There was no way to know it at the time, but 1950 marked the end of a golden era in Baylor men’s basketball.

The current cast of Bears is doing its best to start up one of its own.

The Baylor men’s team was once a major player on the national scene, making two Final Four appearances in a span of three years from 1948 to 1950, dates that until recently have been the high-water mark for a program with a lot more debilitating lows than euphoric highs since those halcyon days.

Baylor’s 1948 men’s basketball team won the Southwest Conference championship and advanced to the NCAA tournament finals, falling to Kentucky in the title game at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Jimmie Willis photo, The Texas Collection, Baylor University

It’s with that historic backdrop that Baylor continues its foray into March Madness Friday with its Sweet 16 tussle against St. Mary’s in Houston. It’s the furthest the Bears have gone in the NCAA tournament in 60 years.

“It’s been a while,” said Bill DeWitt, a key cog for Baylor in both 1948 and 1950. “Of course, I’ll pull for Baylor every year. They had a streak of bad luck, but they’ve really recovered well. We’re very proud of them. They’re terrific players.”

In DeWitt’s era at Baylor, the Southwest Conference champion got a direct pass into NCAA tournament. After failing to make it out of the regional round during the team’s first-ever NCAA tournament appearance in 1946, Baylor broke through just two years later.

The Bears’ conference title in 1948 led them back into the eight-team NCAA tournament, specifically into the West Regional in Kansas City to play Washington and Kansas State. After erasing a 17-point deficit to beat Washington, Baylor overcame a nine-point gap at halftime to drop Kansas State in its own backyard behind 15 points from Don Heathington to punch its ticket for the finals.

That meant a date with mighty Kentucky in New York City’s famed Madison Square Garden just two days later.

The team certainly got the most out of its first New York experience that year. Buddy Garcia, a professional middleweight boxer from Houston based in New York, sneaked the team through a back door and into Stillman’s Gym just down the street from Madison Square Garden during its off-day.

Stillman’s is a magical name to old ring veterans, and the Bears watched on as famous pugilists Rocky Marciano and Jake LaMotta ducked in and out of punches in advance of fights.

“It was a nice experience,” DeWitt said. “We always had a good time looking around New York.”

The excitement was palpable on campus in those days. Fans huddled around radios in bunches all over Waco the night of March 23 to listen to Buddy Bostick’s tinny broadcast crackle through speakers.

Baylor even chartered two DC-3 airplanes to New York for the game, but weather forced one to return and socked-in fog at LaGuardia Airport made landing for the other one an adventure.

“That just added to the excitement,” DeWitt said.

The game itself didn’t go Baylor’s way, but few neutral pundits expected it to. In the Eastern Regional Finals, the Adolph Rupp-led Wildcats had beaten vaunted Holy Cross and its point guard, the wiry and implacable future NBA Hall-of-Famer Bob Cousy, with a run-and-gun style no team in the country could emulate. Kentucky won 36 games that year, an NCAA record that stood strong for 39 more years.

Kentucky’s ferocity shocked Baylor out of the gate, and the Bears never regained their equilibrium, losing, 58-42, to bow out in front of a packed Madison Square Garden crowd.

“I remember the smoke of old Madison Square Garden,” said Jackie Robinson, a team captain who spearheaded the team’s 25-win turnaround during his first season in 1946. “The crowd was 18,333, we all knew that, and Kentucky had everything. Our tallest man was 6-3, and (Alex) Groza, their center, was 6-9. That was the ‘Fabulous Five,’ and when you play a team that’s better, you have to admit it.”

But the Bears received a king’s welcome back to Waco. Throngs flocked to the city’s downtown rail station to welcome the team home, ushering them down Austin Ave. in convertibles with fans jamming the sidewalks to see.

“Practically the whole student body met us at the train station downtown,” DeWitt said. “It sure was something to see.”

In 1950, DeWitt captained the next — and last — Baylor men’s team to record a win in the NCAA tournament until this year. Coach Bill Henderson’s Bears won their third consecutive conference title that year to earn another spot in the regional round in Kansas City. But without stars Bill Johnson, Red Owens and Robinson — who won a gold medal with the U.S. basketball team at the 1948 Olympics in London — the Bears fell to Bradley in the regional finals by a point in the final seconds.

A disappointing 12-point loss to North Carolina State in the third-place game at Madison Square Garden put an end to the most prosperous run in Baylor men’s basketball history.

Of course, that could all change this year. Every win from here will be historic as the Bears inch ever closer to matching the accomplishments of those Baylor teams those many years ago.

One thing’s for sure: excitement for Baylor men’s basketball hasn’t been this rampant since the Bears left behind a smoky Madison Square Garden in 1950.

“I’m enjoying watching them,” Robinson said. “I have a daughter and son-in-law who went to Duke, and I’ve got a suspicion that Baylor’s going to play Duke.

“I love that. I’m just loving it.”

wparchman@wacotrib.com

757-5711

RELATED SEARCHES

• Community excited about Baylor hoops success
• Samhan's the man at Saint Mary's