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Jack Ramsay's legacy at St. Joe's will never die

AS ONE of the legendary seasons in Big 5 history was just about to hit its peak 50 years ago, the players had no way of knowing this was the final college run for Jack Ramsay, the coach who transformed little St. Joseph's College from an afterthought when the Big 5 began in the 1955-56 season to early City Series domination to national power, ranked No. 1 by Sports Illustrated before that 1965-66 season began.

AS ONE of the legendary seasons in Big 5 history was just about to hit its peak 50 years ago, the players had no way of knowing this was the final college run for Jack Ramsay, the coach who transformed little St. Joseph's College from an afterthought when the Big 5 began in the 1955-56 season to early City Series domination to national power, ranked No. 1 by Sports Illustrated before that 1965-66 season began.

In the final three games before Ramsay became the head coach in 1955, the Hawks lost to Delaware, Muhlenberg and Lafayette (83-65). As the first Big 5 season began that winter, La Salle was coming off a national championship and a loss in the national championship game, Temple had Rodgers and Lear, Villanova was a national program and Penn had won 98 games the previous five seasons. St. Joe's had Jack Ramsay.

The Hawks went 23-6 and swept the City Series, 4-0. Overnight, the landscape had changed. Jack Ramsay changed it.

"He had a particularly adept way of communicating,'' said Clifford Anderson, the 6-4 1/2 center who still holds the Hawks career rebounds record. "You could tell he had a lot of empathy for your personal situation and he would speak directly to you in such a way that you know he really cared about you. He had so much insight and he was a super-intelligent individual.''

In Ramsay's 11 seasons, St. Joe's went 234-72, 34-10 in the Big 5 (4-0 five times) and played in a more cozy NCAA Tournament seven of his last eight seasons. The success was immediate, but the masterpiece came at the end when the Hawks went 50-8 in the 1964-65 and '65-66 seasons, with a starting lineup of Anderson, Matt Guokas, Billy Oakes, Tom Duff and Marty Ford, each of whom averaged double figures in both seasons.

The '64-65 team lost only once in the regular season, 65-61, at Providence with Jimmy Walker, Dexter Westbrook and Mike Riordan. Oakes remembers that game as if it were yesterday, but it wasn't really what happened in the game that made such an impression.

"I was going in for a layup," Oakes said. "The stands were very close. Jimmy Walker knocked me into the stands. I got a concussion. I actually played for two or three minutes afterward and didn't even know it. The next thing I know, I was in the hospital."

The team flew home the next day. Oakes was instructed not to fly. His seatmate on the train ride home was Jack Ramsay.

"That's the type of person he was,'' Oakes said. "He cared a lot about us, not just as players, but as individuals. He was very much like a father figure to all of us.''

The Friars were so excited when they beat the Hawks in overtime in that year's Sweet 16 they cut down the nets. They lost the next night to Bill Bradley and Princeton by 40.

They were all back for St. Joe's the next season, the season everybody around the program thought they could win the national championship. They had a few stumbles early, but by the time they got to February, they were about to get scorching hot. During a nine-game winning streak to end the regular season, St. Joe's scored more than 100 points six times, beating Boston College, 107-89, Temple 105-74, Seton Hall 110-64, Georgetown 111-73, Lafayette 108-80 and Xavier 101-83. The Hawks buried No. 8 Providence, 65-48, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

"We had a fastbreak team, very mobile,'' Anderson said. "We had a particular approach to the game with a lot of passing. A lot of times on a fastbreak, the ball never touched the floor.''

That speed, the ball movement and the 3-1-1 zone press regularly broke team's spirits.

When St. Joe's first became a power, the NCAA East Regionals were always in Charlotte, N.C., where many Hawk historians will tell you they did not regularly get a friendly whistle when they were playing West Virginia, Duke or Wake Forest. The regionals came to Maryland's Cole Field House in 1962, 1963 and 1965, a more neutral environment.

Cole, however, got its first Final Four in 1966, so the East Regionals went back to North Carolina, played at North Carolina State's Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh. St. Joe's got No. 2 Duke in the Sweet 16, with Jack Marin and Bob Verga, a really good team playing only a few miles from its campus.

"They were up 17, we went into a press and we almost caught them,'' Oakes remembered.

The Hawks shot only 32 percent. They lost that night, 76-74, and crushed Davidson the next night in the third-place game, 92-76, Ramsay's final game at St. Joe's, March 12, 1966.

Ramsay's St. Joe's teams were 0-3 against Duke. Nobody has done any better since then, the Hawks 0-10 all time against the Blue Devils.

Ramsay's final St. Joe's team played only one game at the Fieldhouse and 15 at the Palestra, where they regularly attracted crowds of 9,000 plus and where they beat Michigan State, Minnesota and Wake Forest by a combined 67 points.

If the 6-6 point guard Guokas and his center Anderson did not invent the lob pass, they certainly perfected it.

"We made good use of it," Anderson said. "(Guokas) was a great passer and I was pretty much of a leaper. We tried to keep the ball above the basket as much as possible."

The game everyone remembers from that season was on Jan. 16, a rare Sunday afternoon Big 5 game against Villanova, down a bit that season after going 47-9 the previous two seasons.

"We were really playing poorly," Oakes said. "I especially played poorly that game. It was an afternoon we couldn't do anything right."

Oakes fouled out late. Steve Donches took his place to play defense. He played, he thinks, the last 90 seconds and stole the ball to give the Hawks the final possession in a tie game.

"The play was supposed to go to Guokas at the foul line for him to look inside or shoot," Donches said. "We worked the clock down. Somehow, the ball did not get to Matty. The ball bounced out to me. I had just looked at the clock and my memory it was four (seconds). I think I took one dribble, turned and fired."

It was around a 30-footer, launched right in front of Ramsay on the St. Joe's bench.

"At the time, I said I thought it was short, but what I really meant was I thought it was low because it was way out of my range," Donches said. "It was a line drive."

It went right through.

"I turned around and all I could hear was coach Ramsay yelling, 'Wow, wow' and jumping up," Donches said. "I turned to him and said to him, 'We did it.' It was fantastic."

It was St. Joe's 71, Villanova 69.

That '65-66 team averaged a school-record 91.1 points per game. They set school records in free throws made (607) and field goals made (1,053).

"It was such a great team to watch even from the bench," Donches said. "(Ramsay) told us before the season that there isn't a team on the schedule we can't beat. He exuded a confidence that transferred to the players."

Anderson was an incredibly quick leaper whose second jump was higher than everybody else's first. And Guokas was a great passer.

"When Matty had the ball, anything could happen," Donches said. "One time, I saw him make a pass bowling the ball down the floor."

They were absolutely good enough to have a won the national championship that eventually went to Texas Western over Kentucky in a game that inspired a book and a movie because of the social implications of the first all-black starting five champions beating all-white Kentucky.

"Ramsay was really a basketball genius, just seemed to make the right call all the time," Donches said. "The thing I always loved about St. Joe's was the hustle."

Halftimes, Donches said, were an instant-replay review of everything that had happened.

"I swear he could play back every play if he had to," Donches said. "He always had a plan and got right to it, in those days on a chalkboard."

Oakes remembers Ramsay's "intensity and his ability to put that intensity into you." Ramsay, he said, would emphasize individual opponent's strengths not weaknesses. He wanted his players to understand exactly what it was they were about to encounter. When the games began, Ramsay's teams were always prepared.

"It was an honor to play for Ramsay," Oakes said.

Ramsay developed a problem in his right eye, likely caused by the stress of coaching, so he left St. Joe's after that season to become general manager of the 76ers, a team that would win the NBA championship in his first season. But he was a coach, first and foremost. His methods were going to win at any level and he proved it at the highest level when he got back into coaching in the NBA and won 864 games in 21 seasons, including the 1977 NBA championship with the Portland Trail Blazers, his professional masterpiece.

Ramsay was 89 when he died April 28, 2014, but he lives on at Saint Joseph's University in the Ramsay Center, the basketball facility named in his honor that is attached to old Alumni Memorial Fieldhouse, now Hagan Arena. Nearly 50 years after his final game for St. Joe's, Jack Ramsay's imprint is every bit as strong as it was when he left. Ramsay was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1992. Between St. Joe's and the NBA, Ramsay's teams won 1,098 basketball games, but it was never really about that. It was about how they played and who they were.

jerardd@phillynews.com

On Twitter: @DickJerardi