By Steve Sears

Whenever he is in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Florham Park’s Jeff Kleinbaum makes sure to visit his College Avenue Gym stomping grounds on the campus of Rutgers University.

That gym, forever to be known as The Barn, is like a reliable, old friend.

Kleinbaum said, “It is so full of memories.”

Kleinbaum’s recently published, wonderful book, Unforgettable Knights: A Player’s Account of the Legendary Rutgers Final Four Season, tells in great detail the story of the 1975 – 76 Scarlet Knights men’s basketball team that finished the first and only undefeated regular season in the program’s history. The team was also the only Rutgers squad ever to make it to the NCAA Basketball Tournament Final Four.

Consider the other teams on that national stage: (also undefeated) Indiana, UCLA, and Michigan. The Scarlet Knights, who finished the season with a 31–2 record, were competing against college basketball royalty. And as bittersweetly as that season 50 years ago ended in Philadelphia with losses in the opening round and consolation game, what transpired will never be taken away – not only from those who were there, but also for a guy like me. Recollections of the games at The Barn that I watched on New Jersey Network’s Channel 50 with Dick Landis doing play-by-play. Paint chips fell from the ceiling when the Rutgers fans got raucous (which was often) and out came the brooms for cleanup.

I was 14 years old and an eighth grader. All my friends were Seton Hall Pirate fans. I was the lone Scarlet Knights rooter in my junior high school. When RU battled back from a seven-point deficit and defeated Saint Bonaventure, 85-80, to seal the undefeated regular season, one of my friends said, “I am so sick of that team. They are so lucky.”

Not so in my mind. They were my heroes. They were the Scarlet Knights. That March 1, 1976 game was at The Barn. 

That was not luck. That was a great basketball team.

After a recent trek down the New Jersey Turnpike, Kleinbaum walked in the back door of The Barn, which is built on the spot where Princeton and Rutgers Universities played the first ever college football game in 1869. The door was the entry point a half century ago for Kleinbaum and his mates. He first stopped downstairs in the old dressing room, which had been redone and is now devoid of lockers.

“You have to realize how good we were,” Kleinbaum, who was one of five seniors on the club, said. “We averaged 93 points a game. That is a lot of points. And there were no three point shots. There was no shot clock. There was no dunking. We scored 100 points 11 times.”

Shortly thereafter, he entered the old playing area. “That’s where we came out before every game,” Kleinbaum said. “It is on the side of our bench, and I always look out there because it is the first view you saw when you came walking out – the crowd of people. And my parents came to every game, and I obviously knew where they sat, and it was in view when we walked out, so I would always give them a glance. When I saw them, I would say to myself, ‘I am good. I have my family here.’ And just to come out to the sound of the band playing the same stuff they play today and the sound of the crowd, which was deafening, you could feel the floor shaking a little bit.”

Kleinbaum, who graduated Rutgers as an American History major with a minor in Economics, was a teacher for almost 40 years and also coached high school basketball. His first role right out of college was at Spotswood High School, and with them he won a sectional title in four years. After that he coached for two years at Union High School, and then became a stockbroker. Realizing 10 years later that he missed coaching and teaching, he got a job at Middletown North High School, and finally took over the Whippany Park High School basketball program in 2001. His 2003 Wildcats were a 19–5 powerhouse. He coached at Whippany Park for 15 years.

Kleinbaum said, “I was not thinking of writing a book, but I started thinking of the 50th anniversary of that great season. And I remember that someone who was talking to me about Rutgers basketball had, about a year or so earlier, asked me, ‘Jeff, how do I get a book about you guys? I would love to read it. My memories are so strong.”

Kleinbaum checked with his living coaches and teammates regarding his desire to chronicle the 1975 – 76 season in a book, and all gave their blessings. For more information, visit https://unforgettableknights76.com/.

I have once been to The Barn. It was in the mid 1990s, when my wife, our young daughter, and I took a day trip. We parked on College Avenue and asked a few students where the College Avenue Gym was, and they pointed out the way. We entered the ancient facility, and there it all was. The red seats, the long wall behind the team benches, and the playing floor where I had watched one of my basketball heroes, forward Phil Sellers, stare down opponents and score on them often, and where guard Mike Dabney would make a steal and soar high above the rim and, cognizant of the no dunking rule, lay the ball in. 

In addition to Sellers, Dabney, and Kleinbaum, other key Scarlet Knight contributors in 1975 – 76 were Eddie Jordan, Hollis Copeland, Abdel Anderson, James Bailey, Steve Hefele, Mark Conlin, Mike Palko, Bruce Scherer, and Stan Nance. Head Coach was Tom Young, and he was assisted by Joe Boylan, John McFadden, and Art Perry.

Thank you, Jeff Kleinbaum. That memorable 1975-76 season is no longer such a distant memory. Unforgettable Knights transports me back instantly.

“I used to wonder how a team could come in here and even think they could beat a good Rutgers team,” Kleinbaum said of The Barn. “It is a shrine; it is my shrine. I do not want it to ever come down.”