ALMOST Penn’s 1970-71 men’s basketball team was arguably the very best the Ivy League will ever see—even if their 28-0 season did end with a baffling loss that stings even 40 years later. BY DAVE ZEITLIN PENN ATHLETICS; FACING PAGE: BOB IMMERMAN PAGE: FACING PENN ATHLETICS; 42 MAR | APR 2011 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE ome schools offered him cash, clothes, Today, that young, no-name assistant and cars. Others kept him on campus coach—Richard “Digger” Phelps—is a for longer than the recruiting rules prominent TV analyst and one of the most well known figures in the college permitted. Ohio State made such a hard basketball world. But back in the 1960s, Spush to reel him in that then-Ohio Governor when he got in his little red Mustang, Jim Rhodes made a personal plea. drove 450 miles to Ohio and gave Wolf But when it came time to pick the college his bold recruiting pitch, Phelps had where he’d continue his basketball career, his mind on only one thing: building a middling Ivy League team into a big- Jim Wolf W’71 didn’t accept any illegal gifts or time college basketball program. And succumb to political pressure. Instead, the blue- the very first building block was Wolf, chip recruit from Parma Heights, Ohio went with maybe the best high school basketball his gut and followed a young, no-name assistant player in all of Ohio. coach to the University of Pennsylvania. “He offered me a great education,” says Wolf, “and the promise that they were going to build a nationally ranked team.” That promise came to fruition in ways neither could have ever imagined. Four years after Wolf arrived at Penn— and 40 years ago—the Quakers enjoyed perhaps the greatest season in Phila- delphia’s rich hoops history. Joining forces with future Big 5 Hall of Famers Steve Bilsky W’71, Dave Wohl C’71, David “Corky” Calhoun W’72, and Bob Morse C’72—and coached by a no- nonsense former Marine named Dick Harter Ed’53—Wolf and the rest of the 1970-71 Quakers chased down perfection, flirted with it for a tantalizingly long time, and eventually crumbled under its weight in epic fashion. But there’s more to a story than a beginning and an end. In the middle, there are tales of friendship and jump shots that pass the test of time. And looking back on it now, the members of the 1970-71 Penn men’s basketball team agree that they were bound by a single belief, one that seems unfathomable for any Ivy League team in today’s game: There was absolutely nobody better than them. Facing page: (first row) Coach Dick Harter, Jim Wolf, Jim Haney, Steve Bilsky, Dave Wohl, John Koller, Assistant Coach Ray Edelman; (second row) Trainer Bob Matthews, Keith Hansen, Corky Calhoun, Bob Morse, Phil Hankinson, Craig Littlepage, Manager Eddie Spiegel; (third row) Bill Walters, Alan Cotler, Steve Batory, Ron Billingslea. Wolf goes for the layup. THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE MAR | APR 2011 43 Bilsky dribbles. The Beginnings of Greatness Wohl shoots. The season before Harter took over at Penn, the Quakers won 19 games and an Ivy League championship. But when longtime coach Jack McCloskey Ed’48 GEd’52 left following the successful 1965-66 campaign, so too did many of that team’s veteran players. The cup- board was bare, and Harter was essen- tially starting from scratch. Harter’s first two seasons in charge were rough ones as the Quakers sputtered to an 11-14 record in 1966-67 and a 9-17 mark in 1967-68. But it didn’t take long for things to get better. And in a subtle twist, one of the people to thank for the quick transforma- tion was an old baseball coach at Rider College named Tom Petroff. Between stints as an assistant coach and the head coach at Penn, Harter spent one season running the Rider basketball program—the same place where Phelps played his college ball from 1960-63. Phelps had already graduated by the time Harter came to Rider, but Petroff his Mustang. He sold the Palestra, Big 5 Penn,” Harter says, “opened the door to knew both men very well. So when Harter doubleheaders, and a Wharton education, get other players.” Some of those other got the job at Penn, Petroff all but while pointing to the academic success players included high-school stars Jimmy demanded that he take Phelps with him. of former basketball stars and Rhodes Haney ChE’71 and sharpshooter John “He wouldn’t let me leave town unless I Scholars John Edgar Wideman C’63 Koller C’71. But Haney dislocated his hired Digger,” says Harter. Hon’86 and Princeton’s Bill Bradley. And kneecap during his senior year of high Petroff saw what Harter and future he did it all with determination and gusto. school and was never the same, joining Penn players would soon come to realize: “You just got a different feeling from Koller in a reserve role for the duration of Phelps was a go-getter and a rising coach- Harter and Phelps as to what they wanted his time at Penn. Interestingly, it was a ing star. Immediately, Phelps asked Harter to do and what they wanted to accom- little-known recruit out of Long Island if he could recruit nationally, and with his plish,” says Wolf. “You felt that they were (Bilsky) and a football quarterback from head coach’s blessing—not to mention the really going to do this.” New Jersey (Wohl) who made up the back- budgetary support of then-athletic direc- Wolf, who could have played basketball bone of that 1971 class. “Steve and Dave tor Jerry Ford C’32 G’42—the young assis- at just about any college in the country, were two guys that were not recruited tant coach began putting serious miles on was the first big score. “Him coming to nationally, but through sheer willpower, BOB IMMERMAN 44 MAR | APR 2011 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE their only win over a city rival was one of the most memorable in school history, as Penn stunned ninth-ranked Villanova, 32-30, in a slow-down game. In that win, Bilsky, now Penn’s director of athletics, hit the game-winning shot after the Quakers held the ball and ran the clock out for the final three-and-a-half min- utes. “I set the screen and was open for the dump-off,” Wolf says, laughing. “But I was glad he took the shot.” “More than anything else,” says Bilsky, reminiscing recently in his Weightman Hall office, “that kind of began the era in the 1970s when Penn became one of the best teams in the country. [Villanova] was nationally ranked. We were a non- entity. It became one of those famous Big 5 memories, and we didn’t lose a whole lot of games over the next three years.” The Final Pieces of the Puzzle It didn’t take long for the little-known forward from a Quaker family in rural Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, to bond with the highly touted guard from a work- ing-class family outside Chicago. Both Morse (the Quaker) and Calhoun (the Chicago kid), after all, were soft-spoken guys who came to Penn for two reasons: to study and play basketball. And both turned out to be dynamos for the Quakers. “The pillars,” says Cotler, one of their class- mates. “The two corners. I can’t think of two people better suited to represent a university on and off the court.” That the two ballplayers were different only added to their appeal for Phelps, Wolf, Morse, Cotler, and Calhoun surround the basket. who vividly remembers driving out to Kennett Square with future college and competitiveness, and hard work became he fell in love with the place. Soon he NBA coach Jim Lynam, then an assistant the starting backcourt for the third- started going every day and playing with at Saint Joseph’s University, to recruit ranked team in the country,” says Alan the guys who were recruited like Bilsky. Morse. “We watched him play one night Cotler W’72, a lawyer in Philadelphia and He decided these are the guys that he and [Lynam] didn’t like him because he a junior reserve on the 1970-71 squad. wanted to hang around with, and he told was a big man shooting jump shots,” says Indeed, when he got to Penn in the fall of the football coaches he wanted to concen- Phelps. “And I just said, ‘Wow, I like him 1967, Wohl was all set to begin his football trate on basketball. One of them said to because he’s a scorer and can shoot from career for the Quakers. But according to him, ‘You’re probably making the biggest the perimeter.’” Bob Lyons, a Philadelphia sportswriter mistake of your life.’ Then he goes on to be Morse wasn’t a very visible recruit, and the author of Palestra Pandemonium: in basketball for four decades. I just love and he wanted to remain close to home, A History of the Big 5, the Palestra, as it’s that story.” so for him Penn was an easy choice. been known to do, butted in and changed When Bilsky, Wohl, and Wolf were With Calhoun, Phelps remembers real- the course of a life. “Shortly after arriving sophomores in 1968-69 and playing on ly needing to sell Wharton to his father, on campus, he took a walk down 33rd the varsity for the first time (freshmen who had to work a few jobs just to make street, looking for a place to play [basket- were not eligible back then), the Quakers ends meet.