CBC celebrates 50th anniversary of 1960 state championship

It was 50 years ago that the CBC Cadets ruled the Show-Me State in high school basketball. Led by dominanting All-State center Garry Garrison and future Hall of Fame coach D.C. Wilcutt, the Cadets won their second consecutive Missouri Class L state title with a 61-49 victory over arch-rival SLUH.

On that magical day in March of 1960, the Cadets became the first Catholic school to win back-to-back state championships. They defeated an unbeaten Joplin team 75-63 to win the 1959 state title. With Garrison and several other key players back for the 1960 season, Wilcutt felt pretty good about his team’s chances for a repeat.

  “We had a good team coming back, so we felt we had a good chance,” Wilcutt said.

   “It was a deep team and they knew how to win,” said local basketball historian and former CBC star Jim Healey, who watched many of those 1960 games as a grade school student. “They had one outstanding player in Garrison, but it was still a very well-balanced team around him.”

  The leader of the team was Garrison, a 6’8” center who scored and rebounded at will for the Cadets. He averaged 20 points and 14.5 rebounds a game in 1960. He finished his career with 1,616 points and 1,169 rebounds, which is still the best in school history. He was a four-year starter and a two-time All-State selection. He was one of the top rebounders in St. Louis prep basketball history.

  “Garry was as dominant a big player as there was around,” Wilcutt said. “There wasn’t too many big men around back then.”

  Forward Bart Freihaut knew how to play off of Garrison when teams played too much attention to him. A slender lefty, the 6’5” Freihaut scored 41 points in a game during the season, which stood as a single-game record for 20 years. Guard Jerry Strange was a tough-as-nails competitor who could penetrate to the basket and run the fast break while Mark McCotter was another nice guard who could make shots. Forward Jim Redd was a football standout who was an excellent rebounder. Jim Prow, a soccer standout, also played a valuable role in the team’s success.

  The Cadets thrived on the fast break, which Wilcutt brought to CBC from his days at Saint Louis University where he played and coached under Eddie Hickey. Hickey’s fast break became a staple at SLU and Wilcutt made it a big part of his program at CBC.

  “This was an excellent fast-breaking team,” Wilcutt said. “Garrison and Freihaut could clear the rebounds, then throw it out to Strange and he’d take off.”

  There were some bumps along the way as the Cadets finished the regular season with a 15-5 record. The Cadets entered the postseason as the No. 2 seed in the loaded University City regional.

   However, the Cadets’ championship experience and savvy came to the forefront as they dispatched Brentwood, University City and Maplewood to win the regional title. The Cadets overwhelmed Maplewood 69-40 in the championship game.

  In the first round of the state tournament, the Cadets turned back Public High League champion Sumner as Garrison scored 21 points and grabbed 26 rebounds while McCotter added 18 points.

  It was a team effort in the quarterfinals as CBC whipped Chillicothe 80-58 as five players scored in double figures. Garrison and Freihaut scored 20 points to lead the Cadets to the rout.

  The victory set up a big state semifinal showdown against Crystal City and its superstar performer Bill Bradley, a future National Basketball Association star. In the end, the Cadets proved to be too much as they raced to a 77-61 victory to punch their ticket to the state championship game.

  Waiting for the Cadets in the state finals was their old rivals from SLUH. The two teams met in the 1959 state semifinals with CBC taking the victory en route to the state title. They had met twice during the 1960 regular season with each team winning a game.

  However, this one was for all the marbles and a record crowd of 5,213 turned out at the Washington University Fieldhouse to witness the big game.

  “What I remember most about that afternoon was before the game when the military department at our school had our entire student body march from the school to the Wash. U. Fieldhouse,” Wilcutt said. “We had about 800 kids. That was a big highlight for me.”

  The Cadets took control of the game from the outset as they led for virtually the entire contest in taking a 61-49 victory. Despite battling foul trouble, Garrison closed out his marvelous career with 29 points and 29 rebounds. He outrebounded the entire SLUH team by himself.

  Strange and McCotter added nine points while Freihaut scored seven points. Redd scored four points while Prow added three points.

  Wilcutt went on to win a total of 569 games during his Hall of Fame coaching career at CBC that spanned 35 years.