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| Alcorn State legendary 2010 National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Famer coach Mr. Davey L. Whitney raised the bar high. His teams won 711 games in 35 years of coaching, winning a total of 12 SWAC championships. Whitney’s Braves became the first historically black college team to win an NIT game (1979), and one year later, Alcorn became the first historically black college to win an NCAA Tournament game. |
WICHITA, Kansas -- If you’ve seen the list of college basketball teams to have finished with perfect regular season records since 1976, one of them stands out as a head-scratcher.
Sure, hoops fans remember the 1979 Indiana State team with Larry Bird, or the 1991 UNLV squad that was trying to repeat as champion. Even the 2004 Saint Joseph’s team was memorable with two NBA players and Billy Packer complaining loudly about the Hawks’ weak conference.
But one other team on those lists that Wichita State joined last week is basically forgotten – the 1979 Alcorn State Braves.
Alcorn State, located in Mississippi, went 27-0 to win the SWAC, which is comprised of historically-black schools. The Braves did not play in the NCAA Tournament, which was a 32-team field that season.
How was that possible? A big-conference bias by the selection committee? Not quite.
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