[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5308-5309]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO RAMBLERS

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last Monday, college basketball fans 
crowned their newest champion, the Louisville Cardinals. I wish to take 
a moment to congratulate another historic college hoops team.
  The NCAA recently announced that the 1963 NCAA Men's Basketball 
Champions, the Loyola University Chicago Ramblers, would become the 
first team ever enshrined into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall 
of Fame.
  In an era when racism gripped the game, Loyola Coach George Ireland 
assembled the first predominately black team to win an NCAA 
Championship. Loyola's starting lineup featured four African Americans. 
This was unheard of in those days.
  Despite hateful comments from the public and threatening letters from 
the Ku Klux Klan, Loyola lost only two games all season and marched 
through the Final Four. In the championship game they faced Cincinnati, 
a team which had been ranked No. 1 all season and had won the 
tournament the 2 previous years. If this wasn't pressure enough, the 
1963 NCAA championship was also the first nationally televised NCAA 
title game.
  Les Hunter, starting center for Loyola, remembered it as an 
opportunity to show ``that the brand of black basketball was exciting 
and it provided for more exposure and recruiting for future players.''
  The championship game was an uphill battle for Loyola. After missing 
13 of its first 14 shots, they trailed by 15 points with less than 15 
minutes to play. Then, with only 9 seconds left and the score tied, 
Walter Vic Rouse tipped in a missed shot to put the Loyola Ramblers 
ahead by 2 points. When the final buzzer sounded, the Loyola University 
Chicago Ramblers were national champions.
  To this day, Loyola remains the only school from Illinois to have won 
the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship.
  To most players, winning the NCAA championship would be 
unquestionably the highlight of the season.
  As Ramblers point guard and All-American Jerry Harkness says, now 
that he has gotten older he is even more proud of a game Loyola played 
earlier in that championship season.
  On March 15, 1963, Loyola and Mississippi State played a game the 
NCAA calls The Game of Change. It was a game which changed college 
basketball forever--and helped change race relations in America.
  Mississippi State had won their conference for the past 3 years, but 
it appeared they would be unable to compete in the 1963 NCAA tournament 
because of an unwritten State law barring the team from competing 
against teams with black players. Rather than forfeit their place, 
Mississippi State's president and coach decided to defy Governor Ross 
Barnett's vow of ``segregation now and forever.'' They snuck their team 
out of town under the cover of darkness to avoid being served an 
injunction barring them from leaving the State.
  Loyola won The Game of Change, but both teams, together, made 
history.

[[Page 5309]]

The Game of Change altered college basketball and became a watershed 
event in the civil rights era. Three years later, for the first time in 
NCAA history, Texas Western, with an all-black starting lineup, won the 
championship. The 1963 Loyola University Chicago Ramblers helped make 
this possible.
  Loyola's basketball team was led by Coach Ireland and Assistant Coach 
Jerry Lyne, and featured starters John Egan, Jerry Harkness, Les 
Hunter, Ron Miller, and Vic Rouse, as well as reserves Dan Connaughton, 
Jim Reardon, Rich Rochelle, and Chuck Wood. All of those individuals 
are members of the Loyola Athletics Hall of Fame, and each of the five 
starters has also had his jersey number retired.
  I congratulate the 1963 Loyola University Chicago Ramblers on their 
accomplishments and look forward to their induction ceremony in the 
National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame on November 24, 2013.

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