Today, Marquette basketball is nothing short of a phenomenon. The student body counts down the seconds until the first tipoff of the season. The feeling is unmatched when the crowd is exploding in cheers and waves of blue and gold in the stands cloud your vision. Being dressed head to toe in sleek uniforms and holding winning streaks yet to be broken wasn’t always the case for the Marquette Men's Basketball team. Many leave the legacy that the program is today to 1964–1977 coach Al Mcguire, who led the team to win the 1977 National Championship.
Many factors went into this iconic period of basketball, and ESPN’s Untucked documentary explores how Coach Mcguire allowed creativity to flourish within his team thus leading them to victory. In the ’70s, it was the normality to see college basketball teams sporting a plain colored jersey with simple block lettering. This was not the case for Marquette. Coach Mcguire was a unique individual known to wear outrageous ensembles while coaching, and this eventually translated into the Marquette’s jerseys. Former player Glenn ‘Doc’ Rivers (1980–83) explains the insight Mcguire gave to the team in Untucked, “(Mcguire) had his own thoughts on the way life should be”. The coach wasn’t on the same wave as other college teams, he wanted to stand out. The first out of the box uniform Marquette wore was the off-center circular design, and later following that came the bumblebee which was banned shortly after due to referee interference.
In 1977, player Maurice ‘Bo’ Ellis made history when he became the first player to design a uniform that his own team would be wearing. Coach Mcguire encouraged players to be themselves and follow their dreams, so Ellis enrolled as the only male at Mount Mary University to major in fashion design. In Untucked Ellis recalls Mcguire telling him, “You taught me that before you pass judgment on anybody, you get to know them yourself”. Coach’s positivity and encouragement for a creative atmosphere allowed Ellis to create a groundbreaking uniform design in his dorm room overnight that would change basketball as they knew it.
It was exceptionally unconventional, eyecatching. The uniform deemed the name “Untucked” due to the fact it was a long, nearly bell-shaped jersey that was meant to be worn untucked for optimal comfort and breathability. In the Untucked documentary, player Lloyd Walton recalls the pure excitement in every players’ eyes when they stepped into the locker room and saw the jerseys for the first time. He recalls feeling as though he were a part of something bigger when other college athletes expressed their surprise and said their coach would never let them do anything like that. What they had created was something groundbreaking and unique. Walton says, “Marquette had something no one else could do”.
As Bo Ellis was in his senior year and Coach Al Mcguire announced his retirement, the 1977 National Championship was just around the corner. Marquette had never won a national championship before, so the stakes were high to beat North Carolina for the title. Despite the odds, Marquette being the underdogs pulled through and beat NC to win the title. Bo Ellis recalls being lifted up by his teammates to hang from the rim after the win, but the action meant more than just it’s literal movement. “Our team just lifted everybody up no matter what”, says Ellis.
Even today, the legacy that Al Mcguire and Bo Ellis created lives on. Despite the “Untucked” jersey being banned in 1984, the patterns and styles the teams in the ’70s were wearing are still seen on players today, and even sold in the university gift shop. Similar designs are still plastered proudly on jerseys, t-shirts, and sweatshirts that remind us of how these two individuals shaped the culture that Marquette Basketball represents proudly today.