By Woodrow Carroll
A look at the polls in various collegiate sports for both the men and women, there is ready name recognition. State universities, such as the University of Illinois and University of Michigan are easy to identify. State schools we know, for the most part, are based on location.
In men’s college basketball Division I, two teams have been at the top of the leader board all season, Gonzaga and Baylor.
• Gonzaga is hardly a hardwood unknown. Gonzaga is in the eastern Washington city of Spokane. With Bulldogs or Zags for nicknames and with blue and white school colors, the school has a modest 5,200 undergraduate enrollment.
Gonzaga plays in the 10-team West Coast Conference and is top heavy with California schools. Only Gonzaga, Portland, and BYU, (Brigham Young University) in Provo, Utah, are from outside of California.
An Italian-born missionary, Joseph Cataldo, founded the school with the intention of educating the Native American resident in the U.S. northwest in the 19th Century. Although Cataldo continued to minister to the Native American needs and died at age 92 in 1928 in Idaho, the school came under the auspices of the Jesuits.
Gonzaga is named in memory of Aloysius Gonzaga, a 16th Century Italian saint who died at the age of 23 while caring for the victims of an epidemic in his native Italy.
Prominent alumni include singer and actor Bing Crosby. John Stockton, who tormented the Chicago Bulls while playing for the Utah Jazz in the late 1990s, went to Gonzaga. Happily for Bulls’ fans, Stockton and the Jazz came up short in both the 1996 and 1997 championship finals.
• Baylor University is in Waco, Texas with a start in 1841 when Texas was a republic. Judge R.E.B. Baylor was a prime mover in the early years of the school.
Baylor has approximately 15,000 undergraduates. The school is affiliated with the Baptist Church. The green and gold Bears are members of the Big 12 Conference, with foes such as Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.
In its long history, Baylor has produced many exceptional athletes in a wide variety of sports with a shout out for graduate and middle linebacker Mike Singleterry, one the many stars of the Chicago Bears’ Super Bowl XX champion.
Although the women’s basketball program at Baylor does not match the national championships won by Connecticut (11) or Tennessee (8), the Lady Bears have won three national championships, including 2019, the last time a tournament was held, because of COVID-19.
The Baylor men have yet to scale national championship heights. In the early years of the NCAA men’s tournament which started in 1939, Baylor captured a degree of success and played in the championship game of the 1948 tournament against Kentucky, the latter a 58-42 victor. It was the first of four NCAA championships captured by head coach Adolph Rupp, 1949, 1951, and 1958.