Minium: ODU's 1975 National Championship Basketball Team Receives Championship Rings

By Harry Minium

NORFOLK, Va. –  It was the spring of 1975, and a talented, close-knit group of young men of different races and backgrounds traveled to the nation’s heartland and won the first national championship ever for Old Dominion University.

Most ODU fans are too young to have any recollection of Coach Sonny Allen’s up-tempo Monarchs, who averaged nearly 87 points per game and capped the season with a 76-74 victory over the University of New Orleans in the NCAA Division II national championship basketball game.

For those who didn’t experience that season, it’s difficult to describe just how much that meant to ODU, which was then a very young university whose athletics history at that point had largely been unremarkable.

Nor do many appreciate how much that team contributed to the University’s future basketball success.

Fifty years ago, everyone walked a little taller on campus, students, faculty and staff. National championship shirts could be seen all over Hampton Roads. For weeks after ODU won the national title, there was a party atmosphere along Hampton Boulevard.

That team laid the foundation for the University’s future success, including the Monarchs’ Division I debut two years later in which ODU went 25-4, won at Georgetown and Virginia and advanced to the NIT.

“What Sonny Allen and that team accomplished made so much of our subsequent success in athletics possible,” said Dr. Jim Jarrett, who was ODU’s director of athletics for more than four decades.

Friday night, nearly five decades later after they won the national title, the Monarchs received a huge and overdue thank you from ODU.

During an informal reception for all four ODU men’s and women’s national championship teams, 14 people associated with Sonny Allen’s team finally received championship rings.

Others will receive their rings Saturday when that team is again feted during halftime of the ODU-Georgia Southern men’s basketball game at Chartway Arena, which begins at 3:30.

No one can quite recall why the team didn’t receive rings 50 years ago. All three women’s basketball national championship teams received rings years ago, as they should have.

But these rings were, well, worth the wait. Emblazoned with a throw-back ODU Hudson Blue logo on the front, the gold rings had the names of each recipient on the side. They are simply exceptional.

The rings were donated by some ODU men’s basketball players who asked to remain anonymous. And the former players and others who received them were profusely grateful.

Dr. Jarrett was the first to receive a ring from ODU men’s basketball head coach Mike Jones. He and his wife, Sugie, beamed with joy. He received a standing ovation from the 75 or so people assembled in the Hall of Fame area at Chartway Arena.

So did Billy Allen, who accepted for his father, Sonny Allen, who passed away in 2020.

Wilson Washington, the 6-foot-9 center from Norfolk’s Booker T. Washington High, was the best player on that 1975 team and one of the very best players in ODU history. He scored 69 points, had 54 rebounds and 23 blocked shots in the three games in Evansville, and was named the tournament MVP.

Washington was full of emotion when he received his ring. He hugged Jones for a few moments and whispered something into his ear.

“This is an honor,” he said. “Not being forgotten is a great thing. I think letting the people know that you appreciate what they did was a great thing for ODU to do, because what we did launched a lot of things.

“It gave birth to where we are right now.”

The ceremony was emotional for nearly everyone associated with the 1975 team because, well, no one lives forever and Father Time is marching on. And there is only one 50th anniversary.

Most of the players from that team are in their 70s and coaches and others in their 80s.

Two players – Gray Eubank and Rick Tackaberry – have passed away. So has team manager Mike Wrigley. No one from ODU has been able to find former forward Tom Street, who is rumored to be in Europe.

"Everyone has looked for Tom and no one can find him," said former ODU guard Tommy Conrad. 

Former players Leon Hylton, Joey Caruthers, Curtis Cole, Reese Neyland, David Moyer, Jeff Fuhrmann, Oliver Purnell and Washington all received rings.

Jay Rountree was recovering from surgery and unable to travel and Wendell Morrison was unable to attend for health reasons. Joey O’Brien is expected to get his ring Saturday.

Former managers Tony Flores and Carol Hudson and former assistant coach Charlie Woollum also got rings. Former assistant Ed Hall will get his on Saturday.

The ceremony was personal for me as well. I was a 22-year-old ODU student in 1975 who was so excited about the Monarchs’ appearance in the national championship game that I jumped into my car with two of my ODU wrestling teammates and we drove the nearly 800 miles to Evansville, non-stop.

The guys who accepted rings from Jones were my heroes 50 years ago.

Evansville’s Roberts Municipal Stadium was about half full, but the 2,000 Monarch fans made it seem like ODU's home court.  

We got back to Norfolk too late for the post-championship celebration at Norfolk Botanical Garden, which drew several thousand fans.

“It was pretty amazing,” said Rick Kiefner, part of the ODU radio crew in 1975. “The fans were so excited.

“When we got to the airport, we didn’t see anybody there. But then we turned the corner and there were hundreds of cheering fans.

“It gave everyone goose bumps.”

ODU was a far different place then than it is now. The campus was far smaller – the east side of Hampton Boulevard, where Chartway Arena now sits along with hundreds of dormitory rooms, classrooms and other University buildings – was then nothing but bars, warehouses and run-down apartments.

Enrollment was about half of the current count of nearly 23,000 students.

ODU was largely a commuter school that would not begin playing football for 34 years. Before the ODU Fieldhouse opened in 1970, the Monarchs played their home games largely at local high schools.

1975 was the first time we saw our University’s name in national publications, such as Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News, which at the time served some of the present role of ESPN on the Internet.

"That 1975 team winning a national championship, it was a very historic thing," said Jones, who opened his remarks by announcing "I was two-years-old in 1975."

Everyone laughed, but he gets what that team meant to ODU basketball.

"It set the precedent of a winning program, a program that can acheive so much," Jones said. 

ODU served notice in December of 1975 that it had a ton of potential by beating California, 84-73, at Scope. The Monarchs finished the season with a 15-game winning streak, which began with another eye-opening victory, a 120-87 win over Kentucky Wesleyan, then a national Division II powerhouse.

Most of the stories told Friday night revolved around a game on Feb. 17, 1975 at Randolph-Macon.

Randy Mac, as the school is often called, was one of ODU’s archrivals and at halftime of that game, the Monarchs trailed by 18 points. Paul Webb, who would succeed Allen as ODU’s head coach in 1975-76, was then the coach at Randolph-Macon.

The Jackets' small gym was packed with fans, only a handful wearing ODU blue. They sat three deep on the floor right up to the baseline.

Allen, a master of knowing how to push his players’ buttons, had nothing to say to them at halftime. He simply walked out.

It had the desired effect.

Woollum then told the players “tonight you’re facing the biggest challenge of your life.”

A challenge they were up for.

The second half began with a Randolph-Macon basket, but then ODU reeled off 20 consecutive points. Fuhrman sent the game into overtime with a jump shot and Moyer, who was a substitute who didn’t play a lot, clinched the game for ODU.

“We had a bunch of guys foul out and when Sonny Allen put me in the game, he said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t foul.’ Not exactly the vote of confidence I was hoping to hear,” said Moyer, who would go on to become an attorney.

Then a funny thing happened. With 30 seconds left, ODU forced a turnover and the ball fell in front of Moyer, who picked it up, raced to the basket and made a breakaway layup that pushed the Monarch lead to three.

“All I was thinking then was please, God, don’t let me blow the layup,” he said.

ODU won, 86-85.

“I think that’s the game that propelled us to the national championship,” Caruthers said. “We were in the middle of a winning streak and then we had that game, and they had a great team.

"Winning that game, and the way we won it, it was crucial for us.”

ODU defeated Randolph-Macon in the championship game of the South Atlantic Regional at the ODU Fieldhouse, 83-76.

Hudson, who would become ODU’s long-time sports information director, said “If Randolph-Macon had been in another region, they probably would have gone to Evansville.

“We might have played them in the championship game.”

And he noted that had ODU lost that overtime game at Randolph-Macon, the Jackets surely would have hosted the South Atlantic Regional.

“If we hadn’t beaten Randolph-Macon that night, I’m not sure we win the national championship,” Caruthers said.

Billy Allen saw the season from a very different perspective. He was a 15-year-old sophomore at Carolton Oaks (now Norfolk Collegiate) High School whose best buddy was a guy named Camden Wood Selig.

Dr. Selig is now ODU’s director of athletics.

Billy Allen got to travel with the team when his high school team wasn’t playing and as such, he got to know his father’s team pretty well.

Billy, by the way, was an outstanding basketball player who had 936 assists at SMU and Nevada-Reno, which at the time was the most in NCAA history.

He generally sat close to his father during games, sometimes on the bench. He remembers sitting underneath the basket for most of the game.

He said Purnell, who would later become the head coach at ODU, Clemson and other schools, may have won the game with his defense.

He recalls the final minutes of the game as if it were yesterday.

“The game was close and New Orleans had a great player named Wilbur Holland who would go on to play for the Chicago Bulls,” Billy said.

“We’re up by two with a few seconds left, and he penetrates through our pressure and goes up for a shot about 17 feet from the basket.”

Purnell, Billy said, seemed to come out of nowhere and force Wilbur to double-pump before the shot.

“He swiped at the ball, and Wilbur had to pull the ball back and the ball just clanked off the rim,” he said.

"It was the kind of shot Wilbur would generally make if Oliver had not been there to force him to double pump."

ODU fans poured onto the court while the PA announcer pleaded with fans to go back into the stands. Eventually they did, but the chants of “ODU” and “We’re No. 1” reverberated through the arena for half an hour after the game.

Brad Face, then sports director at WVEC-TV, did a 16-minute segment on that championship team that still lives on the Internet. I got goose bumps as I relived the final minutes of that game.

Video from Brad Face of ODU's 1975 national championship team

As he was cutting down the net, Sonny Allen walked down the ladder backwards. Flores grabbed him underneath his left shoulder and then Washington underneath his right.

“I was just trying to make sure coach Allen didn’t fall flat on his rear end,” Flores said.

A photographer took a photo of Flores and Washington hoisting Sonny and it became the iconic shot of the tournament.

Washington and Flores relived that moment Friday night with Billy Allen, although he was standing on a chair and not on their shoulders.

“Those guys, they were my heroes,” Billy said. “They took me in. I loved travelling with them.

“They had perfect team chemistry and they all played their roles.”

And they were all blue-collar guys. After a goodwill trip to Algeria a few months after the Final Four, the team flew into Washington. When they boarded a bus for Norfolk, Sonny said for all of their hard work in Africa that he would treat them to a steak dinner at the DC restaurant of their choice.

"We ate at McDonald's," Billy said. "The guys didn't want steak. They wanted American food."

He choked up as he remembered his father, at game’s end, holding the game ball.

“He kept saying, ‘We deserved to win. We were the best team in the country.’ That was pretty special.”

Ten members of the Allen family, including  Allen's wife, Lisa, and sisters Jackie Eldrenkamp, Kelly Marcantel and Jennifer Allen, came to Norfolk for this weekend’s celebration.

The Allen family has been frequent visitors to ODU and that’s amazing when you consider the brothers and sisters live in Texas, Maine, Louisiana and North Carolina. And they have all become my dear friends.

“We love ODU,” Jackie Eldrenkamp said. “And we love it every time we come here.”

The family watched ODU practice on Friday and were moved when the coaches and team all approached them and thanked them for their father's contributions to ODU.

"That was pretty awesome," said Melysa Collins, Sonny's granddaughter. 

Purnell was also at practice and afterwards followed the team into the locker room and talked to the Monarchs.

"He gave a hell of a speech," said Conrad, who was also at practice.

Jones, who choked up when he handed Purnell his championship ring Friday night, said he "sees this team for who we are.

"He sat there for an hour and 45 minutes and then came back with us and just told us what he thought we were capable of.

"And for our guys, I think it was really good to hear that from someone like Oliver."

After leaving ODU, Woollum would go on to coach at Bucknell and William & Mary, where he did color commentary for Tribe basketball on the radio for a long time.

“The years at ODU, they were really great times,” he said. “The coaches lived close to each other in Larchmont. We were a close group and remain close.

“Sonny Allen, he did so help ODU basketball. He was a great coach and a great man.

“I only wish he could be here tonight. He would have enjoyed this so much.”

Minium is ODU’s senior executive writer. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram