The Harlem Globetrotters are known mainly as a traveling basketball circus, beating up on the patsy Washington Generals throughout two halves of choreographed, through-the-legs, behind-the-back clowning. But while their unrivaled showmanship was present in the '50s, the Globetrotters of that era were also viewed as a collection of formidably talented basketball players. Led by their center, Goose Tatum, they regularly clobbered NBA teams in exhibition games, and a Globetrotter loss was all but unheard of.
Kevin P. Casey
Kevin P. Casey
Garcia fell into SU's lap after UW refused to admit him.
Related Content
More About
In 1952, Globetrotter impresario Abe Saperstein and Seattle P-I sportswriter Royal Brougham sought to stage an exhibition game between the Globetrotters and the University of Washington at Hec Edmundson Pavilion. But UW declined to participate, leaving Brougham to scramble for another local collegiate opponent. Seattle University was the logical second choice, and they accepted immediately.
Eddie O'Brien comprised one-half of Seattle U's starting backcourt in the early 1950s. The other guard was his twin brother, Johnny. Together they were known as the "Flyin' O'Briens," and are largely responsible for putting Seattle U basketball on the map.
According to the O'Briens, who still live in the area, the team was not informed they would be facing the Globetrotters until the Friday before their Monday game. Johnny O'Brien recalls that in their haste to prepare, the team, then known as the Chieftains, held a previously verboten Sunday shootaround—SU being a Catholic institution and all.
Nonetheless, the team had a solid, if simple, two-prong game plan. One, they would belly up on the Globetrotters' outside shooters and take their chances defending Tatum one-on-one with center Wayne Sanford. Two, they figured that since the Globetrotters played exclusively man-to-man defense, they could feed leading scorer Johnny O'Brien until his stat line was fat and happy.
The game was a big deal. Louis Armstrong provided the halftime entertainment. There was a standing-room-only crowd inside the gymnasium, and thousands more listened to a broadcast of the proceedings outside Hec Ed. As the Chieftains prepared to file into the arena, "Saperstein walked by and said, 'This is all you got?'" recalls Johnny O'Brien. "I kind of think that's where we won the ballgame."
Seattle U opened with an 8-0 run and held on for an 84-81 victory. Johnny O'Brien scored 43 of those points, and the crowd stormed the court after the final buzzer sounded. "It took us a half-hour" to get back to the locker room afterward, Johnny recalls. That win, followed by a 102-101 victory over New York University the subsequent year at Madison Square Garden, established Seattle University as the West Coast's leading basketball program.
"West Coast teams never got covered by East Coast media before then," says Johnny O'Brien, who, with his brother, was named to the nation's All-America team in 1953. "Those games put SU on the radar."
Chieftain basketball would only blossom from there. Seattle U reached down to the District of Columbia's Spingarn High School and established a pipeline of African American talent that led Seattle U, with its team integrated well before others, to become known as "the United Nations of college basketball."
The most prominent Spingarn grad to attend SU was Elgin Baylor. Possessing athletic grace and fluidity previously foreign to the hardwood, the 6'5" forward revolutionized the sport. He was Dr. J before Dr. J was Dr. J, Jordan before Jordan. And he first captured the nation's imagination during his two years at Seattle U, in which he averaged 31 points and nearly 20 rebounds per game and led the Chieftains to the 1958 NCAA tournament final, where they fell to Adolph Rupp's mighty Kentucky Wildcats.
The inner-city Jesuit school went on to send 10 players to the NBA between 1959 and 1981, beginning with Baylor, who enjoyed a 14-year Hall of Fame career with the Minneapolis and Los Angeles Lakers. (The 5'9" O'Brien twins, equally skilled on the baseball diamond, each went on to play for the Pittsburgh Pirates.)
But in 1980, Seattle U basketball fell back off the radar, locally and nationally, as school administrators abruptly dropped Division I sports, citing anemic fund-raising and an institutional philosophy that perceived elite academics and sports to be incompatible. The team spent most of the next two decades playing NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) ball, a classification that ranks three rungs below Division I. But with the arrival of Father Stephen Sundborg in 1997, momentum began to build for a return to college basketball's uppermost ranks. Sundborg viewed Division I athletics as being part and parcel of building a top-flight university, and the team, having already stepped up to Division III (which, like the NAIA, prohibits athletic scholarships) in 1996, made the move to Division II, which offers scholarships, in 1998—a far less complicated endeavor than making the leap to Division I. In 2000 they shed their politically incorrect name and became known as the Redhawks.
This season, Seattle U is playing its first all–Division I schedule in nearly 30 years. Thanks to the serendipitous presence of Chuck Garcia, a wiry, 6'10" forward with unusually good perimeter skills for a man his size; an NBA-caliber home court, KeyArena; and a high-profile first-year coach, former UW assistant Cameron Dollar (assisted by his father, Donald, an Atlanta coaching legend), the Redhawks' return has been more splash than ripple. But as plush as KeyArena is, the fact that it's not within walking distance of Seattle U's campus, and its somewhat ambivalent student body, presents a serious hurdle. And at season's end, Garcia will weigh the option of turning pro, where he is projected as a first-round draft choice. If he chooses to leave, it could take the air out of the early exuberance surrounding the program's rebirth.
