Marquette Basketball History - the '60-'61 Team

This team - and the two that followed - are some of my all-time favorites.

In '60-'61 Kojis was a senior, and he had one hell of a season, averaging 21.4 ppg and an amazing 17.4 rpg. But that wasn't the only reason I was so excited.

That was the year that six sophomores started their careers at MU, four of whom were starters all three seasons. The starters on that '60-'61 team included the following:

Forward: Don Kojis (Senior) 21.4 ppg & 17.1 rpg
Forward: Bob Hornak (Sophomore) 9.4 ppg & 5.6 rpg
Center: Dave Erickson (Sophomore) 9.7 ppg & 7.0 rpg
Guard: Ron Glaser (Sophomore) 14.6 ppg & 5.0 rpg
Point Guard: Richard Nixon (Sophomore) 9.7 ppg & 2.7 rpg (not sure about apg as no one kept track back then)

The two top reserves were the following:

Forward: Lee Borowski (Sophomore) 5.7 ppg & 4.1 rpg
Center: Len Jefferson (Sophomore) 4.3 ppg & 4.2 rpg

Joe Scanlon, who was a starting guard on the '59-'60 team hardly saw the court as he averaged 2.2 ppg in '60-'61 after having averaged 8.7 ppg the previous season.

One of the things that struck me about this group of players was that Kojis, Hornak, Glaser, and Borowski were all from Milwaukee. When Glaser was a junior and a senior at Washington High School, if memory serves, he led the City Conference in scoring. I am pretty certain he averaged over 30 ppg as a senior, or at the very least he was damn close to 30 ppg. He had earned a reputation as a deadly outside shooter.

But the first time I saw him play for MU, I was astonished. I had expected to see perfect form. Instead, he had possibly the flattest shot I had ever seen. I was told later that the reason his shot trajectory was so low was that he played a lot of his games in grade school in a gym that had a really low ceiling. Not sure if that is true, but I wouldn't doubt it, not after having coached teams that played in some of those old Catholic grade school gyms.

Anyway, Ron Glaser was a household name among young basketball fans in the Milwaukee area. That was not the case, for me at least, in terms of Hornak, who played at MUHS. Fans of the old Milwaukee Catholic Conference surely knew about him, but he did not have the kind of "star power" - for lack of a better term - coming out of high school that Glaser had.

Borowski was completely unknown to me when he was in high school.

If memory serves, the other two starters - Erickson and Nixon - came from Minnesota and Illinois (Waukegan?) respectively, and Jefferson, I'm pretty sure, came from Alabama. He might still be the only recruit MU has ever had from Alabama as I can't think of anyone else who came from that state.

That team had only moderate success, despite Kojis' incredible season, in part, I'm guessing, because of the overall lack of experience. It finished the season with a record of 16-11.

Still, that team caught my attention and filled me with anticipation for the future I was sure would come. More on that in a day or two.

By the way, I still view Ron Glaser as one of the top four or five pure shooters MU has ever had. Had there been a three-point line back then, Glaser's point total would probably have increased by somewhere around 40%.

On a personal note, I got to know Ron a little bit when he was an English teacher at his alma mater - Washington High School. At the time, I was teaching eighth grade English in MPS, and we both taught within the Title 1 English program and had to attend the same in-services. What struck me most about him was how humble he was, yet I also had heard about what an intense competitor he was once he hit the court.

Anyway, I proceeded to follow that group of sophomores for three years. It is still one of my favorite teams of all time at MU, especially that '62-'63 team, but more on that team another time.