Hall of Fame coach passed away last night at the age of 89. One season at BG going 18-7 in 1968 and winning the MAC championship.
RIP Bill Fitch
Bill Fitch
Re: Bill Fitch
He was the last coach to take us to the NCAA tournament, back in 1968.
RIP to a legend.
RIP to a legend.
BGSU '20
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Schadenfreude
- Professional tractor puller
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Re: Bill Fitch
Terry Pluto had a nice retrospective.
https://www.cleveland.com/cavs/2022/02/ ... pluto.html
Apparently Bowling Green drew 11,000 at the old Cleveland Arena for a game with Niagara, which is pretty amazing.
https://www.cleveland.com/cavs/2022/02/ ... pluto.html
Apparently Bowling Green drew 11,000 at the old Cleveland Arena for a game with Niagara, which is pretty amazing.
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fredthefalcon
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Re: Bill Fitch
Good article. I think the big draw at that game was Niagara's Calvin Murphy. He was a basketball oddity before Muggsy Bogues being a short guy in what was even more a big man's game back then. A big scorer averaged over 33 ppg in college (pre 3 point) and future NBAer. He's also in the basketball HOF. But the part I found fascinating is that the Cavs used Street and Smith's Basketball Yearbook as well as basketball cards for researching their first draft or two.Schadenfreude wrote: ↑Fri Feb 04, 2022 8:58 am Terry Pluto had a nice retrospective.
https://www.cleveland.com/cavs/2022/02/ ... pluto.html
Apparently Bowling Green drew 11,000 at the old Cleveland Arena for a game with Niagara, which is pretty amazing.
Re: Bill Fitch
I listened to that game (Niagara) on the radio from our house in BG. As did 100s of others around the county, Im sure...... BG basketball was embraced during those days. Guessing Andy Anderson or Doyt Perry hired Fitch. Thinking one may have been the AD at the time. Anyway, Im sure Anderson had some input.
SAme old Same old
Re: Bill Fitch
More Fitch from the Blade:
Feb. 7—When Bowling Green State University hired a new men's basketball coach in 1967, its proud program was adrift, fresh off three straight losing seasons after Harold Anderson's retirement.
A fourth was all but certain, the Falcons picked to finish last in the Mid-American Conference.
"Nobody gave us any chance at all," star forward Walt Piatkowski recalled over the weekend.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
Well, nobody but Bill Fitch.
From the start, Fitch, the Falcons' energetic first-year coach and a former Marine drill instructor, made clear things would be different.
"I demand the type of attitude it takes to win," Fitch told The Blade upon his hire. "I never saw a player who once he tasted victory was not willing to pay the price it takes to keep winning."
And he wouldn't at Bowling Green, either.
In his one season at the school, his players paid a steep price — literally, you should hear about their all-terrain conditioning — in the name of a reward sweeter than they could have imagined: a MAC championship and a trip to the NCAA tournament. The latter endures as the Falcons' last trip to the dance.
"An incredible year," Piatkowski said.
Fitch died last week at 89, and, as the tributes rolled in, much of the focus was deservedly on his Hall of Fame career as an NBA coach.
In 25 pro seasons, the two-time coach of the year turned down-on-their-luck teams into contenders, the Cleveland Cavaliers into miracle men, and the Boston Celtics into champions (1981).
But around here, his stopover in Bowling Green endures as anything but a footnote.
Before Fitch led the Miracle of Richfield — as the Cavs' 1975-76 season became known — the Falcons watched him answer a hoops prayer of their own.
It was 1967, and the magic of Nate Thurmond, Butch Komives, and those early-60s BG teams that first turned Anderson Arena into the House That Roars could not have been more of a memory.
Fitch, a 34-year-old Iowan who had spent the previous five seasons at Division II North Dakota, changed everything, beginning with his players' bodies.
Piatkowski, at the time 6-8 and 250 pounds, remembers the coach, never one to mince words, calling him too fat and having the team train with the cross country runners. The basketball players were the ones wearing weighted vests.
Bob Hill, a freshman on that team who went on to become a longtime NBA coach, likewise recalled his first day of conditioning when he arrived on campus in the summer.
"I never thought I would survive it," Hill said a few years ago. "[Fitch] took us to a farm where he had a half-mile course marked out. He had us jog to the half-mile mark, then sprint back. And we had to do that five times. Then we had to run 100-yard dashes, and the only way we dropped out was if we won them. Then we went to the gym and ran a fast-break drill for 30 minutes.
"After we were finished, I went back to my room, fell asleep, and woke up at 4 the next morning."
But, as the players learned, there was a method to the coach's basketball madness.
"It was good for the players, because it helped them get on the same page together," Fitch said. "If you go through that much hard work, you want to get something out of it."
And so they did.
Led by Piatkowski, the senior standout from Woodward who had slimmed down to 212 pounds, the Falcons rallied around each other — and their coach — almost immediately. In a marquee early showdown at a packed Cleveland Arena — which was owned by BG grad Nick Mileti, the soon-to-be founder of the Cavaliers, who debuted in 1970 — BG upset the great Calvin Murphy and Niagara, and kept rolling. The next week, it beat Virginia and Syracuse.
Heck, the Falcons (18-7, 10-2 MAC) were so good that Fitch had a 7-foot dummy built midway through the season.
"We would have to shoot over it in practice," said Piatkowski, whose son, Eric, played for Fitch on the Clippers in the mid-90s, "because he thought we'd have to go through Lew Alcindor and UCLA [in the NCAA tournament]."
Alas, Bowling Green never got its shot at the NCAA champs, falling to Marquette 72-71 in the first round of the then-23-team dance. And Fitch left to become the head coach at Minnesota after the season. (He was then tabbed to get the Cavs off the ground in 1970, hired by Mileti because of the BG connection.)
But whether the good times were fleeting or not, nothing could diminish what Fitch and his Falcons paired to accomplish that winter, their place in school lore only growing by the year.
Call it the Miracle of Bowling Green.
First Published February 6, 2022, 6:53pm
Feb. 7—When Bowling Green State University hired a new men's basketball coach in 1967, its proud program was adrift, fresh off three straight losing seasons after Harold Anderson's retirement.
A fourth was all but certain, the Falcons picked to finish last in the Mid-American Conference.
"Nobody gave us any chance at all," star forward Walt Piatkowski recalled over the weekend.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
Well, nobody but Bill Fitch.
From the start, Fitch, the Falcons' energetic first-year coach and a former Marine drill instructor, made clear things would be different.
"I demand the type of attitude it takes to win," Fitch told The Blade upon his hire. "I never saw a player who once he tasted victory was not willing to pay the price it takes to keep winning."
And he wouldn't at Bowling Green, either.
In his one season at the school, his players paid a steep price — literally, you should hear about their all-terrain conditioning — in the name of a reward sweeter than they could have imagined: a MAC championship and a trip to the NCAA tournament. The latter endures as the Falcons' last trip to the dance.
"An incredible year," Piatkowski said.
Fitch died last week at 89, and, as the tributes rolled in, much of the focus was deservedly on his Hall of Fame career as an NBA coach.
In 25 pro seasons, the two-time coach of the year turned down-on-their-luck teams into contenders, the Cleveland Cavaliers into miracle men, and the Boston Celtics into champions (1981).
But around here, his stopover in Bowling Green endures as anything but a footnote.
Before Fitch led the Miracle of Richfield — as the Cavs' 1975-76 season became known — the Falcons watched him answer a hoops prayer of their own.
It was 1967, and the magic of Nate Thurmond, Butch Komives, and those early-60s BG teams that first turned Anderson Arena into the House That Roars could not have been more of a memory.
Fitch, a 34-year-old Iowan who had spent the previous five seasons at Division II North Dakota, changed everything, beginning with his players' bodies.
Piatkowski, at the time 6-8 and 250 pounds, remembers the coach, never one to mince words, calling him too fat and having the team train with the cross country runners. The basketball players were the ones wearing weighted vests.
Bob Hill, a freshman on that team who went on to become a longtime NBA coach, likewise recalled his first day of conditioning when he arrived on campus in the summer.
"I never thought I would survive it," Hill said a few years ago. "[Fitch] took us to a farm where he had a half-mile course marked out. He had us jog to the half-mile mark, then sprint back. And we had to do that five times. Then we had to run 100-yard dashes, and the only way we dropped out was if we won them. Then we went to the gym and ran a fast-break drill for 30 minutes.
"After we were finished, I went back to my room, fell asleep, and woke up at 4 the next morning."
But, as the players learned, there was a method to the coach's basketball madness.
"It was good for the players, because it helped them get on the same page together," Fitch said. "If you go through that much hard work, you want to get something out of it."
And so they did.
Led by Piatkowski, the senior standout from Woodward who had slimmed down to 212 pounds, the Falcons rallied around each other — and their coach — almost immediately. In a marquee early showdown at a packed Cleveland Arena — which was owned by BG grad Nick Mileti, the soon-to-be founder of the Cavaliers, who debuted in 1970 — BG upset the great Calvin Murphy and Niagara, and kept rolling. The next week, it beat Virginia and Syracuse.
Heck, the Falcons (18-7, 10-2 MAC) were so good that Fitch had a 7-foot dummy built midway through the season.
"We would have to shoot over it in practice," said Piatkowski, whose son, Eric, played for Fitch on the Clippers in the mid-90s, "because he thought we'd have to go through Lew Alcindor and UCLA [in the NCAA tournament]."
Alas, Bowling Green never got its shot at the NCAA champs, falling to Marquette 72-71 in the first round of the then-23-team dance. And Fitch left to become the head coach at Minnesota after the season. (He was then tabbed to get the Cavs off the ground in 1970, hired by Mileti because of the BG connection.)
But whether the good times were fleeting or not, nothing could diminish what Fitch and his Falcons paired to accomplish that winter, their place in school lore only growing by the year.
Call it the Miracle of Bowling Green.
First Published February 6, 2022, 6:53pm
SAme old Same old
