These St. Francis Faithful Didn't Just Jump on the Terrier Bandwagon

Editor’s Note: St. Francis failed in its latest attempt to qualify for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, falling 66-61 to Robert Morris in the 2105 NEC Championship on March 10.

MARCH 10, 2015 — As St. Francis Brooklyn prepares for the 2015 Northeast Conference Men’s Basketball Championship game against Robert Morris tonight at a sold-out Pope Center, playoff fever has gripped the college’s Brooklyn Heights campus as casual fans flock to the Terrier bandwagon. But a select few—loyal for decades—remain guardedly optimistic about their team’s prospects.

For the past five years, before and after every Terriers’ game, Franey Donovan never fails to scratch a superstitious itch. A 1968 alumnus, Donovan regularly emails St. Francis head coach Glenn Braica a simple pre-game message: focus on the team in front of you. No matter the outcome, Braica will get a post-game message such as the one following Saturday’s 62-48 NEC semifinal win over Saint Francis University of Pennsylvania.

“Hey Glenn, Congratulations - that was a real good one to get and it was a terrific team effort! Get some rest and let’s just focus on RMU and let’s get the Colonials on Tuesday night! Franey”

Donovan follows his Terriers religiously, commuting to St. Francis games from Connecticut. But his devotion has yet to be rewarded. A fan for almost sixty years, he’s never experienced the joy of his team winning a championship.

In New York City basketball circles, Ray Nash is the epitome of success. As boy’s basketball coach of Bishop Ford High School from 1975 to 2001, Nash coached numerous Division I athletes including Armond Hill, a 1976 first round pick of the Atlanta Hawks—currently an assistant on Doc River’s staff—and Charles Jones, who played for the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Clippers. He also coached a young Glenn Braica.

Yet Nash’s career as a player is defined by St. Francis’s most noteworthy loss. In a 1963 first-round National Invitational Tournament game at Madison Square Garden, he scored 16 points as the Terriers led a talented Miami team late before losing 71-70, a disappointment that lingers still.

Thomas Quigley, who has attended Terrier games since 1948, when he was a St. Francis freshman, graduated to a career as a professor of chemistry at the college, teaching from 1962 until retiring in 2001. A keen observer who easily rattles off details of Terrier exploits stretching back 67 years, Quigley doesn’t recall them ever playing an NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament game—because St. Francis never has.

NCAA: Monkey on the Terriers’ Back

In more than a century of intercollegiate basketball competition, St. Francis has qualified for postseason play 12 times, the most recent being an automatic NIT bid this season, the team’s first in 52 years, when the Terriers captured the 2014-15 Northeast Conference men’s basketball regular season title.

But when it comes to the NCAAs, St. Francis has experienced only futility. The Terriers are one of five Division I men’s basketball programs—Army, The Citadel, Northwestern and William & Mary are the others—playing continuously since the National Collegiate Athletics Association was founded in 1939 to have never qualified for an NCAA tournament.

Which is why this game tonight looms so large: a win by the top-seeded Terriers over the # 2 Colonials would revoke St. Francis’s membership in an ignominious club, as the NEC champion is guaranteed an NCAA berth.

Basketball Scandals Lead to Terrier Greatness

In their storied if not exactly stellar history, the Terriers have come close to greatness on numerous occasions, only to fall just short. In an on-campus interview, Professor Quigley paints a portrait of New York City basketball’s glory days of the 1940’s and 50’s, when the St. Francis five were regular participants in games at the old Madison Square Garden, or matched against powerhouse Catholic schools, including Fordham, St. John’s, Manhattan, Niagara and Providence, in front of 5,000 people at Manhattan’s 69th Regiment Armory.

Quigley mentioned a particular St. Francis and Manhattan game from 1952, one of the longest games in college basketball, up to that point, which the Terriers won by scoring 12 straight points in the fourth overtime to beat the Jaspers 82-70.

The point-shaving scandals of the early ‘50s that almost destroyed college basketball in the City actually benefited squeaky-clean St. Francis. From 1951 to 1956, under the guidance of Dan Lynch, a legendary St. Francis coach, the Terriers compiled five straight 20-win seasons to go 105–32, the program’s greatest period of success.

Ray Nash, who would go on to star in basketball at St. Francis, first saw the Terriers play in the 1956 NIT, losing in the semifinals to eventual runner-up Dayton. As Nash tells it, watching the game was a homework assignment from Pat Gleason, a biology teacher at St. Francis Prep who had been an All-American at St. Francis.

“That was my first game and I was hooked.”

A Fateful NIT Game Leads To Dark Times

The 1960s, another great period in St. Francis basketball, produced perhaps Terrier fans’ single greatest disappointment in the 1963 NIT match-up against Miami.

“It was probably the greatest game St. Francis ever lost,” Nash said, “because of the comparison of the teams and the fact that we lost by one point. It was just an incredible game for the little scrawny kids from Brooklyn against Rick Barry and Mike McCoy, who was seven feet [tall].”

Quigley, with his distinctive Brooklyn accent, said Lynch’s boys schooled the more talented Miami team: “We actually taught them how to play.”

I would not consider that [St. Francis] team particularly talented,” he added, “but they were really good at playing together.”

By the time Fran Donovan made his way to Brooklyn Heights in 1964, St. Francis was beginning a long, slow descent into mediocrity. St. John’s grew into a university, leaving its Brooklyn roots for more spacious Queens, while LIU would slowly revive its long dormant basketball program. These changes were followed by a more dramatic development at St. Francis: in 1969 Lynch retired after 21 years as Terriers’ coach. His absence was felt immediately and continuously, as the program went a dismal 229-353 from 1969 to 1990, with only three winning seasons and zero postseason appearances.

“St. Francis always being relegated unfortunately to not having great facilities, it takes its toll,” Nash said. “I don’t know that I can say those were the dark years. Wins and losses maybe but who knows what’s dark and what’s light.”

Ganulin and Braica Bring Hope and Wins

Glenn Braica, who this season led the Terriers to their first NEC regular season title since 2003-04, was an assistant under Ron Ganulin (1991 to 2004). Ganulin had brought the Terriers to the cusp of an NCAA berth in 2001, when St. Francis led Monmouth by 20 points with 14 minutes remaining in the NEC championship. But the Hawks stunned the top-seeded Terriers with a 31-8 run to capture a 67 – 64 victory.

In describing the worst defeats in St. Francis history, Donovan said: “The most obvious was that loss to Monmouth. Having that big lead late in the game, being unable to close the deal to get that first bid to the NCAAs was literally gut-wrenching.”

I didn’t sleep at all that night. I thought for sure that was our year.”

Braica arrived as head coach starting the 2010-11 season—with Ganulin as an assistant—and now has St. Francis at the pinnacle of success. Designated the NEC’s top team in a preseason coaches poll for the first time ever, the Terriers, behind senior forward Jalen Cannon and senior point guard Brent Jones, posted a 15-3 conference record, capturing the program’s third NEC regular season title on their way to a 23-10 mark.

Cannon’s play in particular has greatly elevated expectations. Announced last week as the 2015 NEC Men’s Basketball Player of the Year, he holds the St. Francis career scoring and rebounding marks, and is the first Terrier to ever collect over 1,500 points and 1,000 rebounds.

Donovan believes that Cannon is the best to ever wear the St. Francis red and blue.

“Richie Dreyer, Ray Nash, Jim Raftery, Gil Radday, Dougie Smith—those were very, very good players,” he said, reeling off the names of Terrier greats. “But Jalen is incredible. I’ve never seen a better St. Francis player than Jalen Cannon.”

Braica’s five years at St. Francis have not been without disappointment. In the first round of the 2014 NEC tournament, the Terriers held a 10-point lead with under two minutes to play at Mount St. Mary’s but couldn’t hold on, losing 72-71 on a last second 3-pointer.

“Last year in the opening quarterfinal round, losing to Mount St. Mary’s after holding such a big lead was another major disappointment,” Donovan said. “I thought for sure we had a good enough team last year to at least get to the championship. They weren’t able to do it and it was very disappointing.”

Despite the deflating loss to the Mountaineers, who went on to win the 2014 NEC championship, confidence in Braica—selected as Jim Phelan NEC Coach of the Year in 2012 and again this year—has never wavered.

“First of all he’s exactly what St. Francis wants: a Franciscan gentleman,” Nash said. “He’s not too excited he’s not too laid back. Glenn understands the game extremely well. He understands what he’s dealing with at St. Francis College. It’s not UCLA or Kentucky.”

He loves the school and brings to the game exactly what he brought when he played: a consistency and a calmness that makes everybody else relax.”

With wins in the first two rounds of this year’s NEC tourney and a rabid Pope Center crowd behind them, perhaps tonight is as good a time as ever for a Terrier NCAA berth.

If so, Coach Braica is sure to have a joyous email from Franey Donovan waiting for him.

PHOTO CAPTION: Franey Donovan