The All-American Basketball League started their inaugural season in the fall of 1947. The Youngstown Cubs, so-named due to their lower status to the NBL's Youngstown Bears who had folded after the previous season, proved to be the team to beat. The Cubs won 19 of their first 22 before a five-game skid allowed them to finish the season 20-8 and .3.5 games ahead of second place. The owners of the second place finish were the Dayton Metros. A team from Columbus, Ohio, called the Mariners, got off to a mediocre start. In mid January, the entire Columbus team was dismissed and the team was expected to be excised from the league, but the leadership was able to coax the Dayton Metropolitans, a popular barnstorming team, to fill in for Columbus for the remainder of the season. The Metros went 11-4 and climbed into second place at the end of the season.
The Wheeling Puritans, lead by Jimmy Quinlan's 15.5 points per game*, finished in third place, while the Altoona club finished in fourth and became the last team to qualify for the playoffs. The popular Cumberland (MD) Dukes, who drew well, finished in fifth and missed the playoffs despite two of the leagues better scorers in Lou Bell and Bob Pence.The Zanesville team started the season with a respectable 4-4 record after ten games, but then fell into a 10-game losing skid that sent them deep into the cellar for good.
The playoffs kicked of on March 14, 1948, with Dayton drubbing the Altoona Railroaders 68-44. Altoona came back to give Dayton a couple of tough games but lost the final two games by a total of four points and were swept out of the best-of-five semifinal. Meanwhile, regular season champ Youngstown needed 4 games to dispatch Wheeling. Youngstown and Dayton met for the 1948 Championship, and the teams split the first two game in Youngstown before the Metros pounded the Cubs in games 3 and 4 to win the title.
Teams:
Altoona Edwards / Railroaders
Columbus Mariners / Dayton Metropolitans
Cumberland Dukes
Wheeling Puritans
Youngstown Cubs
Zanesville Pioneers
* based on statistics I was able to cull from boxscores I found, not official league stats
No comments:
Post a Comment