'Our Game' traces the ups and downs of basketball in New England
Our Game: The Story of New England Basketball
By Bill Reynolds
Hall of Fame, 184 pp., $16.95
Remember "Swisher" Mitchell, "Porky" Vieira, or Jack "The Shot" Foley? In "Our Game," a short, affectionate general history of New England college and amateur basketball, Providence Journal columnist Bill Reynolds recovers the exploits of such forgotten hoopsters, quirky gym rats, and big men on campus. He also recalls the coaches and entrepreneurs who drove the game's growth. He reminds us that New England has long occupied a central place in basketball history, starting with James Naismith's invention of the sport at a Springfield YMCA in 1891.
Ironically, for some time basketball had a flimsy grip on the passions of New Englanders. Baseball and hockey dominated their interests. Boston high schools stopped fielding basketball teams from the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s. Meager crowds watched the Celtics dynasty of the 1960s. The sport possessed a much stronger identification with hoops hotbeds such as Indiana, North Carolina, and New York City.
Yet basketball innovations emerged from New England after Naismith first created goals out of peach baskets. Rejecting the rugged, sluggish style of the 1930s, Frank Keaney at Rhode Island State (now the University of Rhode Island) demanded his teams play "fire engine basketball," an early version of the fast break. The Runnin' Rams led the country in scoring nine out of 10 years that decade.
The 1947 team at Holy Cross, nicknamed the "Fancy Pants A.C.," won the NCAA title and captured the region's imagination. A sophomore on that team named Bob Cousy would secure sports fans' hearts with his whirling dribbles, clever passes, and gutsy style. He basically invented the modern point guard position. Another member of that title team, Joe Mullaney, became coach at Providence College. Mullaney conceived the combination defense, which blended man-to-man with zone principles. He led the Friars to National Invitation Tournament championships in 1961 and 1963.
Burgeoning media attention and an influx of African-American stars drove basketball's changes in the 1960s. After Cousy retired from the Celtics, in 1963, he coached at Boston College, making the Eagles a basketball power. Meanwhile, Roxbury's Jimmy Walker starred at Providence. After scoring 50 points in one game, the graceful guard sat on the bench with his hand over his shoulder, never looking back as a procession of admiring kids slapped his palm. "You want a definition of cool?" Reynolds writes. "Jimmy Walker in December of 1965, in Madison Square Garden."
The 1970s may have been the last decade of genuine New England college basketball, marked by the lovable Ernie DeGregorio at Providence and the glorious Julius Erving at UMass-Amherst. The formation of the Big East Conference in the 1980s integrated some schools into the national commercial network of big-time college sports, but it destroyed such historic rivalries as UConn-URI and Boston College-Holy Cross. Reynolds nevertheless celebrates recent accomplishments such as UConn's dual championships in men's and women's basketball in 2004.
"Our Game" is neither a comprehensive nor critical history of New England basketball. It concentrates on major college programs, and it seeks only to rejoice in their glories. Reynolds has nevertheless evoked a basketball tradition, lending us an important understanding of the region's sporting past.
Aram Goudsouzian teaches history at the University of Memphis. He is the author of "Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon" and "The Hurricane of 1938."
