All Good Things Must Come to An End . . .
by Jim Noles
The fluffy fall of thick snowflakes greeted the train that brought West Point's basketball team down to Philadelphia on Saturday, February 17, 1945 -- 80 years ago today. And, as Army's head coach Ed Kelleher handed three pennies to a newspaper vendor and flipped to the Philadelphia Inquirer's sports pages, he received another salutation: "Expect 11,000 Crowd at Twin Bill Tonight," a headline proclaimed. "West Point Favored to Beat Penn for 28th in a Row; Temple, NYU Play."
One can imagine Kelleher grimacing at the news. His team, on the heels of an undefeated '44 campaign, was enjoying a remarkable 27-game winning streak, and tonight's game should have been played at the University of Pennsylvania's famed Palestra. But the Navy's V-12 program had taken over the steel-and-concrete arena and so now ("thanks to the Navy," at least one cadet must have muttered), as Kelleher had been warned, the cadets would have to face the 10-5 Quakers in the rollicking atmosphere of a doubleheader at the city's Convention Hall.
By the time of the 8:00 pm tip-off, over five inches of snow lay on the streets of the City of Brotherly Love. Undeterred, some 11,505 fans crowded into Convention Hall, straining it to capacity. Perhaps some remarked on the irony of the future Army lieutenants, in a world at war, playing a team named after the peace-loving Quakers. And indeed, for the first twenty minutes of the game, the Cadets never relinquished the lead as they pushed the scoreboard to a 29-25 tally.
Yet while Army could boast some of the finest football players of their generation on West Point's basketball bench -- men like Doug Kenna, Dale Hall, and Glenn Davis -- complemented by the sharpshooting skills of John Nance, Penn boasted a secret weapon of its own. His name was Howard Dallmar, the Quaker's 6'4" center. Dallmar had previously excelled at Stanford, where he had earned honors at the Most Outstanding Player in 1942's NCAA Basketball Tournament, and now he was at Penn to complete pre-flight training in the Navy's V-7 program.
"[P]laying his farewell game . . . the 22-year-old San Franciscan was surpassing even his incandescent best. Over his shoulder, under the small of his back, front, side, Dallmar was feeding teammates from all over the court," the Philadelphia Inquirer's sports scribe recounted.
Under Dallmar's leadership, the Quakers stormed back and, by the time four seconds remained on the game clock, Penn possessed a 61-54 lead. At that point, Penn's coach pulled an exhausted Dallmar off the court; when he did, play paused for nearly two minutes as the crowd crowned him with a thunderous standing ovation.
The game at Convention Hall marked the end of the Quakers' '45 season; as for West Point, it would lodge three more victories to end the season 14-1 with a final victory over arch-rival Navy. Keeping with the dictates of the previous season, the cadets would accept no invitations to either the NCAA or NIT tournaments; instead, only their terms or, in some cases, careers of military service awaited for them. It would be Coach Ed Kelleher's last season of basketball as well, but that's a tale for another time.
About the Author: Jim Noles (USMA '90) is a Professor of Practice with Auburn University's College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment. His most recent book, Undefeated: From Basketball to Battle -- West Point's Perfect 1944 Season, was published by Casemate in 2018 and is, as they say, "available on Amazon and wherever fine books are sold."