This isn’t Loyola-Chicago’s first rodeo in terms of a legitimate chance at a national championship. The Ramblers won the 1963 national title, and now they’re in the 2018 FInal Four with a chance to win another.
Loyola-Chicago legend, Jerry Harkness, is happy the Ramblers went back to the Final Four ‘before I went in the ground’
He’s a piece of college basketball history, and the 2018 Ramblers get to do something historic as well.
Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Former Ramblers player Jerry Harkness is pretty happy he could see his alma mater get it done. Let’s just say he doesn’t have another five decades to wait around.
Harkness isn’t just any player either. He was a black player on the ‘63 Ramblers team that changed college basketball forever.
On March 15, 1963, Loyola defied the unwritten rule of not playing more than three black players at once by starting four black players in an NCAA tournament game versus an all-white Mississippi State team. The game was played at a pivotal moment in civil rights history. For its part, Mississippi State went against a legislative order that banned the Bulldogs from playing an integrated team and snuck across state lines to compete in the game.
Including this season, the Ramblers have only been to the NCAA tournament five times since the national title run, and three of those tourney berths were also in the 1960s. 1985 was the last time the Ramblers had been in the Big Dance before this season.
Now they’re back, and Harkness gets a chance to see them try to equal his team’s on-court feat and put another banner in the rafters.
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