March 25, 1908: College Basketball's 1st Great Team

March 25, 1908: Perhaps the 1st great college basketball team wins perhaps the 1st great college basketball game. John Schommer hits an 80-foot shot with seconds remaining, and the University of Chicago closes its season with a 16-15 victory over the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.

The season before, on March 23, 1907, Chicago beat the Central YMCA, 22-19 at the Bartlett Gymnasium on the UC campus. This was the early days of basketball, which was founded at a YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts, only a little over 15 years before. Such a matchup would never be scheduled today.

Nevertheless, the Chicago Maroons completed their season, with a record of 15-2. Their only 2 losses had been on March 6, away to the University of Wisconsin; and on March 16, home to the University of Minnesota.

This was their 1st season under head coach Joseph Raycroft. John Schommer and Albert Houghton were named All-Americans. At the time, freshmen were allowed to play on the varsity, which would later be banned, except for wartime conditions and other unusual circumstances (such as disasters), until 1972.

In 1907-08, with Schommer leading the way as a junior, the Maroons went 23-2, losing on January 21, away to the aforementioned Central YMCA; and on January 31, again away to Wisconsin. Known as "Mr. Everything," Schommer also lettered in baseball, football and track.

John Schommer

In 1908-09, they went 12-0, completing a 3-year run of 50-4. Schommer became the 1st-ever 4-time basketball All-American, with Pat Page also making the team. In each of those 3 seasons, Chicago won the title in the Western Conference, the league that would become known as the Big Ten; and were, decades later, retroactively recognized as National Champions by the Helms Foundation.

Schommer succeeded Raycroft as head coach, but only coached in the 1911-12 season. But there was no professional league in which he could play, so he refereed Big 10 basketball games until 1940. In 1959, he became 1 of the 1st 4 players elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. He died in 1960. Raycroft later led Princeton University's Department of Health and Physical Education. He died on September 30, 1955, the same day as James Dean.

In 1939, Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago dropped varsity sports, believing it to have become overemphasized. Michigan State eventually took Chicago's place in the Big 10. A sports program was revived at UC in 1973, at the NCAA Division III level.

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March 25, 1908 was a Wednesday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. Professional basketball barely existed. And the Stanley Cup Finals was won earlier in the month by the Montreal Wanderers, the team known as "The Little Men of Iron" winning their 3rd Cup, in a run of 5 out of 6.