With the spring 2020 sports season canceled by the COVID-19 outbreak, we at Fordham decided to browse our archives and provide our fans with content about some of the exceptional teams and student-athletes that have graced Rose Hill over the years.
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Bronx, NY – It has been 49 years since the best season in Fordham men’s basketball history came to an end with a victory over sixth place in South Carolina’s ranking at the 1971 NCAA Eastern Regionals in Raleigh, North Carolina.
On March 20, 1971, Fordham ended a 26-3 season with a 100-90 victory over the Gamecocks at the Reynolds Coliseum on the NC State campus. With the win, Rams climbed to seventh in the last Associated Press poll of the year.
The Rams was led by senior tri-captains Charlie Yelverton, Jack Burik and Bill Mainor, who finished their Rose Hill with a 20-point game. Yelverton led with 25 rebounds and added 10 rebounds, while Burik and Mainor each scored 23, a career record for Burik. The second year Ken Charles also double-doubled for Fordham, scoring 22 points and catching ten rebounds.
Fordham used a second period of accurate shots (the Rams hit 57.9% of shots in the first half) to erase the six-point deficit in the interval.
The 1970-1971 season was for Fordham’s history books, when Richard “Digger” Phelps came to Rose Hill and took the Rams to new heights.
“I did a job interview at Seton Hall and I couldn’t,” said Phelps at the Fordham basketball dinner in 2010. “So, I was in Final Four and started hearing rumors that Holy Cross coach Jack Donahue, who trained Lew Alcindor at Power Memorial and graduated from Fordham, would accept Fordham’s position, Georgetown’s coach Jack Magee would be transferred to Holy Cross and I would get Georgetown’s job. “
But when he returned from Final Four, his wife gave him a message. John Druze, a member of Fordham’s famous Seven Granite Blocks, called and wanted to speak to Phelps about Fordham’s position.
The next thing Phelps learned was that he was offered the job and was told that there was an assistant coach at Holy Cross Frank McLaughlin, who wanted to return to his alma mater to serve as his assistant.
Checking his list, the first thing Phelps did was to appoint his three veterans, Jack Burik, Bill Mainor and Charlie Yelverton as captains. He realized that he inherited a second year of 6’8 “who could play as a pivot, Paul Griswald. Unfortunately Griswald was defeated by an injury at the end of the season in the first week of training, leaving Rams without a big man in the pivot. Phelps adjusted , using three players with about 6’5 “in the center: Tom Sullivan, Bart Woytowicz and George Zambetti. He also decided to play a squad of three guards, a unique concept at the time.
The Rams used the minor squad to press early and often, a trademark of the 1970-71 team.
Some games in the season, the Rams were playing Holy Cross and assistant coach Frank McLaughlin proposed an idea to Phelps, to start four guards. So that night, the Rams put four guards and Yelverton on the court and ran over the Crusaders 102-78, Fordham’s third 100-point game of the year.
The Rams were now shooting at all cylinders, winning 20 of the first 21 games, including a victory over the University of Massachusetts, led by a guard who would go to the NBA Hall of Fame, Julius Erving.
Fordham closed the regular season with a record of 24-2 and received the school’s second offer for the NCAA Championship.
The Rams opened the tournament at St. John’s Alumni Hall, where they easily defeated Furman, champion of the Southern Conference, by 105-74, Fordham’s first NCAA victory. Yelverton (30 points, 19 rebounds), Charles (18 points, ten rebounds) and Woytowicz (18 points, 13 rebounds), each registered double doubles.
Fordham moved to NC State and faced Villanova in the first game. Yelverton, who scored 14 of Fordham’s first 24 points, had problems in the first half when the Wildcats managed to increase the lead from 26 to 24 to eleven points in the interval. The Rams came close to five in the second half, 61-56, in a Woytowicz basket, but a four-minute goalless stretch knocked Fordham down when the Rams fell, 85-75.