Past Is Prologue? How Aztecs Claimed National Hoops Crown—in 1941

With the clock ticking down the final 3 1/2 minutes of the deadlocked national championship game, the Aztecs fed the basketball to their shortest starter, who slipped under the defense of the favored, and larger, opponents to score the tiebreaking basket.

After the stingy, ball-hawking Aztec defense forced a stop, the opponent pressured State’s ball-handling All-American forward.  The Aztec star player deftly dished the ball to the quick but undersized hoopster who laid it up and in again. 

The scenario repeated itself a third time in the last minute—providing a six-point lead that the scarlet-and-white-clad Aztecs held onto for the national title.

As Aztec fans await today’s 4:15 p.m. Sweet 16 game against Connecticut, they can take heart from an earlier version of coach Steve Fisher—and the true story of the first San Diego State basketball dynasty.

In 1941, San Diego State College won the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics basketball crown.

The story of coach Morris H. Gross’  pre-World War II basketball program is unknown to many. Luckily David Howard Fontius chronicled much of the SDSC  story in his 1976 master’s thesis A History of Basketball at San Diego State University 1921-1971.  Fontius interviewed many of the key players and coaches from the early years of Aztec basketball.

One of these players, Harry Hodgetts,* now 93 years young, is still with us and clearly remembers coach Gross and the three years that he took part in helping San Diego State’s varsity shock the collegiate basketball world.

SDSC was still a small school focused on teacher training in the pre-war era.  With a student population of barely over 2,000, State was the only four-year institution in the wartime-booming San Diego of 1941.

The college had moved out to its new “Montezuma Mesa” campus site in 1931, overlooking undeveloped Alvarado Canyon and the Waring Ranch to the north (later to become the route of Interstate 8 and the communities of Allied Gardens, Del Cerro and San Carlos). 

The small state teachers college, now in these undeveloped wilds north of El Cajon Boulevard (then U.S. 80) and just west of the La Mesa city limits was only beginning to establish its role in building regional pride through athletics.

The most successful of these Depression-Era programs was coach Gross’ hoopsters.  He had been a two-year Aztec letterman under initial State basketball coach—and “men’s” gymnasium namesake—C. E. Peterson during the pioneering 1922-23 and 1923-24 seasons against junior college opposition. 

It was then that Gross learned of pioneering University of Kansas basketball coach “Phog” Allen’s revolutionary fast-break offenses and shifting zone defenses while starring for the Aztecs’ first league championship squads.

Gross became San Diego State’s basketball coach in the 1929/30 season.  

Hodgetts remembered coach “Morrie” as bringing legitimacy to Aztec athletics.  Harry recalled Gross as “a handsome man whose good looks and [self-confident] demeanor would often get him stopped on the street by people who thought he was a famous movie star or celebrity.”

Struggling to build a successful program while waiting for the new campus and gymnasium to be completed, Gross coached his third team, the 1931/32 squad, to their first Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) title.  Conference competition the small Whittier, Occidental, Pomona, LaVerne and Redlands colleges.

Gross’ Aztecs recaptured the crown in 1933/34.  This team featured captain and first team All-Conference center—and future radio and television celebrity—Art Linkletter.

Coach Gross’ on-court success was a result of his local recruiting prowess. 

La Mesans and East County fans took special notice when Gross tapped Coach Jack Mashin’s 1932-33 Grossmont High School championship team for five key players. 

The resulting 1933-34 SDSC Freshmen squad (freshmen were ineligible for varsity sports back then), featuring the former Foothiller stars Byron Lindsley and Linden Burns, finished 19-1 champs that year.  In Lindsley and Burns’ senior year of 1936-37 these local boys led the Aztecs to the conference varsity title again with a record of 18-9.

Gross’ other advantage was his use of the latest strategy.  Taking advantage of the 1935 rule change that eliminated a jump ball after each basket, Gross went after smaller but faster players who could institute his quick-scoring, ball-handling fast-break offense and high-pressure “switching” man-to-man defenses.

Another important Gross improvement was scheduling of tougher competition.

He would slate pre-season and nonleague games with big-time Pacific Coast Conference schools, local and regional club and military teams as well as barnstorming all-star teams such as the Harlem Globetrotters and Brooklyn Colored Clowns.  Gross thought this experience was essential to creating a competitive and tough squad. 

As such, at the beginning of the 1938-39 season Gross, who also filled the job of director of athletics from 1935 to 1941, announced that the Aztecs would be leaving the SCIAC the following year to join the new California Collegiate Athletic Association.  The CCAA also would include San Jose, Fresno and Santa Barbara State for its inaugural 1939-40 season.

The need for tougher competition timed right into Coach Gross’ loading up not only the schedule, but also his most talented teams. 

Led by sophomores Milton “Milky” Phelps, Dick Mitchell and Hodgetts, all from nearby Hoover High, San Diego High star Bill Patterson and Los Angeles junior college transfers Andy Echle and Earl Allison, the Aztecs won the championship during that last 1938-39 SCIAC season.  Phelps and San Diego junior Don DeLauer, the No. 1  and No. 2 scorers in the league, were named All-Conference for the 25-7 squad.

Highlights of this season included close losses to national power USC, an early season sweep of Pacific Coast Conference members UCLA and a victory in the preseason California “State College” tournament—a precursor event to the following year’s new state colleges conference.  

Hodgetts remembered that USC’s coach told Gross that he was “glad to escape the road trip to San Diego with two close wins”—and reportedly “would never return to face the scrappy Aztecs.”

As SCIAC champions, the Aztecs were invited to basketball pioneer John Naismith’s National Association of Intercollegiate Association “small college” postseason tournament in Kansas City. 

With slim Depression-era budgets, the college’s administration voted to allow the basketball team to represent the school.  Campus organizations, however, were  recruited to help raise funds for train tickets and lodging expenses.

The State College Aztec newspaper reported that the Associated Students and Letterman’s Club would lead the fundraising efforts.  Others also chipped in, as local soda fountain operators Clarence and Andy Radequez developed a new ice cream sundae called the “Kansas City Special,” whose proceeds would be donated along with the college’s campus store’s offer of candy sale profits.

With the team $450 short of its goal, the San Diego City Council voted to supply the remaining funds to send the community’s “basketball envoys” off to their destined success. 

The San Diego Union and State College Aztec documented hundreds of cheering fans seeing off the Aztecs from the Santa Fe Depot for their three-day, two-night excursion to Kansas City.

Coach Gross chose only his top eight players for the trip.  As one of four sophomores to make the trip, Hodgett recalled that the team’s energetic and entertaining style—along with its photogenic coach—made “the team from the little school of the west” the darlings of the Kansas City press.

The “darlings” ran off victories over South Dakota’s Aberdeen State 49-35, East Texas State 41-35 and Manchester College of Indiana 49-41 to open the tournament.  Injuries to leaders Milky Phelps and Don DeLauer in the Manchester game left the team short-handed. 

Gross quickly called back to San Diego to garner funds to cover a $450 plane fare to send out sophomore reserve Bill Patterson to join the team for the semifinals.

Patterson made the overnight flight, earning him the nickname “Sky Hawk.”  With speedy Bill joining the squad, the Aztecs clobbered Peru Nebraska’s Teachers College 49-29 and headed into the championship game against Southwestern College of Kansas.

The injury riddled Aztecs fell behind early to the local squad. 

Yet the team fought back from a 10-point deficit in the final period to pull ahead by a point in the final minute. 

The Aztecs’ national championship dreams would have to wait when Southwestern star Eddie Henshaw sank a last-second basket to seal the victory for the Kansans.

Yet by coming so close—and with only one senior letterman—expectations for San Diego State’s basketball future were high for the following seasons.

Next in Part 2:  High Expectations, A Spook-y Mascot, Another Near-Miss and a Third-time Championship Charm.

*Editor's note: An earlier version of this story referred incorrectly to Harry Hodgett.