By Pep Parotti

The game that stunned U.C.L.A.

By anyone’s measure, it must have been a long trip home. But when the New Mexico State Teachers College (now WNMU) Mustang hoopsters returned to Silver City from their hugely successful West Coast tour on January 3, 1940, they must have been a supremely happy group of young men. In a matter of two weeks during the Christmas season, including jaunts into Texas and Arizona, they had defeated their opponents seven times losing only one match to the Texas Miners by two points. Along the way, in addition to the game they had taken from the Miners, the Mustangs had twice defeated the West Texas State Buffaloes, twice defeated the Arizona State Teachers College (NAU) Lumberjacks, and snatched a stunning come from behind December 29 victory from Loyola of Los Angeles, one of the four best teams on the West Coast; Eddy Page and Willis Smiley’s skills had put the Mustangs over the top 45-40 in the game’s last six minutes.

Had things stopped there, the Mustangs might have returned home beaming with triumph, but instead, the game that followed Loyola’s defeat elevated them to a level that they might never have anticipated, for on the night of December 30, 1940, they took on and beat the mighty Bruins of U.C.L.A. 28-27, in a game that went down to the wire and gave the Bruins an upset that no one could have imagined. In fact, there seems a considerable possibility that U.C.L.A. first scheduled the game thinking they were to play the New Mexico Aggies; indeed, it is just possible that some of their players ran onto the boards never having heard of the NMSTC Mustangs before the contest began. Needless to say, The Bruins got a surprise that night from a team that relied heavily on “the Hoosier Connection” because several of those winning Mustangs—Frannie Ray, Eddy Page, Hap Hollar, George Means, James Grinstead, and Nick Chintis—were Hoosiers, born and raised. And that was by no means the start of nor the end of the Hoosier Connection.

Ken Gunning, the Mustang’s coach (1938-1948) who led his team to their victory over U.C.L.A. was also a Hoosier from Shelbyville, Indiana. And it was from his own hometown that Gunning with Ray Brancheau’s backing recruited Frannie Ray, Eddy Page, George Means, and James Grinstead. Coach Gunning had been a standout star during his college years at Indiana University where he had participated in basketball, baseball, and track. In fact, as a freshman during the 1933-34 season, he had led his team in scoring, and his skills were good enough to land him a spot with the 1937-38 season of the National Basketball league from which he was recruited by Haddon James, NMSTC President, and Ray Brancheau, Director of Athletics, to coach at NMSTC. With the exception of a break for service during the war (1942-1946 when Maurice “Cat” Wooden coached in his place and won a conference championship) Gunning remained head coach of the Mustangs until he left in 1948 to coach at Wichita State before finally returning to his home state in 1951 to settle and coach in Connersville, Indiana. Throughout his tenure at NMSTC, Coach Gunning continued to head a strong basketball program and continued to recruit Indiana boys to play for NMSTC, many of whom, finding that they loved New Mexico, elected to remain in the state after graduation from college. But if Coach Gunning and several of the coaches who followed him—Harve Oliphant (hometown: Vincinnes, Indiana, Head Coach 1950-1956), Jim Smith (hometown: Rochester, Indiana, Head Coach 1956-1969), and Dick Drangmeister (hometown: Calumet City, IL; Head Coach 1969-1982, 1992-1994) maintained strong recruiting ties with the Hoosier state and nearby Illinois, they merely built on a tradition which had started at New Mexico State Normal School as early as 1929 when a young man named Dale Shock from Syracuse, Indiana decided to pass on offers to play for Alabama, Notre Dame, and Indiana State and come West instead.

If WNMU’s Hoosier Connection originated anywhere, it probably originated with Dale Shock. By a strange coincidence, Dale Shock and John Wooden, later to become the famous coach at U.C.L.A., both played in the 1926 Indiana State Basketball Championships, the “Sweet Sixteen.” At that time, high school teams were not yet divided into “classes” based upon the numbers of students attending particular schools. Schools with only ten boys competed against schools with hundreds, and the competition was fierce. Shock and Wooden’s teams did not actually play one another; their teams were eliminated and did not meet, but on the basis of their performances, each received scholarship bids from various nationally known colleges. Wooden went to Purdue for college play while Shock, receptive to advice from a friend, decided to “go West” as a young man. His decision landed him at New Mexico State Normal School (NMSTC/WNMU) where in 1929 he began playing basketball under then head coach Dean French. In addition, he played baseball for Normal and ran track, and then, in what must have come as a surprise, he also learned that scholarship players were required to play football, a game that he had never so much as seen, Indiana high schools at the time devoting themselves largely to basketball.

Riding the rails back and forth between Silver City and summer jobs in Detroit where he painted houses in order to support himself in school, Shock returned to Normal each year and established an enviable record as a student athlete. During each of his first three years at Normal, the young Hoosier served as Captain of his basketball team. Football at Normal had been discontinued after Shock’s first year of play, but the basketball program remained strong, and for the 1931 and 1932 seasons, he was named the top basketball player in New Mexico when all of the New Mexico colleges still fell under the state’s athletic umbrella. And then in 1933, without pay, he took on coaching duties with the school, acting as player-coach during his senior year, only going into games when the teams he was coaching most needed his on-the-floor services, and finally, following his graduation, for the 1933-34 season, he served as NMSTC’s basketball coach, a post he only relinquished in the following year when Ray Brancheau arrived from Notre Dame to take up duties as Athletic Director and Head Coach for both the revived football program and basketball.

Dale Shock’s subsequent career as basketball coach and teacher at Cliff High School left a record of which both New Mexico and the Hoosier State can remain proud. Coaching during a time before New Mexico’s high schools were divided into “classes—A, AA, AAA, AAAA” according to size--Shock built an enviable record for wins and few losses which pitted Cliff against schools much larger including Las Cruces High, Alamogordo, Hot Springs, and Western High of Silver City. On the basis of his lifetime accomplishments, earned honors eventually named him to the New Mexico High School Coaches Hall of Fame, the New Mexico Activities Association Hall of Fame, and the WNMU Athletic Hall of Fame. Finally, in 1974, Dale retired whereupon Dave Rydeski, yet another WNMU graduate, took over coaching duties at Cliff until 1979 when Dale’s son, Pete, was hired as head coach for Cliff High School.

At one remove from Indiana but through the ongoing Hoosier Connection, Pete Shock, a 1972 graduate of WNMU, carried right on where his father left off. Having played his basketball under both Jim Smith and Dick Drangmeister, Pete had been well conditioned to carry on his teaching and coaching duties at Cliff High School, and his own record there, extending from 1978 through the 2012-2013 season represents a remarkable achievement. Across his tenure, Pete’s teams won fourteen New Mexico State titles, ten in basketball and four in track, and in 1999, Pete was named National High School Coach of Year. In addition, on the basis of his stellar performance, he takes well-deserved pride in the fact that he was also named to three Halls of Fame along with his father: New Mexico High school Coaches Association Hall of Fame, New Mexico Activities Association Hall of Fame, and WNMU Athletic Hall of Fame. The man is genuinely humble about his achievements, but his honors also include four other Halls of Fame to which he has been named for his teaching and coaching endeavors.

Brian Shock, Dale’s grandson and Pete’s son, continues the WNMU/Hoosier Connection. Brian began coaching at Cliff following his father’s retirement after the 2012-2013 season. Between 2013 and 2016 when he took off for three years to coach at Alamogordo and Cloudcroft, his teams won two New Mexico State titles, and in 2019, Cliff rejoiced to see him return to coach his hometown team in contests still to be entered. Thus, the Shock family, starting in the 1920s with Dale at the Normal School and extending through Pete to Brian lengthens Western’s Hoosier Connection to nearly a century, but while the three men offer stellar examples of the ties that have bound WNMU to the State of Indiana over the past century, they have not been alone in maintaining that long standing relationship.

L. “Chauncie” Snyder, a native of Mishawaka, Indiana and a Notre Dame Law School graduate, had the misfortune to contract tuberculosis while serving in the Army during World War I. In order to regain his health, Chauncie eventually moved to New Mexico and settled in Silver City where he formed a business partnership with John Bingaman. Highly active in civic as well as business affairs, Chauncie was eventually made a regent on the board at New Mexico State Teachers College, so when the administration decided to restart their football program in 1934, the President turned to Chauncie whereupon both Chauncie Snyder and John Bingaman got on the telephone with the Athletic Department at Notre Dame. Officials at Notre Dame instantly gave them the name of Ray Brancheau, a Hoosier transplant from Michigan and their star halfback who started play under Knute Rockne and who had been named Notre Dame’s most valuable player during the 1933 football season. At the time, in the middle of the depression when jobs were scarce, Ray Brancheau accepted NMSTC’s offer immediately. Barely knowing where Silver City was located and without ever having so much as seen a photo of the town, Ray put his young family on the train and, like Dale Shock before him, came West to take up duties as Athletic Director and Head Football and Basketball Coach at NMSTC.

While Ray Brancheau continued to coach football at Western until 1948, he only coached the basketball team for one season. Who coached the basketball team between 1936-1938 remains a mystery owing to imperfect documentation for those two years, but what is important to note is that Ray brought both Ken Gunning, a native of Shelbyville, Indiana, and Maurice “Cat” Wooden, a native of Martinsville, Indiana, to the NMSTC campus during the mid-'30s, and both enjoyed successful runs with their basketball programs. Prior to their arrival, both men had played professional basketball in 

Indiana. Gunning, after standout years, at Indiana University including a Big Ten Championship, had played one year in the National Basketball League. Wooden, after leading the basketball team at Indiana’s Franklin College, had gone on to play for various professional teams and coached at Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis. When the United States entered World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor, it was not long before Ray Brancheau was called into service as a Lieutenant in the Navy and sent to Norman, Oklahoma to oversee physical training for naval air cadets. After his 1940-41 winning season, Ken Gunning also suspended his coaching duties to enter the Navy, and during the 1941-1942 season, Cat Wooden, taking over duties as Athletic Director and Head Basketball Coach, led his NMSTC team to a conference championship, and then, when the college suspended athletics for the duration, he too entered service by joining the U.S. Marine Corps. Following the war, all three “Hoosiers” returned to NMSTC, Brancheau once more taking up his post as Athletic Director and Football Coach, Gunning resuming his role as Basketball Coach, and Wooden joining the college administration in a variety of roles. Eventually, Gunning decided to try his luck with a larger university and coached at Wichita State while Wooden moved to Los Angels as Principal of West Covina High School. 

Following Gunning’s departure, non-Hoosier, Hank Balke, coached the NMSTC/NMWC basketball team between 1948-1950. He was succeeded by another Hoosier, Harve Oliphant, a native of Vincennes, Indiana who coached from 1950-1956. Jim Smith, a New Mexico Western College graduate, former Mustang player, and native of Rochester, Indiana followed Harve Oliphant and continued to coach Western’s basketball team until 1969 when he turned over coaching duties to Richard “Dick” Drangmeister who had come to Western for his college play from Calumet City, Illinois which is divided from Hammond, Indiana by a single street. Thus, in the coaching and recruiting departments, the Hoosier connection couldn’t have remained stronger.

If one tries to name the standout Hoosier players who played on Western’s various teams, the list seems endless. Several of them went on to become members of the Western New Mexico University Hall of Fame; while some went on to play professional basketball, many others remained in New Mexico and enjoyed successful careers in education. All of these Hoosier transplants attest to the strength of the connection which has bound Indiana to New Mexico. Many of these same young men went on to teaching and coaching careers of their own. From any viewpoint, their playing careers and the enduring Hoosier Connection comprise records which few could have foreseen but of which WNMU as well as the states of New Mexico and Indiana can and should remain justifiably proud.