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