. Gasaway doesn’t say. He writes virtually nothing about the role of faith, except to remark that players “have always professed all manner of evolving beliefs, agnosticisms, skepticisms, and disbeliefs.”
What he lacks in analysis he tries to make up for in description, and though he provides a portion of lively anecdotes, his story sometimes sinks into a chronicle of recaps. It’s one darn game after another, and stretches of the book are about as interesting as the old four-corners offense, used by teams to kill time before the advent of the shot clock. By the book’s final pages, Mr. Gasaway appears to have given up on the search for a deeper meaning.
He confesses: “If there is a specifically Catholic secret sauce for basketball success, it remains elusive.”A priest might suggest that God has something to do with it. James Naismith, for his part, would have been pleased to know that Mark Few, the celebrated coach of Gonzaga’s team for the past two decades, is the son of a Presbyterian minister.
Last edited: