Nat Holman was an American professional basketball player and college coach. He is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and is the only coach to lead his team to NCAA and National Invitation Tournament (NIT) championships in the same season.
The 1950 NCAA basketball tournament involved 8 schools playing in single-elimination play to determine the national champion of men's NCAA college basketball. It began on March 23, 1950, and ended with the championship game on March 28 in New York City. A total of 10 games were played, including a third place game in each region and a national third place game.
Eugene "Squeaky" Melchiorre was an American basketball player. A point guard, he was drafted by the Baltimore Bullets and was the first overall pick in the 1951 NBA draft. Melchiorre never played an NBA game due to his lifetime ban from the league for point shaving when he was a college player.
The CCNY point-shaving scandal of 1951 was a college basketball point-shaving gambling scandal which revealed widespread bribery and match fixing going on with major colleges and universities both in and around New York City, particularly at the Madison Square Garden. While the public scandal officially involved at least seven American colleges and universities, the scandal has been most closely associated with the 1949–50 CCNY Beavers, which won both the 1950 NCAA basketball tournament and 1950 National Invitation Tournament and had a number of players implicated in point shaving and match fixing.
The West Virginia Mountaineers men's basketball team represents West Virginia University in NCAA Division I college basketball competition. They are a member of the Big 12 Conference. WVU has won 13 conference tournament championships, and has 31 appearances in the NCAA tournament, including two Final Fours, most recently in 2010. The Mountaineers have also appeared in 16 National Invitation Tournaments (NIT), and have won the tournament twice, in 1942 and 2007. The 1942 NIT Championship is claimed by West Virginia as a National Championship.
The St. John's Red Storm men's basketball team represents St. John's University located in Queens, New York. The team participates in the Big East Conference, where it is a founding member of the league. As of the end of the 2022–23 season, St. John's ranked ninth with 1,922 total wins among NCAA Division I teams. St. John's has appeared in 30 NCAA tournaments, most recently appearing in 2019. The Red Storm's best finish in the NCAA tournament came in 1952 when they were NCAA runner-ups and made the Final Four. St. John's also made a Final Four appearance in 1985. St. John's is coached by Rick Pitino.
The Bradley Braves men's basketball team represents Bradley University, located in Peoria, Illinois, in NCAA Division I basketball competition. They compete as a member of the Missouri Valley Conference. The Braves are currently coached by Brian Wardle and play their home games at Carver Arena.
Irwin Dambrot was an American basketball player, best known for his college career at the City College of New York.
The 1949–50 CCNY Beavers men's basketball team represented the City College of New York. The head coach was Nat Holman, who was one of the game's greatest innovators and playmakers. Unlike today, when colleges recruit players from all over the country, the 1949–50 CCNY team was composed of "kids from the sidewalks of New York City," who had been recruited by Holman's assistant coach Harold "Bobby" Sand from Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL) schools such as Taft, Clinton, Boys, Erasmus, and Franklin High Schools.
Sherman White was an American basketball player at Long Island University (LIU) who is best remembered for being indicted in a point shaving scandal that resulted in him being stripped of numerous honors and awards, having to serve an 8-month jail sentence, and being prohibited from ever playing in the National Basketball Association (NBA). As a college senior in 1950–51, White was the nation's leading scorer at 27.7 points per game and was only 77 total points shy of becoming the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) all-time single season leading scorer when he was caught, thus forcing him to prematurely quit and never getting to finish his college basketball career.
LIU Brooklyn is a private university in Brooklyn, New York. It is the original unit and first of two main campuses of the private Long Island University system.
Alan Seiden was an American collegiate and professional basketball player. He led St. John's University to the 1959 National Invitation Tournament title and later played professionally with the Pittsburgh Rens of the American Basketball League. Seiden was so highly respected by his peers that it took the NYC Basketball Hall of Fame only five years to induct him (1995).
Bernard Fliegel was an American standout basketball player for the City College of New York (CCNY) during the late 1930s, and later, a professional in the American Basketball League. As a senior in 1937–38, he received the Haggerty Award, given to the best men's basketball player in the New York City metropolitan area, and remains the only winner from CCNY in the award's long history.
Norman Clifford Mager was an American professional basketball player who played in the National Basketball Association for the Baltimore Bullets during the 1950–51 NBA season. Mager is also notable as a key member of the 1949–50 CCNY Beavers men's basketball team, the only team in NCAA history to win both the National Invitation Tournament and NCAA tournament in the same year.
Edward L. Warner was an American college basketball player. He was one of the stars of the 1949–50 CCNY Beavers men's basketball team, the only team to win both the NCAA tournament and the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) in the same year. He was also a central figure in the point shaving scandal that came to light in the aftermath of that season.
Edward Roman was an American college basketball player. He was the leading scorer of the 1949–50 CCNY Beavers men's basketball team, the only team to win both the NCAA tournament and the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) in the same year. He was also a central figure in the point shaving scandal that came to light in the aftermath of that season.
The 1949–50 Bradley Braves men's basketball team represented Bradley University in college basketball during the 1949–50 season. The team finished the season with a 32–5 record and were national runners-up to the City College of New York (CCNY) in both the 1950 NCAA tournament and 1950 National Invitation Tournament. Early on in the NCAA Tournament's days, which began in 1939, teams were allowed to participate in both it and the NIT. The 1949–50 college basketball season is noteworthy in that it is the only year in which a team won both tournaments (CCNY), and the losing team of both championships happened to be Bradley. Coincidentally enough, a year later, several of Bradley's players from this season's team would be instigated as individuals involved in what would later be known as the CCNY point-shaving scandal due to the biggest noise coming from the scandal at the time involving CCNY despite the fact that seven different universities had players involved in the scandal at the time, including Bradley.
During the 1960–61 NCAA University Division men's basketball season, a major gambling scandal involving a former NBA All-Star basketball player and many members of organized crime syndicates broke through which had ultimately been years in the making. The scandal involved 37 arrests of students from 22 different colleges, as well as at least nine players that received money from fixers or gamblers that were never convicted of crimes, eight go-betweens being prosecuted for their efforts in the scandal, and two players being shown to have received bribe offers without reporting them to proper authorities. Not only that, but close to fifty people who had associated ties with the scandal were reported to have been permanently banned from the NBA as well as a result of this case, including future Hall of Fame players Connie Hawkins and Roger Brown, thus making this case more infamous in terms of results and impact than the CCNY point-shaving scandal from a decade prior. However, it is slated that hundreds more players alongside 43 other college basketball games were controlled throughout the scandal by comparison.
The 1952–53 NCAA men's basketball season began in December 1952, progressed through the regular season and conference tournaments, and concluded with the 1953 NCAA basketball tournament championship game on March 18, 1953, at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, Missouri. The Indiana Hoosiers won their second NCAA national championship with a 69–68 victory over the Kansas Jayhawks.
The 1950 NCAA University Division Basketball Championship Game was the finals of the 1950 NCAA basketball tournament and it determined the national champion for the 1949-50 NCAA men's basketball season. The game was played on March 28, 1950, at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It featured the CCNY Beavers of the Metropolitan New York Conference - the reigning NIT champions, and the Bradley Braves of the Missouri Valley Conference.
