|
Indiana University South Bend's students played sports together from the very early days of the campus in the 1960s. The sports in the campus' early days were played primarily at the student club level. Many are to this day, as intramural sports.
IU South Bend's basketball team began as a student club in 1969. Note: men's basketball began in 1969 and women's basketball began on the campus in 1990. Men's basketball was first under Coach Reinbold. There was a cheerleader team in this year.
Its moniker of "Titans" was coined in a Student Government Association election in December of 1969. The student body selected the official nickname and chose Air Force blue and white as the school colors (later these became red and white - like the rest of the Indiana University campuses). The first varsity athletic letter was offered in 1971. The first men's basketball scholarship was awarded in 1985 - to Saleem Olajuwon, international student from Nigeria.
The first basketball coach came to the IU South Bend campus in 1981, Coach Reddy Gustine, to coach the team at its club status. In the Fall of 1984, there was a student - generated petition to get varsity basketball on the campus (rather than have it at the student club level) and to have a dollar of each student's student activity fee go specifically to a sports fee. It was this time also that the basketball team's uniforms were printed with "Titans" on them for the first time. By November of 1984, the IUSB Basketball Club joined the National Little College Athletic Association (NLACC). IUSB's Titans joined the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) by unanimous vote by the Athletics Committee on September 25, 1987. In the same year, Homer Drew came in as the men's basketball coach. IU South Bend is a part of the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference (CCAC).
In 1990, women's basketball began with its first home game. By 1992 the women's basketball team had won its first game. In 1993, Mary Wisnewski was hired as the women's head basketball coach. Wisnewski retired in 2006, and Steven T. Bruce began his tenure as women's head basketball coach.
The women and men's basketball teams have had a number of home gyms. The first location that the team played was at South Bend's Greene Elementary School. The team got its second home gym - still on "borrowed" ground - at Mishawaka's Bethel College gym in 1970. In 1985 Titans moved to playing home games at the city-owned Newman Recreation Center near campus. The fourth - and final - home of the basketball teams (both women's and men's) - is in the campus' Student Activities Center (the "SAC"). The SAC has three basketball courts as well as an indoor track, weight machines and racquet ball courts for athletes and the rest of the IU South Bend community to use.
| 
