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A Historic Year

Recently, in the March 14 edition, there was an article about the Morgan boys’ basketball team from 2023 to ’24 (“Morgan Boys’ Basketball Left it All on the Floor This Winter”). The article referred to a historic year for the Morgan Huskies, finishing with an 18-2 record season, the best in Morgan’s history. Without taking anything away from the excellent accomplishments of the current 2023-’24 team, there was a better win-loss record at Morgan.

In 1954, the Huskies finished their regular season with a 20-0 win-loss record and was the only class C school in the state with an undefeated season. The only loss came in the final game of the state tournament for state champs. Morgan was defeated by a team that they defeated twice during the regular season and wound up with an overall 24-1 season.

During that year, sportswriters predicted that Morgan could beat 80% of the class B teams and 60% of the class A teams in the state. That season, the team’s shooting average was 60% from the field and 80% from the foul line. Morgan’s star center, Fred Gerl, scored 57 points, establishing a new scoring record at Morgan. Morgan’s average game points scored per game was 62, with a high of 94. because of all the newspaper publicity during the season, the number one class A team in the state, Hillhouse, wanted to come to Morgan and play us to find out how good we really were. The sports writers named that team “The Wonder Five,” and it was one of the greatest teams Hillhouse High ever had. They came to play Morgan in an exhibition game. We kept them close until the third quarter but, in the end, lost by 15 points.

Andrew G. Bakoledis

Clinton