The Stokes era had ended, but what many might call the greatest all-around team in Saint Francis history came on the scene almost immediately beginning a three-year run of success in the winter of 1957 at the start of Hughes' 11th season as head coach.  Stokes had brought notoriety to the school, but Hughes in all his years in Loretto never had a team as deep as the one he coached from 1957 through 1960, and he wasn't bashful about saying so, telling anyone who would listen that his 1957-58 team was  "the best team I ever coached."  Comprised of eight sophomores, two juniors and two seniors it represented a perfect storm of experience and youth.

JACK O'MALLEY 1956-1959   Jack O'Malley's physical skills did not set him apart. His was a completeness of person, physical, spiritual, intellectual ability and finally, the passion to prevail. With a year at St. Francis Prep following his senior year of high school, O'Malley came to Saint Francis a far tougher and more mature player.  Along with those qualities came a confidence that was to serve him well over the next four years. If Jack O'Malley was a presence during a basketball game, he was also a presence among his teammates -- especially in the 1957-58 and 1958-59 seasons -- an immensely positive presence.  He had an uncanny ability to never get flustered in tight games and he was never fearful of taking the final shot or setting it up. He was up to whatever challenges the team or his coach, Skip Hughes, put upon him and he routinely took on the opposition's finest player:  a Hal Greer or a Lenny Wilkins, it made no difference.  "He was one of those take-charge guys," recalled Altoona Mirror reporter Jim Lane. "I always remember him as the guy who would be the leader of the team.  You put a team out on the floor and you look for the leader, who's the captain on the floor?  Well, it's Jack O'Malley, right?  Who else would you pick?  It was Jack."

"It was imposing," Wilbur Trosch, only a sophomore in 1957, said.  "Skip had brought in three guys from New York City alone.  How did a dentist from Hollidaysburg get these guys, I remember saying.  I saw all this talent and I doubted making the team."

But even with the new riches, Hughes was the same as he always was. Never outspoken in the style favored by contemporary coaches, he offered no homiletic proselytizing at practices or many tactical alterations during timeouts. As a fine player himself by most reports, he saw his teams through a player's eyes and saw no reason to temper a particular style that would hamper individual ability as he understood it.  To players he believed had special athletic gifts and didn't use them, he was particularly critical.

With no preferred offensive set he let his lead guard, Jack O'Malley, set the stage for whatever was to take place on the court.  A leader by the nature of his personality, O'Malley had come to college after a year at Saint Francis Prep, now a more physical and mature player.  He had missed Stokes by one year but immediately started fronting a lineup that included Al Cunningham, a guard out of New York, Bill Saller, the team's captain who had played alongside Stokes in previous years, sharpshooter Frank Puschauver and Jim McClellan, a 6'6" sophomore.  In time, Hughes came to trust O'Malley impeccably and once he and his running mates coalesced, Hughes had the coach on the floor that he needed.

The team that put Saint Francis once again on the national map after a two-year hiatus found its final missing elements just in time to join O'Malley for his junior year. Wilbur Trosch at center, Joe Aston at forward and Bobby Jones at guard gave Hughes strength at every position. Trosch and Aston, like O'Malley, were Pittsburgh area natives who had honed their skills growing up on the city's playground courts competing against the likes of All-Americans Chuck Cooper, the first African-American to be drafted by the NBA, Sihugo Green and Dick Ricketts, among others.  Any success the trio had was sure to give them bragging rights come summer on the courts of Mellon Park, Moore Field and St. Raphael's.  The three along with O'Malley and holdovers Rip Nixon, Jim McClellan, and Don Falenski composed a team that had an imposing physical presence for that era.

"When [Hughes] brought all these sophomores in like Trosch, Jones and Aston, that changed our whole program," O'Malley said.  "We were back to where the Stokes years were."

When team members climbed off their bus dressed in blue blazers and gray slacks, they gave off the appearance that here was a program that exuded class.  When they walked out on the court, however, there was a tangible sense of their physical power; the bodies alone were enough to intimidate other teams.  There was Trosch, 6'8," all broad shoulders.  He was just one of the team's top six players 6'3" or taller.  McClellan and Nixon were 6'6" and 6'5" respectively, Aston stood 6'5" and Falenski, the first reserve at 6'6."  O'Malley was the smallest at 6'2".  "We had four pivot guys and a guard," Trosch liked to say. Providence coach Johnny Woods would later come to call them the "Moving Towers of Loretto."  

McClellan's enforcer personality stared down anyone coming inside the key, leapers Aston, Nixon, and Jones dominated the glass, Trosch with his delicate touch approximating today's three-point range gave defenders fits, while Don "Flip" Falenski and his bulky presence handled a share of the rebounding chores and offered up a nice shot to boot. Meanwhile, O'Malley directed all the action out front or driving to the basket. 

Games were played at a more frenetic pace.  "Up and down the floor, go through, keep it moving, figure-eight kind of thing," O'Malley recalled.  Practicing at nights after Hughes would arrive following a day of dentistry greatly aided the team, O'Malley believed.  "At night we were ready to run," he said.  "For us, in the evening we were ready to go and we usually beat a team in the last half because we out-conditioned them. Skip didn't stop and say, 'here are the X's and O's.  You just ran until you dropped."

A basketball season is full of exclamation marks, and Hughes saw his team punctuate the 1957-58 season with more of these than most.  But in one game in particular did Saint Francis serve notice that this team was different than even the Stokes-dominated squads.  It came early in the season and it came against Duquesne. Saint Francis had beaten Duquesne just once in 17 previous games, so to say this was a  budding rivalry would be a stretch of enormous proportions. The Dukes with their All-American pedigree had managed to outclass tiny Saint Francis even with Stokes. 

The team had come close the year before losing, 90-81, at the Cambria County War Memorial. As Saint Francis embarked on its 25-game 1957-58 schedule the new sophomores set the tone as five players connected in double figures as the team dismissed St. Vincent's, 89-78, at the War Memorial.  Against Marshall, another "home" game but this one played at Altoona's Jaffa Mosque, Hughes' team had a tougher time before shaking off the Thundering Herd, the third-highest scoring team in the country the previous year, by a score of 74-67. O'Malley sparked the win setting up shots for Aston, his running mate at guard, who had 32 points. 

WILBUR TROSCH 1958-1960   Wilbur "Tree" Trosch was a big man for his era, as big as most of the great players of the 1950s.  Only Wilt Chamberlain and a few others could tower over him and very few had his range or touch of shot.  To successfully recruit a player of Trosch's stature ranked as a major coup for the school and by his sophomore year he was a starter and very much the face of Saint Francis basketball nationwide.   The game of basketball is a physical one, there is always contact, holding, pushing, elbowing and while Trosch could do all of that, he had something else that many big men did not have:  a jump shot that approached and often passed what we know today as three-point range.   "I had a guard's mentality," he was known to joke.  He was a Hughes favorite and later worked for the coach as an assistant, even taking the reins as head coach for a period of time when the dentist became ill.   But it was as a player that he will always be remembered. The centerpiece of the great teams of the late 1950s, he garnered major attention from followers of the college game from around the nation and his Saint Francis teams finished with a .740 winning percentage, the highest in college history.  He was later drafted in 1960 as the 13th pick  by the NBA's Syracuse Nats (the franchise later became the Philadelphia 76ers) but opted not to go.

Saint Francis looked to end a history of futility at the Pitt Field House against Duquesne and establish who would be the top team in the region. Hughes' team would have a distinct height advantage this time but the Dukes knew the history between the two schools as well as O'Malley and company and were not disposed to go quietly.  Leading by one point and holding the ball, Duquesne's Bob DePalma was fouled by Falenski with a little over a minute to play.   But DePalma missed the free throw and Saint Francis rebounded and went ahead, 63-62, on Trosch's jump shot from the foul line.  Jack Sauer's rebound and follow-up with 42 seconds left gave Duquesne the lead once again, although briefly. With 29 seconds left DePalma's fifth foul gave O'Malley a chance to tie and win and he did as he sunk both his foul shots. With the large contingent of students in the stands the postgame celebration was effusive. Students poured onto the floor, looking to carry someone, turning to Trosch as the public address announcer pleaded for order. "That started us on a roll," remembered Trosch, "and we went on to win five of the next six games against Duquesne." 

While O'Malley had provided the winning points the difference in this game, as it would be all year, was Trosch and his 6'8", 230-pound frame. He gave the team a lot of muscle while Aston provided the finesse. "Between the two of us we were one Maurice (Stokes)," laughed Trosch.  They had scored 33 points and taken down 16 rebounds. 

The game was to be the first of many nail-biters over the season as Saint Francis followed with a 91-86 win over St. Joseph's in a twin-bill at Philadelphia's Palestra,  pounded St. Bonaventure, 72-50, at the Mosque, ended Providence's eight-game win streak, 61-59, on O'Malley's driving basket with 25 seconds left, broke Xavier's string of 25 consecutive wins, 75-70, and did likewise to Villanova's incomprehensible home win streak of 83 games, 70-64, again in Philadelphia, behind a flurry of Trosch buckets in a 12-point break-out.

A loss to Steubenville and its crafty coach, Hank Kuzma, had brought Saint Francis back to earth but Hughes remained positive as to the possibilities of an NIT bid as the school's athletic director, I.V. Davis, had received some feelers from the tournament which was to open March 13.  On March 4, the offer came and Saint Francis was off to its third trip there. With an NIT bid already in their pockets, the Frankies strengthened their position as an NIT dark horse with a crushing, 91-77, victory over the Dukes in a game at the War Memorial marred by a free-for-all shortly before halftime that spilled out to include spectators.  Games with Duquesne were routinely played at the War Memorial in those days as Saint Francis' growing success began to draw larger crows.  Over 4,000 showed up for the second game with the Dukes and less than 500 reserved seats were available at game time. 

Although unseeded, Saint Francis was not without its supporters as to how far it could go in the NIT. Again, size decidedly favored the team in any contest, made more imposing when in pregame practices all 11 players lined up at mid-court and the first 10 dunked the basketball.

Called by one paper, "the best big man in the East," Trosch could strong-arm under the boards but had proven he was most effective offensively on a picture-perfect jump shot. McClellan and Falenski provided the muscle and Aston, Nixon and Jones the finesse. O'Malley was said to employ, "some of Guy Rodgers' ball-handling tricks as well as pull up outside and hit the jump shot." 

The first round blowout loss to Fordham in the opening game of the 1958 NIT ranks as the greatest disappointment of Jack O'Malley's career, he said: "We let a lot of people down and let ourselves down." The team lost 83-59, and didn't appear like the one that had won 20 out of 24 games; one which just a week or so earlier had ended proud home winning streaks of Xavier and Villanova.  "[Fordham] just cut us to pieces," O'Malley noted, "and it was a coach's clinic and we didn't have an answer. They were ready for us."  Trosch called it "our most tragic game."   

Just before the game, Hughes had commented on his team's penchant for out-rebounding the opponent after being outshot, and sometimes vice versa.  Against Fordham, Saint Francis was both out-rebounded and outshot. Onlookers including media and former opponents were shocked by the outcome that put a grim ending to what they and others had believed was Saint Francis' best team. 

The 1958 campaign had thus been a year of considerable glory tinged with ultimate frustration with the loss in the NIT.  But with only the losses of Nixon and McClellan, Saint Francis could count on a strong nucleus returning the following year.

The new season started where the last one had left off -- with no carry-over from the Fordham debacle.  Going into Charlotte, North Carolina's Carousel Classic undefeated -- the team had beaten Marshall on a last second shot by Bobby Jones, 74-72, before a packed house at the Mosque -- Saint Francis readied itself to take on the likes of the University of Pittsburgh, George Washington, Davidson and Fordham, who had embarrassed the Frankies the year before.

The seemingly mild-mannered Hughes, in appearance at least, had not forgotten the humiliation of the Fordham loss and had learned prior to the season that the New Yorkers would be in the Carousel and quickly, but quietly, had called tournament officials to see if his team could enter. 

To no surprise, Fordham was the tourney favorite and after dispatching Pitt and George Washington slept easy the night before its championship game with Saint Francis.  Trosch had helped his team break down Bucknell's zone offense in the opening round of the Carousel connecting on five of six jump shots, but in what was becoming common place now, it was O'Malley who decided the contest with the game tied, 59-59, when he stole the ball and scored on a fast-break to put the team ahead for good. The next day the team blew away Davidson scoring 42 points in the second half with Falenski leading the way with 18 and Trosch and Aston chipping in with 13 a piece. This set up the rematch with Fordham.

Jumping all over the Rams, Saint Francis raced out to a 20-point lead in the second half but had to hold on in the final minutes winning on a Trosch tap-in to give the Frankies a five-point cushion and, in effect, the win.  For his efforts, Trosch was named the tournament's MVP.  "They had the same team back [from the previous season] and it was just a case of us knowing how they played," noted Trosch.

The winning streak was short-lived, however, as Saint Francis promptly lost three of its next four, dropping games to Marshall, Youngstown, and St. Joseph's. An about face and soon was necessary if the they were to have any chance of a repeat trip back to the NIT.  Following wins over St. Bonaventure, Dayton and Xavier, the Frankies readied themselves for Steubenville, a team that always presented problems for them, in what would be O'Malley and Falenski's last home game of their careers. Both men had played varsity since their freshman years, but newly imposed college rules would no longer permit freshman to play varsity. 

Behind at the half, the team was rescued by Bobby Jones on some spot-on shooting and some equally impressive rebounding that gave some life to the team as he finished with 22 points and 16 rebounds.  Prior to the game's start, Hughes had told his players that they had no chance to receive an NIT bid although four berths remained open in the 12-team field.  The era of what was perhaps the greatest team in Saint Francis history was over.


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 (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