Schaus

When those media outlets “Brought on the Mountaineers,” they told of the “Golden Era” of WVU basketball and almost always reported on winning efforts in the far-flung Southern Conference.

From 1955 — when Fred Schaus began his too-short coaching career in Morgantown — until 1963, when George King did the sideline strategizing, the Mountaineers were one of the winningest teams in all of college basketball.

The near-decade of success had Mountaineer teams claiming Southern Conference championships and posting 20-win seasons as regularly as UCLA took home national championships under coach John Wooden.

Schaus coached for six seasons, only leaving after the 1960 campaign when he became coach of the Los Angeles Lakers and had rookie Jerry West on his NBA team, Schaus had a six-year record of 146-37 and spent his WVU coaching career atop the Southern Conference and playing in the NCAA Tournament.

West

Superlatives about the team, its coaches and players came from veteran writers like Shorty Hardman, Stubby Currence, Mickey Furfari, Tony Constantine and Bill Evans. And Fleming outdistanced them all with his often larger-than-life descriptions of fast-paced games, especially those played at the WVU Field House, where 6,000 fans squeezed into the cramped but boisterous stands.

First, it was “Hot Rod” Hundley doing his scoring, showmanship and winning of games for the blue and gold. In his three seasons for the Mountaineers, the team had a combined 65-25 record and three Southern Conference titles in hand. Hundley had All-American honors in his last two seasons — 1956 and 1957.

Then came the three-year term of Jerry West, like Hundley and in-state player from Chelyan, who scored and rebounded his way to permanence in the WVU record books.

Freshmen could not play varsity basketball, courtesy of NCAA rules, when West came to Morgantown in 1956, and so in his three seasons the Mountaineers had a combined win-loss record of 81-12, won three more Southern Conference titles and played in the NCAA national championship game when he was a junior in 1959.

Schaus presided over teams that combined for a 56-5 Southern Conference record and strode through the league unbeaten in 1957, 1958, and 1959.

King

West was on almost every All-America team posted in his last two seasons. He also was a member of the gold medal-winning United States Olympic team in 1960.

In 1958, the Mountaineers finished the regular with one loss and with a consensus No. 1 ranking in the newspaper polls. They took the conference tournament championship but lost the services of senior Don Vincent with a broken leg in so doing. Vincent could not play in the NCAA tournament, being replaced in the starting lineup by sophomore Willie Akers. And West Virginia lost in New York City to Manhattan’s Jaspers, 89-84.

Others in Schaus’ core of 1957-1958 players were West, Lloyd Sharrar, Bob Smith, Joedy Gardner, Bucky Bolyard, Ronnie Retton and Bob Clousson. West, Sharrar, Smith, Bolyard and Retton are all in the WVU Athletic Hall of Fame.

When West was a junior, it was him along with Smith, Bolyard, Akers and Clousson comprising the starting lineup. The rest of the core of players helping the much-toasted Mountaineers past NCAA tournament foes Dartmouth, St. Joseph’s, Boston University and Louisville and into the national championship game versus California were Jim Ritchie, Lee Patrone, Joe Posch, Butch Goode and Retton.

That much-remembered team won 29 games before its 71-70 loss to California.

Thorn

As a senior, West and company stayed ahead of all the pursuers from the Southern Conference and rode into the NCAA Tournament with a starting lineup that featured Akers, Patrone, Jim Warren and Jim Ritchie. The most-used reserves were Paul Miller, Posch and Goode.

Coach King kept the winning wheels in motion, registering a record of 70-18 for the years 1961 through 1963. Rod Thorn, once labeled a “state natural resource” by the West Virginia legislature, was King’s most chronicled player.

King left Morgantown after the 1965 season with his record stamped in bold faced print at 102-43.

The “Golden Era” came before the avalanche of public information about college basketball became available. Its players were recruited from nearly every corner of the state or small towns in bordering states and the homegrown faces were generally placed on pedestals of various sizes and heights by the public.

Schaus was a WVU graduate, had been one of the better players on Mountaineer basketball teams and had even been president of the student body at one time as an undergraduate.

Vincent

Those seasons of whirlwind winning became known as the “Golden Era” of WVU basketball. And the athletes of those mostly electrifying teams that showed up-tempo basketball and their heels to many an opponent had accolades piled on their shoulders and their likenesses shown in the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame.