Dont blink: it's hard to stay consistent.

[Billy Jack]

Holy Cross. First New England team to win it all. 1947. Only took 3 games…

“Led by Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame head coach Alvin “Doggie” Julian and captains Ken Haggerty and Joe Mullaney, the Crusaders tallied a 27-3 record en route to the first national championship in school history.The team entered the NCAA Tournament riding a 20-game winning streak and defeated Navy, City College of New York and Oklahoma to capture the title. Future Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer Bob Cousy was a member of the team and George Kaftan was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player. Holy Cross became the first school in the Northeast to win the NCAA Tournament.”

I’m not sure that anyone was able “to win it all” back in those days. Not when half of the top teams went to the other tournament. I think of almost all of the tournament champions in those days as co-champions, winning a share of the national title.

Occasionally someone did win it outright. Wen Kentucky played in both tournaments in 1949, winning the NCAA tournament but losing ti Loyola (Chi) in the NIT semi’s before San Francisco beat Loyola for the tournament championship, it seems to me that the NIT became the de facto national championship tournament that year and that USF had a legitimate claim to having won it all. Same for CCNY the following year when they won both tournaments.

In my book, the UConn 1999 team was the first New England team to win it all.

 

[The Yakk]

How does Duke compete with e same admissions policies?

Lol Puke has been paying their players fat stacks since at least the Corey Magette era, and probably earlier.

Any one-and-done would be perfectly happy to attend Stanford for a year if the money were right.