Garden double-headers go 'big-time', by Ari Sclar

After a successful opening season, college basketball continued to grow at the Garden.  The complaints from some coaches during the first season did not diminish the Garden’s appeal and many teams returned during the second season of double-headers.  In December 1935, Kentucky again lost to NYU, 41-28, although “Kentucky had no excuse tonight. The officiating…was not questioned.”[1]  The Garden also attracted Pacific Coast schools during the 1936 season.  After the University of California lost to NYU 41-26 in the opener, the team’s coach praised the referees and said: “I prefer the way the game is played in the East.  Nobody got hurt and the action was faster.”[2]  The coach’s comments demonstrated the important role the Garden double-headers played in college basketball.  Without discussing any problems associated with officiating or rule interpretation, he concentrated on the ‘way’ basketball was played in New York.

Standardized officiating allowed commentators directly to discuss the decades-old question of regional supremacy.  As they had since the early 1930s, the New York press portrayed the city’s basketball as superior to the rest of the country.  Others, however, viewed the sport from a difference perspective.  In 1935, Literary Digest had commented that college basketball had been “long dominated by the Midwest.”[3]  The importance of conferences in the Midwest and West Coast likely contributed to this impression, but historical success meant little during inter-regional games.  Commentators nonetheless distinguished the various forms of basketball through spatial considerations that often contained implicit racial differences.

Differentiated styles conformed to generalized regional differences within the United States.  In reality, styles varied within regions, cities, and even schools as some coaches changed strategies based on personnel.[4]  Most commentators ignored such intricacies, however, and viewed basketball through the lens of regionalism.  Time magazine’s mid-season report in February 1934 represented the basic summary: “bred on small gymnasium courts, Eastern teams play a cunning, fast game; usually with spontaneous maneuvers.  The larger Western courts develop long passers, elaborate strategies.”[5]  Time ignored a ‘Southern’ style, but after the first NYU-Kentucky game in January 1935, the New York Times had explained that Kentucky “demonstrated something quite new to metropolitan court circles.”  They used “a slow, deliberate style of offense” that “was so sharp a contrast that the spectators, used to the swift-moving panorama of metropolitan basketball, were inclined to be impatient with the other type.”[6]

The Garden double-headers both served as a laboratory to determine regional supremacy and slowly decreased stylistic and regional differences.  Teams observed, studied, and embraced the strategies, styles, and methods of their opponents even as the debate over dominance stopped being theoretical.  The Garden’s commercial and popular success led promoters in Buffalo, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other cities to imitate the double-headers.  This structure encouraged annual tours by western schools during winter breaks.  One particular visit revolutionized the sport.[7]

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[1] “New York U. Crushes Kentucky Cats 41-28,” Kentuckian, January 9, 1936.

[2] “Maidman is Best to Bears’ Coach,” New York Evening Post, December 19, 1935.

[3] “Eastern Candidates for Basketball’s Crown,” Literary Digest, February 9, 1935. 

[4] St. John’s illustrated the power of a college program as the team adapted to new personnel and played a different style than they had as the ‘Wonder Five.’  With “fast and shifty,” but “undersized” players, the St. John’s coach transformed the team into one that used a “fast-breaking offense” of “short passes and hard cutting.”  See “St. John’s Quintet Due to Poor Year,” New York Evening Post, November 24, 1933.

[5] “Basketball: Midseason,” Time, February 19, 1934.

[6] “NYU Defeats Kentucky Five, 23-22,” New York Times, January 6, 1935.

[7] Isaacs, All the Moves, 79-80.