Ray Meyer spent the early-to-mid 1970s gradually building the DePaul basketball program back into prominence at a time when Al McGuire’s Marquette and Digger Phelps’ Notre Dame teams ruled the roost for Catholic college hoops in the Midwest. The 1975 DePaul edition was getting closer—while they wouldn’t what make was then just a 32-team NCAA […]
Notre Dame basketball came into the 1975 season off a ’74 campaign that had marked a historic breakthrough. The breakthrough came from Digger Phelps, in his third season, getting to the NCAA Tournament for the first time and reaching the Sweet 16. The historic part came from ending the 88-game winning streak of John Wooden’s […]
Marquette was coming off a breakthrough Final Four appearance in 1974, but Al McGuire’s program had some rebuilding to do. Maurice Lucas, their great power forward, had left early for the NBA. The only senior starter, center Jerry Homan, didn’t average in double figures. The Warriors didn’t match their ’74 performance. But with the emergence […]