Legendary coach and athletic director J. Fred “Doc” Bohler leads the Crimson and Gray to a 25-1 record during the 1916-17 season, the best record in school history. The team features the core of Bohler’s outstanding 1915-16 squad: Roy Bohler (captain and brother of the coach), Ed Copeland, Bob Moss, Ivan Price, and Al Sorenson. The team’s accomplishment is even more remarkable considering it plays 18 of 26 games on the road.

In 1917, college basketball doesn’t yet have a formal way to determine a national champion at the end of the season. A panel of experts chosen by the Helms Athletic Foundation, founded in 1936 in part to retroactively select national champions in football and basketball for seasons in which a formal champion wasn’t determined, didn’t forget WSC. In 1943, the foundation declares Bohler’s team 1917 national champions.