A look back at the 1955 and '56 University of San Francisco NCAA
championship basketball teams.In an era in which integration was
still frowned upon, if not unheard of, in many Southern states,
legendary African-American center Bill Russell emerged as the
future of basketball. With his long arms, astonishing leaping
ability and uncanny timing, Russell turned the act of shot-blocking
into an art form. Under the guidance of cerebral coach Phil
Woolpert, and alongside fellow future NBA hall-of-famer K.C. Jones,
Russell led the Dons - who, with multiple black players, shocked
and scandalized the basketball community - to back-to-back
championships and redefined what it meant to play defense. Johnson
(The Wow Boys: A Coach, a Team, and a Turning Point in College
Football, 2006, etc.) combs through archival interviews as well as
articles and books written by Russell and Jones to piece together
the story of a team that revolutionized the game and endured an era
of racial turmoil, supplementing the material with his own
interviews. Without new input from Russell, Jones or the deceased
Woolpert, however, the narrative feels like a discovery from a time
capsule, with much of its perspective originating in an earlier
era. There is little commentary from modern pundits, making it
difficult to adequately contextualize and frame the legacy and
influence of the team beyond the time period in which it played.
Distance from segregation and a lack of game film contribute to
USF's accomplishments being overlooked, which makes Johnson's
chronicle a much-needed piece of basketball literature. But
incorporating interviews with some of today's top coaches, analysts
and players - who could address modern facets of the game and its
culture developed or influenced by USF - would have injected
welcome insight.A worthy topic for a retrospective - if only the
narrative were as fresh and innovative as its subject. (Kirkus
Reviews)
In the mid-1950s three unrecruited black basketball players,
coached by a white former prison guard who had never before coached
a college team, led a small Jesuit university in San Francisco to
two national titles. "The Dandy Dons" describes for the first time
how the unprecedented accomplishment of the Dons, led by coach Phil
Woolpert and future hall-of-famers Bill Russell and K. C. Jones,
paved the way for black talent in major college basketball and
transformed the sport.
James W. Johnson traces the backgrounds of the coach and players,
chronicles the heart-stopping games on the road to the
championships, and details the Dons' novel techniques: a more
vertical game, more central defense, and intimidation as part of
game strategy. He also gives a textured picture of life on an
integrated basketball team amid a culture of racism and Jim Crow in
mid-twentieth-century America.
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