Legendary Dons Team Won Back-to-Back NCAA Titles
DONS SOCIAL MEDIA HUB | CBS SPORTS NETWORK | 1955TEAM CAPSULE | 1956 TEAM CAPSULE
(San Francisco) – San Francisco basketball will be featured Tuesday, March 20 when CBS Sports Network premiers "16" a look at the top 16 teams in NCAA Basketball history. The Dons legendary back-to-back title teams of 1954-55 and 1955-56 will be featured Tuesday, March 20 at 7:00 PM and 10:00 PM (PT) on CBS Sports Network.
Despite suffering three straight losing seasons after taking over the coaching reigns from coaching legend Pete Newell, Phil Woolpert took the Dons back to the pinnacle of college basketball in 1954-55. With two future Naismith Hall of Fame players on the roster – legends K.C. Jones and Bill Russell – Woolpert changed the game with a starting lineup that featured three African-American players. A two-time national coach of the year and an innovator in every sense of the word, Woolpert was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 1992.
After losing to UCLA in the third game of the 1954-55 season, San Francisco roared to a 60-game winning streak – at the time the longest in Division I history – and captured back-to-back NCAA Championships with a 77-63 victory against La Salle in 1955 and a 83-71 triumph against Iowa in the 1956 final. After the departure of Jones and Russell, Woolpert guided the Green and Gold to the 1957 Final-Four where it lost to Wilt Chamberlain's Kansas squad.
