{"id":13263,"date":"2011-04-17T10:21:17","date_gmt":"2011-04-17T15:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=13263"},"modified":"2020-02-15T21:32:30","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T03:32:30","slug":"the-marquette-law-school-graduate-who-coached-in-the-nba-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2011\/04\/the-marquette-law-school-graduate-who-coached-in-the-nba-finals\/","title":{"rendered":"The Marquette Law School Graduate Who Coached in the NBA Finals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Several former Marquette University law students achieved fame on the athletic playing fields after their time at Marquette\u2014world class sprinter Ralph Metcalfe and Packer star Laavie Dilweg come immediately to mind\u2014but only one former student ever coached a team to the championship finals of the nation\u2019s leading professional basketball league.<\/p>\n

Francis \u201cFrank\u201d Zummach was born in Milwaukee in 1911, and attended Marquette University High School and Marquette University before enrolling in the law school in 1932.\u00a0 Taking advantage of a program that allowed Marquette undergraduates to enroll in the law school after three years of college, Zummach received his undergraduate degree in 1933 and his law degree in 1935.<\/p>\n

Unlike most Marquette law students of that era, Zummach received a J.D. degree, rather than an L.L.B.\u00a0 In the 1930\u2019s, Marquette awarded a more prestigious law degree (the J.D.) to graduates of the law school who also possessed an undergraduate degree and who prepared an acceptable thesis on a legal topic during the third year of law school.\u00a0 (Zummach was also among the first Marquette Law School graduates to take advantage of the diploma privilege.)<\/p>\n

While a student at the law school he was widely recognized as a student leader, serving as the all-university junior class president and as a member of Interfraternity Council.\u00a0 (In the 1930\u2019s, law students were much more integrated into the regular student body than they are today.)\u00a0 One of his fellow students at the law school was his former Marquette basketball teammate, Ed \u201cBoops\u201d Mullen, who has the distinction of being Marquette\u2019s first ever basketball All-American.<\/p>\n

The 5\u201910\u201d Zummach joined the Marquette basketball team in 1930 as a college sophomore.\u00a0 His coach was the legendary Bill Chandler, who had just left Iowa State to take over the chronically weak Marquette basketball team.\u00a0 By mid-year, Zummach had played his way into the starting line-up, helping the Hilltoppers achieve their first winning season in nine years.\u00a0 He was made co-captain of the team the following year, and the local cagers compiled another winning record and nearly upset national champion Purdue, which was led by national player of the year John Wooden.<\/p>\n

Zummach\u2019s senior year, his first at the law school, was even better as the team went 14-3 with victories over Wisconsin, Notre Dame, Michigan State, and Indiana.\u00a0 After exhausting his eligibility as a player, Zummach became an assistant coach at Marquette and served in that capacity through the 1938-39 season, apparently while practicing law in Milwaukee.\u00a0 (As late as 1940, the Blue Book of College Athletics still listed Zummach as the assistant coach of the Marquette varsity.)<\/p>\n

\"\"Zummach\u2019s connection to professional basketball begins in the fall of 1939, when he was offered the position as head coach of the Sheboygan Redskins of the National Basketball League.\u00a0 The Midwest-based National Basketball League, which was founded in 1937, was widely regarded at the time as the nation\u2019s premier professional basketball league.\u00a0 Sheboygan had entered the league in the fall of 1938, but the Redskins had been a disappointing 13-17 in their inaugural season.<\/p>\n

The community-owned team turned to Zummach to improve the franchise\u2019s on-court performance.\u00a0 Zummach accepted the position, which paid him $500 to coach the team and $100 to serve as its legal counsel, and moved his law practice to Sheboygan, where he opened a law office in the Security National Bank Building.<\/p>\n

In rebuilding the Redskins, Zummach recruited heavily from the ranks of Marquette\u2019s basketball alumni, and the 1939-40 team included five former Hilltoppers.\u00a0 (Unfortunately, he was not able to recruit his former teammate Boops Mullen, who already played for the NBL\u2019s Oshkosh All-Stars.)<\/p>\n

In his first year as a professional coach, Zummach\u2019s team compiled a respectable regular-season record of 15-13, which was good enough for a first place tie with Oshkosh in the highly competitive Western Conference of the ABL.\u00a0 In-state rivals Sheboygan and Oshkosh, which was led by three-time MVP and league scoring leader Leroy Johnson, squared off in the first round of the NBL play-offs.\u00a0 The team split the first two games of the series, but the All-Stars edged Zummach\u2019s Redskins by a score of 31-29 in the third and final game.<\/p>\n

The next year the NBL abandoned the two-conference format, and Zummach\u2019s Redskins finished with a record of 13-11, which was good enough for a tie for second in the seven-team league.\u00a0 In the first round of the play-offs, Sheboygan defeated the Akron Firestone Non-skids two games to zero, setting up a rematch with Oshkosh, which had won the regular season and defeated the Detroit Eagles in the other play-off series.<\/p>\n

Much of the credit for the Sheboygan team\u2019s success was attributed to Zummach\u2019s skillful coaching.\u00a0 On the eve of the Sheboygan-Oshkosh play-off series, the Milwaukee Sentinel wrote, \u201cTeam play and spirit, stout hearts and an excellent coaching job by Frank Zummach have combined to put the Redskins among the cage elite.\u201d (Milwaukee Sentinel, March 11, 1941.) Unfortunately, the All-Stars, playing in their fourth consecutive NBL final, again proved to be too much for the Redskins, as Zummach\u2019s cagers fell to Oshkosh by scores of 53-38 and 54-36 in the best of three series.<\/p>\n

Although all of Zummach\u2019s teams at Marquette and Sheboygan were all-white, he was not insensitive to the plight of black athletes.\u00a0 Prior to the 1940-41 season, the Redskins hosted an exhibition game against the renown Harlem Globetrotters.\u00a0 At first it appeared that the all-black Globetrotters would have nowhere to stay\u2014in this era, Sheboygan had a reputation for being particularly inhospitable to African-Americans\u2014but Zummach\u2019s efforts one of the Sheboygan hotels was persuaded to provide rooms for the visiting team.<\/p>\n

In 1941-42, the Redskins slumped to a 10-14 record and a fifth-place finish, thus missing the play-offs for the first time in Zumbach\u2019s tenure with the team.\u00a0 Although the Redskins continued to play well at home, they won only two of eleven road games that season.\u00a0 At the conclusion of the season Zummach stepped down as head coach to concentrate on his law practice.<\/p>\n

Using many of the players that Zumback had recruited, his successor, former player Carl Roth, led Sheboygan to the 1943 NBL championship by defeating Oshkosh and the Ft. Wayne Zollner Pistons (now the Detroit Pistons) in the play-offs.\u00a0 The Redskins remained one of the dominant teams in the NBL until 1949 when the NBL merged with the Basketball Association of America to form the National Basketball Association.\u00a0 Sheboygan was a charter member of the NBA, but the problems of competing against teams in much larger cities led it to drop out of the league after the 1949-50 season.<\/p>\n

After stepping down as coach of the Redskins, Zummach remained in Sheboygan where he formed the long-standing law partnership of Wolters & Zummach in 1945.\u00a0 He was also an active member of the Wisconsin Bar Association.\u00a0 Although he is currently retired at age 100, Martindale.com still lists him as a practicing lawyer in Sheboygan.\u00a0 He is currently the oldest living former Marquette University basketball player and the only professional basketball coach from the 1930\u2019s that is still alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several former Marquette University law students achieved fame on the athletic playing fields after their time at Marquette\u2014world class sprinter Ralph Metcalfe and Packer star Laavie Dilweg come immediately to mind\u2014but only one former student ever coached a team to the championship finals of the nation\u2019s leading professional basketball league. Francis \u201cFrank\u201d Zummach was born […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marquette-law-school-history","category-sports-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28946,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13263\/revisions\/28946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}