Quick: Name the only team that calls New Orleans home to have won a national championship.
It wasn’t Baron Davis and the Hornets, “Pistol” Pete Maravich and the Jazz or the Buccaneers of the America Basketball Association.
It wasn’t Perry Clark coaching the Tulane Green Wave or Tim Floyd with the UNO Privateers in the programs’ respective golden ages.
It was All-American Leroy Chollet, Coach Jack Orsley and the 1945 Loyola Wolfpack after they upended Pepperdine College of Los Angeles for the NAIA crown in Kansas City, Mo.
The champs were headlined by: Chollet, a local Holy Cross product, who led the ‘Pack in scoring and lasted two seasons in the NBA as a draft pick for Syracuse Nationals; Jim Hultberg, whom The Maroon named “second to none in all-around basketball ability;” Tommy Whitaker, a high-scoring Jesuit High graduate; and Sam Foreman.
The headlining quartet spread the scoring around in the early season, each frequently scoring no less than seven points and no more than 15 after Chollet’s initial red hot scoring settled.
He scored 50 points over two games against the Brookley Field Flyers and the Naval Repair Depot.
“That boy could jump out the gym,” said Hultberg of Chollet’s athletic ability. “It’s because of him we won so many games.”
Ray Laborde, a walk-on guard from Marksville, La., said, “He was probably the best basketball player in the New Orleans area.”
“There was no height on that ball club. I don’t think anyone could dunk,” Laborde added with a chuckle. “But, (we) believed in plays.”
Their tallest player, coincidentally, played the role of the ‘Pack’s sixth man: the 6 foot 4 forward Joe Gurievesky.
“I’m looking at the picture now, and we never met up against any giants in those days,” said Hultberg.
The Wolfpackplayed most of its regular season slate against local military service teams, such as Jackson Barracks in St. Bernard Parish and the Keesler Field Fliers of Gulfport, Miss. as opposed to its traditional Spring Hill, Tougaloo and Tulane match-ups.
Loyola orchestrated its run to the title in the years of World War II, so clubs playing ball around the city were composed of servicemen waiting to be called into service.
Conscription had dismantled previous Loyola teams who otherwise would have accepted national tournament bids.
Of the more intriguing match-ups, the team played Southwestern Louisiana Institute, from which Foreman had transferred.
Foreman’s new team battered his old team 62-47, a game in which Laborde earned a trip to the stripe and scored his only point of the season.
Yet another noteworthy match-up saw the Wolfpack edge the once undefeated Gulfport Naval Training squad 48-47, the winning field goal drained by Hultberg in the waning moments of the contest.
Chollet and Whitaker had tallied 14 and nine points respectively in a tight game won because the Loyola cagers outlasted Gulfport, according to The Maroon.
They later overcame a 31-16 deficit to topple Keesler Field, led by ex-Georgetown All-American Francis O’Grady, 52-45.
Winning had become such a habit that comic complaints about their “hair-raiser” results, a mid-season run of close wins and losses, surfaced.
“There’s many a Wolf fan with a bad heart nowadays, and there’s plenty of reason for them to have one. It’s none other than the Wolves themselves who have caused such an upset in the cardiac machinery of their followers,” wrote G. Gernon Brown Jr, a columnist for The Maroon at the time.
A heart specialist setting up a practice within the gym “should do a thriving business,” he mused.
When The Maroon issue of Feb. 23, 1945 hit the newsstands, the Wolfpack had outscored its opponents 1,300-1,066.
Coach Orsley said of Hultberg, “(He) has probably developed faster and improved more than any member of the team.”
Chollet had just scored 20 points against the Millsaps Majors, and the team was awaiting word about whether or not its 20-4 record was enough to warrant a national tournament bid.
The bid hinged upon whether or not a lackluster Louisiana Normal from Nachitoches, La., whose coach was the chairman of the regional selection committee, would upend the heavily favored LSU Tigers. The only reason he’d send his team to the national tournament, said the Louisiana Normal coach, was if his team beat LSU.
LSU did Loyola the favor and burst Louisiana Normal’s tournament bubble.
Loyola went on to beat Central Normal of Danesville, Ind., Phillips University of Enid, Okla. and Southern Illinois before stunning a much taller Pepperdine to win the national crown.
Jim Bonck, a guard, surprised the tournament field by “copping” a game-high 15 points in the 53-31 win against Phillips.
Chollet, in the vein of marquee players, delivered a performance in the tournament that made it impossible for the Wolves to not win.
He scored 62 points in four games’ work, good enough for a selection on the first team all-tournament squad.
Hultberg made all-tournament second team, providing all the support Chollet needed for the crown.
“(Orsley) orchestrated the last game so we could win,” said Hultberg. “He invited us to pick up Pepperdine all over the floor.”
Brown reported, “(Orsley) has performed, by converting a group of New Orleans prep athletes into champs, the finest coaching job in the history of Loyola.”
The Kansas City Star, in its tournament coverage, coined “the New Orleans boys” as “the surprise champions.”
How could Loyola, restricted to mostly “local cagers” and a few students enrolled in the V-12 military study program, win?
Brown and the Kansas City Star turned in a two-fold answer. One: “Loyola had one of the finest coaches in the country.”
Two: “The Loyolans could hit the basket from any angle when they were in the bucketing mood, but it was when the enemy had the ball under the Loyola basket, or in its immediate vicinity, that the New Orleans boys really got down to leveling … Pepperdine could seldom get set for a shot.”
“It’s something we’ll always remember,” said Laborde, who went on to enjoy a career as a politician in the Louisiana House of Representatives and as Secretary of Administration.
Ramon Vargas can be reached at [email protected].
