As much as any head basketball coach of his era, Skip Hughes cast a blind eye towards the issue of race. He wanted to win basketball games. Stokes was not his first African-American player. He had recruited Eugene Phelps in 1952. Race or the relations between black and white never entered Hughes' mind as he sought to acquire players for his fledgling program where he could, starting first in the Pittsburgh area and its environs.
Saint Francis first caught the nation's spotlight beginning in 1954. It was a case of a player making a school's reputation. Maurice Stokes had been a standout player at Westinghouse High School in Pittsburgh. Hughes, who had spent his collegiate days in Pittsburgh, knew about him and knew that Phelps, his former high school teammate and close friend who was currently at Saint Francis, might help the coach lure the 6'6" Stokes to Loretto.
"In the back of his mind Skip was thinking, 'If I can get Eugene in here and he likes it, he's such a good friend of Stokes, it'll be a lot easier recruiting Maurice,'" remembered Emil Wandishin, who went on to become the team's point guard during the Stokes era and who knew both men.
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Dr. WILLIAM T. "SKIP" HUGHES
Head Coach
1946-1966
What transpired at a small Catholic College located in a backwater high in Pennsylvania's Allegheny Mountains between 1946 and 1966 is perhaps one of the more remarkable stories in the chronology of early college basketball.
Succinctly, it was largely due to a part-time coach and full-time dentist named Dr. William T. "Skip" Hughes. It was during this 20-year stretch that the stoic Hughes pasted together -- piece by continuing piece - a remarkable record which caught the attention of a growing audience of college basketball enthusiasts nationwide.
Skip Hughes would achieve his success as much by the power of his recruiting talents as by any on-the-bench coaching genius. Remembered Wilbur Trosch: "I recall [Duquesne coach] Red Manning asking me, 'how did Skip get all you guys to that mountain-top?" Over his career, he took three of his teams from "that mountain-top" to the NIT when it was the preeminent post-season tournament in the nation and included only 12 teams.
"Whoever built a program in seven years that was known nationally?" quipped Emil Wandishin, who quarterbacked one of Hughes' early teams and later served him as an assistant. "No scouting or recruiting budget, small enrollment. Skip did it his way."
Much of the Hughes image as a quiet and thoughtful coach who succeeded largely on his own and while accepting no salary is linked forever to the exploits of Maurice Stokes, his greatest and the school's greatest player.
Hands-on in every way off the court, he more often left it to his players when the game started. A competitor all his life, Hughes near the end of his coaching career was not beneath taking the floor with his teams during practices and directing the offense himself.
It is not too strong a statement to say that Saint Francis basketball would never have garnered the reputation it had without his leadership.
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Stokes came and led the Frankies in scoring and rebounding from the moment he arrived on campus, averaging 16.8 points his first year and 23.2 points the next. In his junior and senior years he upped his totals to 23 points a game and then 27 points and suddenly Saint Francis was racking up 20-win seasons.
Complementing Stokes, who played wherever he wanted on he floor, was a lineup consisting of Wandishin, who had transferred to Saint Francis from LIU after the school dropped its program in the face of New York's ongoing college gambling scandal, Bill Saller, from nearby Altoona at one forward position, Frank Puschauver filling the wing, and finally Ed Dugan, who also played inside and featured a nice shot. Later, Jim McClellan, who some believed was a Stokes-in-the-making and who had come like him from Westinghouse High, would play a prominent role as the team's enforcer underneath.
Hughes' teams were basically five-man units."That was Skip's strength," believed Bob Ford, who was a member of the Stokes dominant-teams and one of his closest friends. "He had the ability to put the proper five on the floor."
Hughes seldom substituted and only when one of the starters got himself into foul trouble. When that player was Stokes, as it was in a game against Villanova in 1954 and a few nights later at Mount St. Mary's in Maryland, Saint Francis was in trouble. Years later, Saller was still peeved that a local Maryland newspaper had falsely claimed that one of the Mount's players had "held" Stokes well under his average.
As to strategy, it was simple: "You look for your first option which was Maurice," Wandishin recalled. "Then you look for the other guys and, hopefully, everybody was moving." Wandishin directed the offense from the middle of the court and as Stokes rebounded he would pitch out and race down the floor. "We'd give him the pass and, boom, he'd put in in."
The culmination of every season was the postseason National Invitational Tournament, popularly known as the NIT. Sponsored by the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association, the NIT began in 1938 with six teams and grew from there. It was a success in every respect. The NCAA was inspired to initiate its own tournament the next year but for years played a subservient role as schools could choose which one to play and, to no surprise, preferred taking the trip to New York with the sights, sounds, and Broadway all providing the perfect and fitting environment for a growing game. The college game was prospering and the original Madison Square Garden, located just a few blocks from Broadway, was where you wanted to be if you played college basketball. In time, the writers, with an embarrassment of riches in fans and money, turned the NIT over to the local colleges to run.
From 1952 through 1955, the eastern Catholic schools were dominant and played a major role in maintaining the tournament's prestige. La Salle, Seton Hall, Holy Cross, and Duquesne won respective titles over those years. In 1955, Saint Francis made its mark finishing fourth in the tournament as Garden fans were treated to an outstanding performance by Stokes.
Saint Francis had rolled over BYU, 81-68, in the previous year's NIT before falling to Duquesne in what was becoming an annual rivalry between the two schools. The Frankies finished 21-9 in the regular season the next year gaining revenge over Duquesne, claiming two victories over St. Bonaventure -- one an overtime win on the road -- and easily defeating Temple and its All-American guard Hal Lear, who would go on to become the NCAA tournament's MVP in 1956.
Stokes opened up Saint Francis' return trip to the NIT with a 29-point performance over Seton Hall and found Holy Cross waiting in the next round. Tom Heinsohn, who would go on to play for the Boston Celtics and eventually coach them, was the Holy Cross star. The Crusaders' jumped out to a slight halftime lead much of it due to Heinsohn's play. Saint Francis had tried a zone -- a rare occasion for a Hughes team and something they had never practiced, recalled Wandishin -- and it didn't work. At halftime, Stokes said - but "not in a cocky way," remembered Wandishin -- that he would take Heinsohn man-for-man when play resumed. That Stokes did, scoring 21 points and shutting down the Holy Cross star as Saint Francis came away with a 68-64 victory.
What suddenly interested spectators and New York media were soon to discover, Stokes was only getting started. In what many basketball historians consider one of the finest games in NIT history, Stokes poured in a career-high 43 points but Saint Francis fell, 79-73, to the University of Dayton, after leading at the half. Dayton had scored on a desperation shot with just seconds remaining in regulation to force the overtime.
Even though he had played the Dayton game with a sprained ankle, Stokes' play was up to its usual high standard in the tourney's fourth place game against Cincinnati and its star Jack Twyman, who was soon to become his teammate and close friend in the NBA. He capped off what had been a magnificent week-long display of all-around ability with 31 points in a 96-91 loss. For his efforts he was selected the tournament's MVP and finally honored with a second-team selection to that season's All-American team. In gaining this recognition, he established himself as the most recognized and honored athlete to ever play at Saint Francis.
"Although [people] always talk about what I have done for Saint Francis, people forget what Saint Francis has done for me," Stokes, ever self-effacing, wrote later as he reflected on his four year college career. The school had been a nurturing place for him and even after a year in the NBA and the title of the league's rookie of the year, he could still find time to return to Loretto to attend his former teammates' graduation and, in the process, stay a week.
Stokes in a very direct way had put Saint Francis on the map and made recruitment of a new powerhouse team more possible for Hughes. Thus when Stokes left for even grander stardom in the NBA, it was more a case of the end of one era and the beginning of another.
What is The Golden Era?
From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, Saint Francis College ranked among the upper tier of the nation's college basketball programs. Between 1947 and 1971, SFC teams turned in 19 winning seasons, six 20-win campaigns and were selected to participate in the elite National Invitational Tournament on three occasions.
The Golden Era Series
The Golden Era series is a 12-part narrative of the history of the Saint Francis University men's basketball program. The first eight parts are a chronological overview of the program's heyday, which spanned from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. The last four parts detail themes or events that are woven through the mid-century Saint Francis teams.
PART I: Eastern Roots (6/26/13)
PART II: Stokes Sets The Standard (6/27/13)
PART III: A Most Complete Team (coming 7/3/13)
PART IV: Gold Medal Guard Play (coming 7/10/13)
PART V: Simply Sandy
PART VI: Stormin' Norman In Control
PART VII: Porter's Pulse
PART VIII: A Changing Game, A Changing Environment
The Meaning of Fellowship: Saint Francis vs. Jim Crow
The Jaffa Mosque: "Home of the Frankies"
The Rivalry: Saint Francis vs. Duquesne
The 'Spirit' That Was Saint Francis
