Travel back to the past with Pipe Dream Sports. Every week we will be reaching into our archives, digging up past sports articles. Who wrote those articles? How were the sports teams back then? Could we finally find the answer to why Binghamton University does not have a football team? Those questions and more will be answered as we look back to a time when the America East did not exist.

No better place to start than when it all began, 1946. A few big things happened during that year: a school that would one day be known as Binghamton University was formed, Glenn G. Bartle was the dean and The Colonial News, later known as Pipe Dream, was created.

The date is Dec. 13, 1946. The third issue of The Colonial News had just come out. Sadly, it is the earliest issue in our archives (Issue I and II have disappeared forever). The first Sports editor, Ed Gildea, and probably the only sports writer, covered Triple Cities College (Binghamton University) sports. Way before Baxter the Bearcat, Triple Cities did have a men’s basketball team, led by coach Bert Broder.

Broder and his squad were looking for a new, suitable basketball court to play on. At the time they played on a small, hardwood square court, nothing compared to the 5,322-seat Events Center Binghamton has today.

In 1946, parent university, Syracuse, made their first National Invitation Tournament (NIT) appearance.

Triple Cities college were still four years away from joining the SUNY system and competing in the NCAA.

Here are excerpts from Ed Gildea’s article where he describes the great potential of the Triple Cities men’s basketball team:

“The small court … has considerably slowed up the development of what probably will be a pretty good basketball team … We can have a fast team. The boys are agile and eager to play ball. It is practically impossible to judge the merits of a fast break in the restricted space of a small court, but two fleep forwards can usually guarantee the success of this particular offensive strategy.”