The Picture

About five years ago I was doing some research in the Special Collections Department of Alexander Library at Rutgers in anticipation of the upcoming 50th anniversary of the 1967 men's basketball NIT team.  Included in the archival material was a file of images and the first photo was the below picture of what was clearly a very early Rutgers basketball team.  While the names of the five players and the young man in street clothes were on the back of the picture, the most valuable information was painted on the basketball - "Rutgers 31 - Princeton 30 - February 11, 1920."  Clearly there was a story here and a visit to the microfilm department produced a Daily Home News article which described a dramatic Rutgers victory at Ballantine Gym, then Rutgers home court.  My interest might have ended there, but a few days later, I was telling longtime friend, Bill Bess about the game and he asked, rhetorically, or so he thought, who Rutgers played in those days.

Left to right, second row, Leland Taliaferro, E. L. Casey, Art Hall, first row, Edward Benzoni, Calvin Meury, Walter French
Rutgers University Archives

A look at the "All Time Scoreboard" in the Rutgers media guide reflected many familiar opponents - Syracuse, West Virginia and Pittsburgh to name a few.  Also included were schools like Swarthmore, Stevens Institute, NYU and CCNY, the latter two were among the college basketball powerhouses of the day.  None of this was surprising until I got to the end of the schedule when suddenly Rutgers had played some very different opponents - major state universities like Georgia and Utah.  Even more intriguing was a notation next to these and two other games indicating that they had been played on a neutral court. The notation led me to the end of the media guide where I read the words "National AAU Tournament, Atlanta, Georgia."  But that couldn't be, the 1967 squad was the first Rutgers team to play in the post-season or so I had believed for almost 50 years.

Daily Home News - February 12, 1920

Further research confirmed that not only had Rutgers played in the 1920 National AAU tournament (there was no NCAA tournament at the time), they finished second, winning three straight games before losing in the championship game.  When I looked into the 1920 season in more detail, I realized that this remarkable story had largely been forgotten.  As a result, I decided to nominate the 1919-20 team for the Rutgers Athletic Hall of Fame and was delighted when they were inducted in October of 2019, in time for the 100th anniversary of a season that should never be forgotten.  I'm especially grateful to the Hall of Fame committee since it isn't easy to evaluate players and teams that no one living today saw play.  Some schools avoid the issue like another New Jersey university that won't consider Hall of Fame nominations unless the school's Sports Information Department can confirm the relevant statistics.  That kind of policy would doom the first 70 years of Rutgers athletics to oblivion since a 1930 fire not only destroyed Ballantine Gym, but took with it almost all of the records dating back to the first football game in 1869.

Daily Home News - February 18, 1920

Somehow the picture I found by accident survived and it's a good thing it did.  Without it, the story of the 1920 team would have remained lost unless, as in my case, someone stumbled upon it.  One of the many differences between Rutgers basketball then and now is that no games were played until January so these next three months mark the centennial of a season when, just as in 1967 and 1976, a Rutgers basketball team brought national recognition to the school.  In order to both preserve and tell that story in more detail, the 2020 version of this blog will feature weekly posts on the team and its achievements beginning with some background about college basketball and Rutgers, both of which were very different 100 years ago.