General | 10/18/2016 2:00:00 PM

The following feature first appeared in the football game program on Oct. 15, 2016.
When George Brown called Mark Wittock last year, it was the first time the former Wayne State basketball teammates had talked in more than a half-century.

Brown, a Cass Tech graduate and 1983 Wayne State Athletics Hall of Fame inductee, was trying to track down some of his former teammates, who nearly 60 years earlier had become the first – and to this day, only – Wayne State basketball team to participate in and win an NCAA Division I tournament game. 

Despite the decades-long gap between conversations, the two quickly got on the subject of an event that had never escaped their minds. In particular, the discussion shifted to one officiating call during Wayne State's Sweet Sixteen game against mighty Kentucky in 1956 that changed the outcome – and history – of the program.

Wayne State, which led Kentucky, 34-32 at halftime and continued to stay within striking distance of the more talented Wildcats deep into the second half, could not recover after the 6-foot, 6-inch Brown, who just happened to be the team's best player, fouled out. 

"I remember one of the things we talked about was when he (Brown) fouled out of the game about halfway through the second half," Wittock recalled. "He said, 'We were doing fine until they (the officials) fouled me out. The fifth foul, I wasn't within three feet of that fella."
With the score tied at 40, Kentucky went on a 20-6 run to polish off Wayne State, 84-64. It was Wayne State's second loss of the season and it ended the Tartars' remarkable 17-game winning streak. 

 "When George Brown fouled out in the middle of the second half, Kentucky's height just dominated," Wittock recalled. "That game seemed so much closer, but at the end, when we did get behind, they sent in a bunch of new guys who seemed to be taller than the guy they were replacing."

The 1956 team posted an overall record of 18-3 (the third loss came to Morehead State in a consolation game that was played a day after the Kentucky loss). They were 10-1 at home – games that season were played at the University of Detroit (the Matthaei wasn't built for another decade) – and a perfect 7-0 on the road. 

The only loss outside the NCAA Tournament that year was to Louisville, another national powerhouse, which went 26-3 that season and won the National Invitation Tournament. 

"We were a great team," said Jerry Greenberg, another member of the 1956 team, who played in 20 of the 21 games and averaged 3.5 points and 4.3 rebounds per game that season. "And we were only the second team ever from the state of Michigan to, at that point, have gone to the NCAA Tournament."

But aside from the on-court success, the 1956 Wayne State basketball team, made up of a diverse group of athletes with skills across several sports, had to overcome several off-court adversities in its quest to make a name for itself.

A Trailblazing Team
What stands out about the Wayne State basketball teams in the mid-1950s, and 1956 in particular, are the unique circumstances surrounding the program and sport.

For starters, the current university president, Clarence B. Hilberry, was not the biggest fan of athletics. At one point the fate of the football program was at stake in favor of more intramural sports programs. Thankfully that, as many Wayne State fans will attest, never happened. 

But one of the changes made to the basketball program was to move the team into the President's Athletic Conference, which consisted of less competitive opponents that some players acknowledged, aided the record 17-game winning streak.

"(Hilberry) did us a big favor because that conference was weak," Greenberg recalled. "But we were still a great team; to even play Kentucky in the Sweet Sixteen, we had to beat DePaul."
DePaul, for reference, had gone 1-1 against Kentucky during the 1956 season.

The game against Kentucky, coincidentally, also shone a light on a challenge the Wayne State basketball team faced, particularly when playing on the road or at neutral sites.

Wayne State was comprised of a diverse team: white players like Wittock and Greenberg, and African American players like Brown and Clarence Straughn. Kentucky, meanwhile, was comprised solely of white players.

"We were pioneers in basketball at that time," Wittock said. "But we went through some discriminatory things on the road, like needing permission to stay at hotels and eat at restaurants and not being able to get into movie theaters."

The discriminatory atmosphere even boiled over during halftime of the Kentucky game, which, remember, Wayne State led, 34-32. The two teams, playing at a neutral site in Iowa City, Iowa, were separated by nothing more than a curtain. Multiple Wayne State players say they heard a Kentucky coach tell his players, "If those (discriminatory word for African Americans) beat us, we'll never get back to Kentucky alive."

It would be another decade-and-a-half before the first African American played basketball at Kentucky. Brown, meanwhile, in 1957 became the 31st African American to play in the National Basketball Association.
 
Multi-Sport Ties
Though rare these days, multi-sport athletes in the 1950s were easy to find. And Wayne State's 1956 basketball squad had plenty of ties to other sports.

For starters, look no further than the Tartars' coach, Joel Mason, a 1981 inductee into the Wayne State Athletics Hall of Fame. Mason actually started his 32-year Wayne State career as an assistant football coach before taking over as head basketball coach in 1948. Though not known for his tactical approach to the sport, Mason, from the now-defunct Upper Peninsula city of Stambaugh, compiled a 186-173 career record, which stood for 35 years and is still third all-time.

His success, according to players, was that he was a strong recruiter. For example, he used his Stambaugh ties to recruit Don Halverson, who saw action in 18 of the 21 games for Wayne State in 1956.

After that season, Halverson went to another sport – baseball – where he played 10 games for the Fitzgerald (Georgia) A's of the Georgia-Florida League. Clarence Straughn, whom Greenberg called, "the best guard to ever play for Wayne State," also took a shot at a baseball career. He played 30 games for the Olean (New York) Oilers of the New York-Pennsylvania League. At the time, Olean was part of the Philadelphia Phillies' organization.

One player opted to stick with basketball during his post-Wayne State career.

Brown, who was also a track star in addition to leading the 1956 team with 17.4 points and 15 rebounds per game, went on to play in the NBA, albeit for a brief stint. He scored one point in six minutes of action during one game for the Minneapolis Lakers in 1957.

The Last Call
There was a bit of irony to the 2015 phone call between Brown and Wittock.

Brown had reached out to Wittock in an attempt to reach another former teammate who he hadn't heard from in a couple of years. And unfortunately as the two caught up, they came to realize that many of their teammates from that 1956 team had recently passed away.

Tarpon London, or "Toppy," because of his 6-foot, 10-inch frame, passed away in 2005. Tom Keller passed away in 2010. Lawrence Gualtieri died in 2015. 

And sadly, Wittock's phone call with Brown was not just their first in almost 60 years, but also their last. Brown passed away last month.

Wittock has preserved memories of that season and his career in a scrapbook he now describes as a little moldy and smelly. He also has his memories from days sharing a dorm with Halverson and London, the only three players on the team not from the Metro Detroit area. 

But as time wears on, the living history of the 1956 squad lives on through a handful of players like Wittock and Greenberg and Halverson.
 
"Until then, nobody knew about Wayne University," Greenberg said. "We put the school on the map."