The very first season of basketball at ULM was 1931-32 when the school competed as a junior college. Then known as Ouachita Junior College (OJC), Paul Kemerer was named the first-ever head coach (he was also the football coach). OJC won its first-ever game with a victory over the Louisiana College Freshmen. It also defeated Magnolia A&M that season, but many games were cancelled due to heavy flooding in the area which made transportation a challenge. Three of OJC's five starters were members of the football team.
Due to financial complications, basketball was disessembled the next two seasons. In 1934-35, Jim Malone arrived as football coach and athletic director and brought in Cary Phillips as head coach. It was big-news because Phillips was a prominent basketball figure in the area and an All-Conference guard at Ole Miss. OJC went 3-8 in 1934-35 before dejavu kicked in and the program was cut once again because of money. Phillips left to run a drug store in West Monroe and also ran the city's Brown Paper Mill Safety First basketball team as both a player and coach. He didn't get another call from the school for 16 years when it was looking for its first-ever senior college coach.
Basketball was replaced by boxing until 1938-39 when it returned for one season. Malone coached the team and went 4-9 before cutting it again in 1939-40. The program returned for good in 1940-41 and Malone coached the team to four straight winning seasons from 1940-44 with key wins over Southeastern Louisiana (also a junior college at the time), Henderson State, Louisiana College, Howard (now Samford), Mississippi State Teachers (now Southern Miss) and Louisiana Tech. Most of Malone's rosters were filled with his own football players and he built his schedules along the way as the seasons progressed.
Malone bowed out as the basketball coach in 1948-49. He ended his career with a creditable 66-48 record. Sergeant Edward Payne, a member of the school's Army ROTC staff, was the coach for the final two years of junior college basketball from 1949-1951 (then known as Northeast Junior College or NJC). Football star George Tarasovic was NJC's leading scorer in 1950-51 with 21 points per game.
ULM (then known as Northeast Louisiana State College or NLSC) became a senior college in 1951-52 and reloaded its entire roster with freshmen. Phillips was brought back to coach the team after he finished his career with the Brown Paper Mill team and also as a star in the Amateur Athletic Union. Phillips was famous in Monroe-West Monroe at the time after his Brown Paper Mill team defeated the New York Celtics - the original Celtics - 28-24 and was reported throughout the country. Phillips also coached Brown Paper Mill to five straight SAAU titles and two national second-places.
Phillips' goal at NLSC was to build a team of all freshmen and let them grow over time. Consequently, wins were tough to come by the first year and the team finished 2-15. In his second year, he signed his first real standout in Billy Bigby, a 6-5 forward from Holmes Junior College. Bigby and James Shively, a sophomore who was the team's best player from the year before, helped increase the team's win total to six. Though more importantly, NLSC defeated three teams in the Gulf States Conference which was big news because the program was set to join the league the following year.
When NLSC joined the GSC, the league mandated that the head basketball coach be a full-time employee at the school. Phillips was part-time because of his Calvert's Drug Store in West Monroe and he did not want to give that up. Consequently, he stepped down before the 1953-54. Arnold Kilpatrick, the AD at the time and also an assistant coach, took over as head coach. Kilpatrick also worked as the head track coach. assistant football coach and an athletic trainer at the same time.
Kilpatrick brought in NLU's first real star in his inaugural season, Mel Gibson from Holmes JC. Gibson was a jump-shooter that leaped high, was hard to block and had tremendous accuracy. NLU defeated Louisiana Tech, the defending conference champions, twice that season.
“If we'd had the three-point shot then,” Kilpatrick would say later, “we wouldn't have been beaten.”
Kilpatrick continued to recruit out of Holmes JC and brought in another star the following year, Bill Bradley. The team finished 21-13 in 1954-55 followed by two more winning seasons in 1955-56 and 1956-57.
Despite three consecutive winning seasons, Kilpatrick's dream was not in sports, but rather to be the president at the University. He first gave up his AD job on June 30, 1957 and then his coaching jobs a few weeks later. He became a full-time faculty member in education, earned his doctorate and was promoted to department head at NLU. In 1966, Kilpatrick became president at Northwestern State, and later president of the NAIA and a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Initially, it was reported that Johnny Reagan would take over as the next head coach in 1957-58. Reagan was Kilpatrick's assistant coach and it was announced in a small column in The News-Star that he was next in line. However, Reagan left Monroe to return to his native Kentucky.
NLU decided to hire a coach out of East Texas Baptist but also had strong ties to northern Louisiana - Lenny Fant. He had been a basketball star in Shreveport, the team captain, an outstanding forward and the student body president. He then coached at Delhi High School for three seasons and played on an independent basketball team organized by Curtis Nicholls, a loyal and long-time NLU supporter. Fant then went from Delhi to Louisiana College as basketball coach and later athletic director. Serving as AD of a struggling sports program with money problems was more than Fant had bargained for, so he left after only one year and took the East Texas Baptist job where he stayed for three years. Fant went 56-22 at ETBC and won the Big State Conference and NAIA district championships his last two seasons.
Fant spent 22 seasons at NLU and compiled a 326-221 record. His influence on NLU/ULM basketball extended far beyond his years as a coach and beyond his life itself.
Fant's final year was 1978-79. He and all-time leading scorer Calvin Natt went out together as champions. They finished 23-6 and won the Atlantic Sun Tournament. The school made its first-ever post-season appearance as it headed to the NIT. Natt finished his career with 2,581 points, which was top-10 in NCAA history at the time. Natt was also a three-time Louisiana Player of the Year winner and a First-Team All-American pick as a senior. He still stands as ULM's only first round NBA draft pick as he was selected No. 8 by the New Jersey Nets in 1979.
Fant was a five-time Coach of the Year winner and he did it the right way. His teams were big winners but he never let the winning dominate his thinking or cloud his judgment. Before the NIT game against Virginia, he was asked if going to the NIT was the highlight of his career.
“No,” he said. “It is very rewarding because we've worked so hard to get here, but the high point of my career has to be all the relationships I've had with the players of the years.”
Fant worked briefly in private business before returning to the University as the administrative assistant to the athletic director. He remained close to NLU basketball and his ex-players; a popular and revered figure. In 1997, he was diagnosed with cancer. His long, 18-month battle was faced with optimism and a fighting spirit. One of his last major public appearances came on Feb. 7, 1998 for the Basketball Oldtimers Reunion at the Coliseum. Fant wasn't sure he would be strong enough to make it at first, but he of course he was. Throughout his long battle, Fant never gave in to bitterness. When friends talked to him, they never heard complaints but compliments for the many who called, visited, drove him to restaurants, to NLU, the doctor's office, etc. On his final day on Oct. 12, 1998, a room in the Coliseum had been named in his honor. After his death, the building itself was re-named Fant-Ewing Coliseum in his memory.
Benny Hollis coached the program for two seasons (1979-81), followed by Mike Vining who won 402 career games (most in school history) in 24 years. From 1961-1982, Fant, Hollis and Vining coached ULM to 21 consecutive winning seasons. The trio combined for 761 wins.
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Special thanks to Bob Anderson, former SID for 33 years (1961-1994), for his heavy contributions and research. Anderson has been an interested observer in ULM for more than 55 years as both an employee and a fan. He is still a regular at ULM sporting events.
