‘Foundational’ BU hoopers head to Hall of Fame

What if Keith Strieter was healthy?

The Brandon University Bobcats and their supporters asked the question long after the men’s basketball team ended their first-ever trip to nationals with a silver medal.

The dominant power forward from Michigan hobbled through a post-season run on a sprained MCL, but any Bobcat will tell you he simply wasn’t himself that winter of 1980. Still, the Bobcats snuck past the York Lions 91-90 and Winnipeg Wesmen 85-81, and led the national final before falling 73-65 to the Victoria Vikings, sparking their run of seven consecutive national titles.

What if Keith Strieter was healthy? Jude Kelly is confident in his answer: The Bobcats win, and then some.

“That ‘79-80 team would have gone down as the greatest-ever Bobcat team. I know they won championships after, but had we won that championship, we’d be in the conversation,” Kelly said while visiting with old teammates in Brandon on Thursday.

“It would have been a legacy no one would have disputed.”

That run was the start of four Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union medals in five seasons at BU, something unimaginable just a few years before the stars aligned in coach Jerry Hemmings’ lineup.

Today, those Bobcat teams will become the first non-championship-winning squads to enter the Manitoba Basketball Hall of Fame during a ceremony at Winnipeg’s Victoria Inn.

“Basketball Manitoba is to be commended. They did not have to put us forward for this honour,” said Kelly, who was part of three of the four teams.

“We feel those teams from the early to mid-’80s were foundational in terms of it encouraged people to come to Brandon and set the standards of success and what winning, dedication and commitment does.”

“It’s really good that Basketball Manitoba has included us because to win any medal at the national level is a difficult task,” added hometown guard Grant Coulter.

“To do it four out of five years, me being part of three of those teams that medalled … is not only good to remember that but also great to have everybody coming back and get a chance to see some guys you haven’t seen for a while.”

• • •

The first trip to nationals came in coach Hemmings’ sixth season at the helm.

Kelly joined that year, after playing his rookie season at the University of Prince Edward Island. He actually committed to St. Francis Xavier in Nova Scotia, but after numerous phone calls from Hemmings, a strong pitch from BU athletic director George Birger convinced him to change his mind.

He quickly realized he was joining the start of something special when he met six-foot-10 Jerry Abernathy and ultra-talented guard Fred Lee. The two New Yorkers, along with Strieter, were by far the most talented import trio in the country.

Lee would become BU’s first-ever first-team all-Canadian that year.

The six-foot-four, smooth-shooting Kelly worked his way into the starting lineup, along with University of Winnipeg transfer Don Jackson, who helped the Wesmen win their first Great Plains Athletic Conference title the previous year, but saw coach Bruce Enns recruit a bunch of guards who might cut into his playing time.

So he joined his hometown Bobcats with high expectations for what they could do.

“When Jerry Abernathy arrived, you noticed a big stability there. I didn’t know much about Fred Lee at the time … but he was amazing,” Jackson said.

“With Jerry and Keith, they were just missing that third American who was really dynamic and Fred was that man.”

Jackson’s Bobcats played his old team seven times, winning six, including the national semifinal. While it was his only year at BU, he takes great pride in what that group started.

“Every time you’d go to the university gym and see (the wall of banners), that’s where it all started in ‘79-80, then it filled up,” Jackson said. “That was the start of the dynasty. It felt good that we were there in the beginning.

“If Keith Strieter was healthy, I really think we would have won.”

• • •

Over the years, Coulter watched the BU program grow while attending games as a high school student. He saw how competitive it was becoming, and after taking the 1979-80 season off and playing senior men’s ball, he knew he had to fight for a spot on the team.

Coulter watched the big stars arrive, and knew that was necessary for the program to be successful at a national level, rather than simply rolling Brandon’s best high school players out.

“When you went to camp and you see some of the players over my three or four years that he recruited extensively … it was really eye-opening,” Coulter said. “Some of the scrimmages we had before the team was settled were pretty competitive and better than some of the games that we played.

“Just to be on the team and get to play, and have some success, were all things you hoped would happen but never knew for sure.”

The Bobcats returned to nationals in 1981 but lost both their games at nationals.

The following year, Texan Will Marshall did his best to step in for Abernathy — no one was filling his size 17 shoes, which still sit in the Brandon University Sports Wall of Fame — earning a GPAC first-team all-star award alongside Hamilton’s Cheddie Warner and second-team all-Canadian Kelly.

The Bobcats lost 75-68 to the Vikings in the national semifinals before bouncing back to beat Concordia for bronze.

In 1983, BU fell to Waterloo 73-72 in the semifinals and downed St. Mary’s for another third-place finish.

While those bronze-medal contests may have been disappointing to participate in, they matter for the Bobcats’ legacy.

“You came there to win the gold or get to the championship game,” said hometown forward Tom Price.

“The third-place game was really early the next day, prior to the national championship game. One third-place game, no one even dunked in the warm-up. Well, one guy did, Brian Ackroyd, because that was his thing.

“But once the ball goes up, you’re playing. We’ve got Brandon University on our jersey, they’ve got St. Mary’s on theirs, and it matters.”

• • •

The Bobcats had another superstar, and this one was here to stay. Johnny Carson received his first of five first-team all-Canadian nods in 1983.

He returned alongside veteran guards Earl Roberts, Ken Fields, Coulter and Don Thomson, while the “Killer Bs” or “Bruise Brothers,” John Bukich, Frank Bojarski and Jan Bujan provided a physical presence in the paint.

Hemmings was on a sabbatical for the 1983-84 season, assistant coaching at Tulane University in New Orleans. (That stint proved critical to BU’s success in the years to follow.)

Assistant Dwight Kearns stepped in as interim head coach and kept the engine rolling.

Brandon went 13-3 in GPAC, swept Winnipeg in the final, then got past St. FX in a regional final to reach nationals. There, it defeated Waterloo 68-61 before losing 70-62 to Victoria in the gold-medal game.

That was the end of BU’s run of national medals, not for lack of talent but for a two-year probation placed on the athletics program.

After that, the Bobcats roared back. With Louisiana native Whitney Dabney joining the full roster in 1986 and David Dominique redshirting before starting in 1988, Brandon won three straight CIAU championships from 1987 to 1989.

Did the 1980 Bobcats walk — or, in Strieter’s case, limp — so the 1987 squad could run? Again, Kelly has his answer.

“No one had ever heard of Brandon University. By the time I’d left, they knew about the program, they knew about the success we’d had, the players, the tournaments we’d won. We built a legacy that had national implications,” Kelly said.

“All of us had a great time in Brandon; we all look forward to any excuse to come back and celebrate with our teammates and friends from back in the day. It’s a bond that will always be around.”

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com