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Wayne State University Athletics

Feature Story - Basketball

Men's Basketball Karl Henkel, WSUAthletics.com Guest Contributor

FEATURE STORY: A New Beginning With a Nod to the Past

The following feature first appeared in the football game program on Nov. 6, 2021. 

The opening of the Wayne State Fieldhouse marks the start of the next unofficial era of WSU basketball, which dates back more than 100 years and includes 23 Hall of Famers, 14 NCAA Tournament appearances, four All-Americans and a litany of facilities it has called home – not to mention key moments of progressiveness that was ahead of its time.

For a glimpse of what we might see in the future, we need to look to the past to learn about WSU basketball's place in Division II athletics, the local college sports scene, and even the city of Detroit, known as a true basketball town.

In a nutshell, the men's basketball team can be described by its remarkable consistency – 57 winning seasons, with the only significant down stretch being a seven-year losing stretch in the 1970s, which were not known as the heyday of Wayne State athletics for any sports team due to the de-prioritization of athletics by past university presidents – coupled with flashes of surprising tournament runs and with a triumvirate of coaches with Bowling Green State University ties leading the way the past four decades.

One of the most important moments in history, though under the radar to most in the general public, came during the 1950-1951 season when Wayne State became the first college team in Michigan, and possibly the Midwest, to field a starting five of all-Black players, according to Detroit basketball historian extraordinaire Bill Hoover, who runs the website DetroitPSLBasketball.com.

"We were pioneers in basketball at that time," recalled Mark Wittock, a member of the Wayne State team in 1955-56, in a 2016 interview. 

That year's team went 17-1 in the regular season – losing only to Louisville, whose roster boasted four future NBA players – and made its first NCAA Tournament appearance. The team disposed of DePaul, who itself had a Hall of Fame basketball coach and two future NBA players, for the program's first and only NCAA Division I Tournament victory, before bowing out to Kentucky in the second round. 

If that sentence feels like it was written in a different time, it was, as Wayne State would eventually transition to Division II upon its creation by the NCAA in 1973.

Kentucky, ironically, had an entirely white team in 1956, and wouldn't sign an African American to play at the school for 13 more years. It wasn't easy for the team – Wayne State players recalled facing discrimination like needing permission to stay at hotels and eat at restaurants and not being able to get into movie theaters when on the road – but it helped pave the way for the de-segregation of basketball across the U.S.

In a previously published article, Rob Fournier, Director of Athletics, wrote that Wayne State athletics was a trailblazing institution that stood up for individual rights in the early 1900s, long before the Civil Rights Movement, and recalled a stand on principle the men's basketball team took after the racial incidents at the 1956 NCAA Tournament.

"To this date, Wayne State remains the only team ever to be invited to what is now the Division I NCAA postseason basketball tournament to 'decline' that opportunity," he wrote.

And unfortunately for the men's basketball program – and the athletic department as a whole – university leadership in that era de-prioritized athletics, and it would take decades to start recovering.

By the early 1990s, the Tartars would make another memorable tournament run. In 1993, after knocking off Ferris State and Northern Michigan to win the GLIAC Championship, Wayne State won the NCAA Division II Great Lakes Regional and eked out a two-point victory over Philadelphia Textile in the Elite Eight before falling to California State University-Bakersfield, 61-57, in the Final Four.

"No GLIAC school to that point had ever gotten that far," said Ron Hammye, who led that 1993 team during his 13 years as Wayne State head coach. "It was quite a feat." 

Nine of Wayne State's 14 NCAA Tournament appearances have come in the past 30 years.

TAKING NAMES
The program has also produced athletes with greater basketball aspirations, including four – "Jumpin'" John Kline, George Brown, Charlie Primas and Ernie Wagner – who played for the Harlem Globetrotters, at the time the pre-eminent destination for the best basketball talent. Another high-profile name is Scott Perry, a team captain from the mid-1980s, who is now general manager of the National Basketball Association's New York Knicks. 

Wagner, Hoover said, was so good that the NBA's Milwaukee Hawks brought their 1954 pre-season training camp to Wayne State's Old Main building, though Wagner instead elected to become a Globetrotter. Brown, a graduate of Cass Tech High School, was the 31st African American to play in the NBA. He scored one point in his lone appearance for the Minneapolis Lakers – who selected him in the fourth round of the 1957 draft – on his 22nd birthday, but his NBA career was stymied as the league struggled to racially integrate. 

Howie McCarty was the only other former Wayne State basketball player to see NBA action. He played one season for the Detroit Falcons, averaging just over a point-per-game in 19 contests coming off the bench in 1946-1947.

Kline, Wayne State's first All-American in 1952-53, founded the Black Legends of Professional Basketball Foundation, in order to recognize those who helped integrate basketball. 

More recently, Jeff Ferguson, a transfer from Missouri, played a season with Wayne State in 2005-2006 before catching on in the now-defunct Premier Basketball League. 

And Stan Heath, an assistant coach during the 1993 NCAA Tournament run, later went on to be the head coach at Arkansas. He's now Eastern Michigan's head coach.

END OF AN ERA - AND A START OF ANOTHER
The basketball team now has a place to call home, one that it will share with the Detroit Pistons G-League team, the Motor City Cruise. But for most of its history, having a dedicated home for the basketball team wasn't a particular priority for the athletic department. Back in the 1950s, the team practiced at Old Main – yes, the place where many of you have taken classes – which at the time was the original Detroit Central High School. 

They played at Detroit Pershing High School, and even Calihan Hall, home of the University of Detroit Mercy's basketball team, along with a handful of other locations including Olympia Stadium and Michigan State Fairgrounds Coliseum. The team then migrated to the Matthaei Center – which was built not for Wayne State basketball but for the city of Detroit's Olympic bid – in the 1960s. 

"It was a great home-court advantage," Hammye said. "It was a great floor to play on; it had a lot of spring. One year we won the GLIAC and hosted the GLIAC Tournament [when it was held at the site of the top-ranked team] and the place was packed both nights that we played – the home court advantage was huge."

It's in the Matthaei, however, where Wayne State's modern history lives, led over the past four decades by three men with ties to Bowling Green State University. First it was Charlie Parker, who had previously served as an assistant coach at BGSU when the team won one Mid-American Conference championship, finished second twice and also went to the National Invitational Tournament.  

Parker won nearly 70 percent of his games across six seasons in Detroit, before handing off to his assistant coach, Hammye, himself a four-year starter at Bowling Green during his college days. Hammye spent 13 years as Wayne State's coach, setting the record for most career coaching victories, before David Greer – a four-year letterwinner at BGSU – took over in 2001. Greer has since passed Hammye in tenure (this is Greer's 21st season at Wayne State) and victories (266 coming into this season). 

Hammye maintains it is nothing more than a coincidence that the past 40 years of WSU men's basketball leadership came from Bowling Green.

"Knowing those guys and knowing the class of individuals they are, and some of the players they had coached that are still part of the program or come back, I'm honored to have been coached by those guys and follow in their footsteps," Greer said. 

Now, Greer readies himself to lead the program into a new era. The team returns National Association of Basketball Coaches All-Region guards Brailen Neely and Darian Owens-White and has the chance to play in back-to-back NCAA Tournaments for only the fourth time in program history (the team went back-to-back in 1986-1987, and back-to-back-to-back in 1992, 1993 and 1994).
 
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Players Mentioned

Brailen Neely

#11 Brailen Neely

G
5' 10"
Redshirt Fifth Year
Darian Owens-White

#14 Darian Owens-White

G
6' 1"
Redshirt Senior

Players Mentioned

Brailen Neely

#11 Brailen Neely

5' 10"
Redshirt Fifth Year
G
Darian Owens-White

#14 Darian Owens-White

6' 1"
Redshirt Senior
G