Glory and Heartbreak: The History of Intercollegiate Men's Basketball in the SF Bay Area by Bernie Schneider (review)

In 1921, Luigi Pirandello published Six Characters in Search of an Author. This book by Bernie Schneider, to twist Pirandello, would best be titled, "A Big Book in Needed Search of an Editor." There is a lot of data here, but Schneider obscures much of it with his poor organization, unneeded parenthetical commentaries, spelling "variations," repetition, and a lack of a much-needed index or bibliography. Even the table of contents is a mess, with breakout sections not identified by pagination in the table but, rather, a general "hint" of their locations. The volume has a great deal of information, much of it of interest, but easily locating such data is a real challenge. Another challenge is just handling the volume, which is a large, unwieldy, 8½ × 11.

Schneider attempts to "cover the waterfront" of all Bay Area college basketball but provides much more depth and care to the University of San Francisco (he is an alum) and Cal-Berkeley. He also provides coverage of the University of Santa Clara (Steve Nash, most noted alum), St. Mary's University (Tom Meschery, alum), San Jose State, and Stanford. There are lots of team and player photographs throughout the volume. Schneider devotes a great deal of deserved attention to Hank Luisetti as the real first star of both Bay Area basketball and college basketball, nationally, who first brought attention to West Coast basketball on Stanford's trips east in the 1930s. In doing this, Schneider also covers many more top West Coast players and teams as he describes the conference races in the Pacific Coast (later Pac-10 and Pac-12) and the West Coast Athletic (later West Coast) Conferences. There are notable omissions, however, most glaring to me being no mention of Rich Kelley of Woodside High, who went on to Stanford where his battles with Bill Walton and UCLA packed Stanford's Maples Pavilion in 1972–74, when UCLA was in the midst of its eighty-eight-game winning streak. Kelley went on to eleven seasons in the NBA. Admittedly, I am prejudiced, having attended these clashes, but, certainly, this warranted some comment.

Where this book is outstanding is in the compilation of data that comprises the appendices. These include coaches and players in the Hall of Fame with Bay Area connections, NBA and collegiate head coaches with such connections, top-fifty teams in the history of Bay Area basketball (obviously personal preferences here), top single-game scoring records by Bay Area players, and much more.

This is really a book for a Bay Area basketball aficionado, that is, someone who can wade through lots of material, has prior familiarity with that information, and can get most of the references that may go unexplained. This is clearly a small, esoteric group, but, for those, the book will be fun to read in short bursts.