'Run Baby Run': The full story behind the best home-court name in college basketballIt starts with former Saint Peter's guard Tom Mac Mahon, who wrote a giant check to tie the 1968 team's legacy to this year's Cinderella squad.
Fifty-four years ago this week, a reporter walked into the locker room of the Saint Peter’s College basketball team looking for answers after the Peacocks throttled 10th-ranked Duke, 100-71, in the quarterfinals of the National Invitational Tournament.The NIT was still a big deal in 1968, and the “delirious, partisan” crowd of 19,500 was “the largest crowd ever to attend a basketball game in New York City,” the New York Times reported.
“Scrawled on the blackboard inside the door to the Peacock dressing room were the thickly-lettered words, "Run, Baby Run.”Run, Baby Run. The phrase stuck as a permanent nickname for the 1967-68 Peacocks, who went 24-4 while averaging 94 points per game. For nearly three generations, that was the gold standard for this program, one that seemed untouchable.Until now.“This is bigger,” a starting guard from that team, Tom Mac Mahon, said Tuesday.
“We are so happy to step aside and say, ‘You know what, we had our time, and now there is a greater team.’”After vanquishing seventh-ranked Kentucky and 20th-ranked Murray State, the current Peacocks are playing in the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 for the first time, and a win over Purdue on Friday night in Philadelphia would make them the first No. 15 seed ever to advance to an Elite Eight.“A lot of us from that (1968) team are going to the game Friday,” Mac Mahon said.
“This is more than a dream. It’s beyond my wildest imagination.”Mac Mahon isn’t just a former player. He’s the program’s biggest booster, having spearheaded the renovation of the decrepit Yanitelli Center into the sparkling “Run Baby Run Arena,” which was unveiled in November. In a very real way, he’s passed a torch that’s been flickering for half a century.The destruction of DukeThen, as now, attitude was the key to Saint Peter’s hardwood success.“Similar to the makeup of the current team, we had a bunch of ragtag kids from New York and New Jersey, kids who were not recruited heavily,” Mac Mahon said.Two transfers put them over the top. Guard Harry Laurie arrived from Loyola-Chicago and Elnardo Webster, a Jersey City native and Lincoln High grad, came from the junior college ranks.
Webster, who spurned recruiting overtures from St. John’s, averaged 25 points and 13 rebounds in 1967-68. It remains one of the best seasons ever by a New Jersey collegian. Laurie averaged 15 points and 7 boards, and center Pete O’Dea (19 points, 14 rebounds), guard Ken Grant (8 points) and Mac Mahon (13 points) rounded out the starting lineup. None of them stood taller than 6 feet 5 — hence the exhortation by head coach Don Kennedy to “run, baby, run.”After the Peacocks opened the NIT with a 102-93, double-overtime thriller over Marshall, the metropolitan area was abuzz.“Jersey City went crazy,” Mac Mahon said. “You couldn’t get tickets. Jersey City found theaters to put the game on so people could watch.”Duke might have been ranked 10th, but the Blue Devils played a brutally slow brand of basketball in the stodgy ACC.
In the seven games prior to meeting Saint Peter’s, they scored 50 or fewer points four times, including a 12-10 loss to N.C. State (yes 12-10, that is not a typo) in the ACC Tournament.So Kennedy figured his team could literally run them out of the gym, which they did.“Other than (the birth of) my grandchildren and my children and (marrying) my wife, it was the greatest night of my life,” Mac Mahon said. “We received keys to the city.”Mac Mahon later would become chief executive officer of Labcorp, the medical-testing giant. He credited his experience with the 1967-68 team for opening the door.“It stuck with me the rest of my life,” he said. “I gained confidence, I recognized I had something to contribute, you just get this belief in yourself when you do something like that.”It also forged a bond with his alma mater that never faded, even as the basketball program did.“I’ve had such love and devotion to Saint Peter’s,” he said. “I wouldn’t be who I am without it.”That came in handy when Shaheen Holloway became the head coach.
Holloway's plea: 'Please help me'
The Yanitelli Center was falling apart for years, to the point where games were postponed because the ceiling leaked. The facility’s sad condition scared off recruits and prospective coaches alike. Holloway took the job anyway. His first recruiting pitch was to donors.“When Shaheen came here he sat down with some of us and said, ‘Listen, I can recruit players, but please help me improve this facility,'” Mac Mahon recalled. “I said, ‘We’ll get you an improved facility. It’ll take a few years. You get the players.’ Lo and behold, I never would have imagined it would develop like this.”Your stories live here.
Mac Mahon donated $5 million as the lead gift, and now Saint Peter’s has a home court on par with at least some of its mid-major brethren. Run Baby Run Arena didn’t sway any of the current Peacocks to commit — they already were on board — but it gave everyone a sense of pride and a reward for moving the program in the right direction.“It was absolutely paramount in my mind that we get it done for this team," Mac Mahon said, "so this team now, when they leave Saint Peter’s, can say they played in the new arena."Oh, and about the arena name?
University officials left that up to Mac Mahon."I thought about it for a while and said, ‘I’m naming it after my teammates,’” he said. “I wanted it to have some connection between the team from ’68 and the possibilities of this team.”Over the past week, that moniker has gone viral.“It never even occurred to me that people wouldn’t know what ‘Run Baby Run’ was, and why would you name an arena that?”
Mac Mahon said with a chuckle. “This has given an extreme amount of pleasure to a lot of people.”Mac Mahon lives in Harding, Morris County. For 10 years, he relocated to North Carolina for his work with Labcorp. No matter how far he strayed from “Harvard on the Boulevard,” as the locals call it, the edge that infused the ’68 Peacocks — and the 2022 version, clearly — stayed with him.“I reminded all those people down there in North Carolina,” he said, “that this guy from New Jersey is a guy who beat Duke.
Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996 and the college basketball beat since 2003. He is an Associated Press Top 25 voter. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.
