The season started with Pearl Harbor and ended with the team winning the NCAA finals in Kansas City. In the intervening months, Italy and Germany joined Japan in declaring war on the United States, and Australia bunkered down for a Japanese invasion. It was indeed the worst of times--but for Stanford basketball, it was the best of times. And for 56 years, it has proved to be an impossible act to follow.
The NCAA basketball tournament was just four years old when Stanford's Indians claimed the title in 1942. Stanford steamrollered its way through the Pacific Coast Southern Division, and then defeated Oregon State in the Pacific Conference playoff to advance to the Western Regional Semifinals in Kansas City.
The team was a powerhouse. In an era when any basketball player more than 6 feet tall was considered big, its nickname--"The Tall Redwoods of California"--said it all. Averaging 6 feet 4 inches in height, the starters were forwards Jim Pollard and Don Burness, center Ed Voss and guards Howie Dallmar and Bill Cowden. But Coach Everett Dean, who had come to Stanford from Indiana University, knew that his "Farm skyscrapers" were fast as well as tall. "They moved very well for big men," he said later, "so we could alternate positions."
In Kansas City, for the 1940s equivalent of March Madness, Stanford defeated Rice, 53-47, and, on the next night, beat the University of Colorado, 46-35. They stayed in Kansas City a full week before they met Dartmouth, the winner of the Eastern Regionals playoff. But they found plenty to do during the stopover. "Most of our time was spent hitting the books," recalls Cowden, one of the last two living members of the team. "The Kansas City press was very flattering because we maintained a very limited social activity, studying instead of seeing the local sights."
On Saturday night, March 28, the two teams fought it out in front of a capacity crowd of 9,500. Stanford was handicapped when Pollard and Burness were benched for illness and injury. But the team showed its depth with the brilliant playing of substitutes Jack Dana and Fred Linari. Stanford sank an impressive 39 percent of its shots and routed Dartmouth 53-38.
It was a glorious night. And 56 years later, that glory remains unequalled.
