Bill Bradley

Harvard all-time moment No. 9: Beating Bill Bradley in 1964

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We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Harvard is next because eight U.S. presidents attended Harvard, exactly half the current Republican presidential candidate field.

On Feb. 7, 1964, Harvard took the floor in front of a packed Harvard Indoor Athletic Building to face Bill Bradley’s Princeton Tigers. That year, Bradley would be named an All-American for the third time, lead the conference in scoring with 33.1 points per game and set the still standing Ivy record for most points in a season (936). He would lead Princeton to a 12-2 record and the Ivy League championship and even win the gold medal on the U.S. Olympic Basketball Team. On this winter night in Cambridge, however, Bill Bradley’s banner year was rudely interrupted by the Ivy League’s perennial bottom feeder.

Bradley had a below average night against Harvard, scoring only 30 points. On the other side, Harvard’s Merle McClung matched Bradley with 30 points of his own, and Keith Sedlacek dropped 31 points, leading the Crimson to a remarkable 88-82 victory. The monumental win over the best player the Ivy League has ever witnessed was huge for the Crimson, as it put them in a tie for first place at the time. Unfortunately, Harvard finished a lackluster 6-8 in Ivy play that year, continuing an 18-year title drought which didn’t end until 47 years later.

Ivy League office selects all-time best women’s and men’s teams

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The Ivy League did something interesting Thursday – it tweeted out its all-time best women’s and men’s teams as selected by the Ivy League office, consisting of five players each. Check out the league’s selections with thoughts after the jump…

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Yale all-time moment No. 8: Elis tie Bill Bradley and company

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We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Yale is next by request of Ivy Player of the Year Justin Sears.

The 1962-63 Yale Bulldogs were solid.

Fresh off a NCAA Tournament appearance the previous year and led by legend Rick Kaminsky, the Elis finished 13-10, and more importantly, 11-3 in Ivy play, including a 62-61 win at Jadwin Gym (capping a four-game win streak over Princeton).

The first-year varsity star Bill Bradley-led Tigers had their revenge, though, nipping the Elis, 61-58, in New Haven on Feb. 9 and again in the Ivy playoff game on March 9, 65-53. Thus the 1962-63 season marked the first non-NCAA Tournament season in a 53-season streak that is still running. Still, the 1963 Elis won a share of the Ivy League championship and cemented their place in Ivy history.

Penn all-time moment No. 2: The almost perfect 1971 season

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We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Penn is next because Corky Calhoun somehow lived up to his mindblowingly awesome name. 

There will never be another season like it in the Ivy League. Despite Harvard’s perennial chest pounding, Yale’s unrequited dreams of glory and Princeton’s … well, whatever they do, no team will ever go undefeated for an entire season (on the men’s side, anyway).

In 1970-71, the Quakers went an astounding 28-0 before finally losing to cross-town rival Villanova (a team they beat earlier in the year) in the Eastern Regional Final, 90-47.  Regardless, they dominated their competition throughout the season, beating Ohio State, Utah and Syracuse, winning both the Ivy and Big 5 titles (the Quakers scored 103 and then 102 points on consecutive nights vs. Harvard and Dartmouth), winning 61 of their previous 65 games and achieving a No. 3 national ranking.  They are therefore considered by many as the greatest Quaker team of all time.

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Princeton all-time moment No. 2: The 1965 Final Four run

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We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. We’re starting with Princeton because Bill Bradley would have made an excellent 43rd President of the United States.

By 1965, Butch van Breda Kolff and his All-American, Bill Bradley, had captured the hearts of college fans beyond the Ivy League. Winners of two straight Ivy titles, the Tigers entered the campaign as the clear favorite to claim a third. The national experts did not, however, believe the Tigers deserved any consideration for national ranking. The Ivy League was, after all, still the Ivy League.

Bradley was one of five seniors who had been through many battles together. They were joined by juniors Don Rodenbach and Robert Haarlow, as well as a talented sophomore class who would themselves notch an Ivy crown in their careers. The sophomores included Gary Walters, a product of Reading High School where he was coached by Pete Carril, and Ed Hummer, the father of Ian Hummer, who would graduate in 2013 as the second-leading scorer in Tiger history.

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Princeton all-time moment No. 6: Bill Bradley enters the Hall of Fame

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We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. We’re starting with Princeton because that’s where Aaron Burr is from and it’s been a bad week for Alexander Hamilton.

In the winter and spring of 1961, Bill Bradley of Crystal City, Mo., sifted through 75 scholarship offers to play basketball in college before deciding to accept the one from … Duke. Believing Princeton offered him a better chance to prepare for a foreign service career, Bradley made a late change in plans and enrolled at Old Nassau in September 1961. He received no financial aid. Fortunately, one of the important influences in young Bradley’s life was the Tiger Heisman Trophy recipient, Dick Kazmaier, whose number 42 Bradley proudly wore throughout his Tiger years.

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From the archives: “A Sense of Where You Are”

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As noted in this space before, the 2014-15 campaign marked the 50th anniversary of Princeton’s 1965 Final Four berth. And as noted by The Classical earlier this month, the New Yorker freed one of its greatest all-time pieces from behind its paywall to coincide with March Madness – a longform masterpiece by the great John McPhee on Princeton’s Bill Bradley first published in the Jan. 23, 1965 issue of the magazine. The book, McPhee’s first, is 15,897 words long, so I’m not going to use a ton of words to set up the piece. Just read it here and be amazed by McPhee’s characteristically amazing storytelling and Bill Bradley’s talents as a basketball player and figure in the public eye, even as it appeared that Bradley might bypass the NBA en route to a less conventional career path at the time. Even if it Bradley hadn’t enjoyed a Hall of Fame career with the New York Knicks or gave Al Gore a serious run for his money during the 2000 Democratic presidential primary race as a former three-term senator, he’d still be worthy of the longform piece that hopefully you’ve already started reading by now.

The Chairman’s big night at Jadwin … and the Tigers’ big win

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The theme for Saturday night’s visit by the Columbia Lions to Jadwin Gym was “HISTORY.”

The Tiger faithful gathered to celebrate history, honoring at halftime the 50th Anniversary of the 1965 Final Four team, captained by the incomparable Bill Bradley. Sensing the significance of the occasion, Columbia’s Maodo “The Chairman” Lo determined to make a little history of his own. More on that below.

The 1965 Tigers reached the Final Four in an Eastern Regional matchup facing the Providence Friars at their place. The night before the final, the Friars celebrated their win in the semis by cutting down the nets in what remains the most egregious example of early chicken counting in this writer’s memory. (The back-slapping of James Jones and his staff in the last minute at Harvard Friday night is a recent contender.) Stung by the snub, the Tigers thrashed the Friars, 109-69. A request for the previous evening’s nets was declined.

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Q&A with former Princeton athletic director Gary Walters

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Gary Walters and his classmates celebrate Princeton's Final Four bid in 1965.(paw.princeton.edu)
Gary Walters and his classmates celebrate Princeton’s Final Four bid in 1965.(paw.princeton.edu)

Very few people have had a stronger impact on Princeton basketball than Gary Walters, who served as his alma mater’s athletic director for 20 years before retiring earlier this year and was a point guard for the Tigers from 1964-67. He was starting point guard on Princeton’s 1964-65 Final Four Team, and we caught up with the Ford Family Athletic Director Emeritus to ask him about his memories of that legendary squad for its 50th anniversary.

Q: What were your expectations going into the 1964-65 season?
A: Very high based on any number of factors, including having the national player of the year and Olympic captain in Bill Bradley and a strong sophomore class, all recruited by coach Butch van Breda Kolff.

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50th anniversary of 1965 Princeton Tigers’ Final Four berth

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Bill Bradley still owns the top 11 scoring games in Princeton history 49 years after graduating.
Bill Bradley still owns the top 11 scoring games in Princeton history 49 years after graduating.

This is the 50th anniversary of arguably the greatest Ivy League basketball team of all time, the 1964-65 Princeton Tigers.

Princeton was coached by the legendary Butch van Breda Kolff and was led by one of the five greatest players in college basketball history, Bill Bradley, as well as a host of other complementary players.

The Tigers finished the season at 23-6 and 13-1 in the Ivies, suffering only an upset loss on the road to a strong Cornell team. They had a stirring 109-69 NCAA win over No. 4 Providence on the road and finished third in the country with a 118-82 win over Wichita State and future New York Knick Dave Stallworth in a game in which Bradley scored 58 points to set an NCAA tournament record. We will be providing our readers with weekly capsules of significant games in conjunction with interviews with key players on that team.

Stay tuned.