num_pages: 400
description: The true story of the game that never should have happened.Something was happening to basketball.In the wartime fall of 1943 at the little-known North Carolina College for Negroes Coach John McLendon was on the verge of changing the game forever. Within six months his Eagles would become the highest scoring college basketball team in America a fast-breaking hard-pressing juggernaut that would shatter its opponents by as many as sixty points per game. The last student of James Naismith basketball's inventor McLendon had opened the door to its future.Across town at Duke University the best basketball squad on campus wasn't the Blue Devils but was an all-white military team from the Duke medical school. Comprised of former college stars from across the country they dismantled every team they faced including the Duke varsity. They were prepared to play anyone-that is until an audacious invitation arrived one that was years ahead of anything the South had ever seen before. Based on years of research The Secret Game is a story of courage and determination and of an incredible long-buried moment in the nation's sporting past. The riveting true account of a remarkable season it is the story of how handful of forgotten college basketball players not only changed the game forever but also helped to usher in a new America.
language: English
title: The Secret Game: A Wartime Story of Courage, Change, and Basketball's Lost Triumph
publisher: Little, Brown and Company