1977 Marquette Champs Bond Goes Beyond Untucked Jerseys
Shortly after winning the NCAA Championship in 1977, it was obvious how much buzz Marquette University received nationwide.
In the 1988 Marquette Hilltopper, admissions director Leo Lynn stated that there was no way to measure the effect of the basketball win has had on the school. Yet, he stated, “when we go to college fairs around the country and all these schools have booths, there’s always a crowd around ours.”
Marquette University’s 1977 basketball team didn’t only give the university a national win still being discussed today. Through the unique bond between Coach Al McGuire and his players, the team collectively changed the course of how teams expressed themselves through uniforms.
The uniforms designed by star player Bo Ellis produced national uproar by making Marquette the only team in basketball history with purposefully untucked uniforms.
Bo Ellis always had a passion for fashion design and expressed this interest to Coach McGuire and other players. Because of this, McGuire worked with the university to get Ellis in fashion design classes at an all-girls college. As the 1977 Hilltopper stated, “McGuire believes so much in Bo that as the season started he said, ‘As Bo goes we go’”. McGuire’s belief in Ellis evidently was seen on and off the court.
With the support of his teammates and McGuire, Ellis decided to create a design for next season’s jerseys. Ellis was searching for something cutting-edge that would set the team apart from others.
When drawing the design, Ellis sketched out an untucked jersey. McGuire and Ellis’ fellow teammates loved the design, and soon enough it became the standard uniform for Marquette team.
McGuire and the team’s support of Ellis’ design is just one simple example of the remarkable bond that the 1977 team had that ended up leading them to victory.
When talking about the final game, Lee stated in an article in the 1977 Hilltopper,“When I saw him (McGuire) crying with five seconds left I elbowed Bo Ellis. I didn’t want him to miss it. It was great. He had all those great teams, with those great records, but they didn’t go very far. To give him something like this in his last season is a dream.”
The jerseys created and the impact they had in basketball history is just a small symbol of the unique bond that McGuire, Ellis, and the others on the 1977 team had for one another.
Edited by Sophia Millay
