Bruce Bennett: Three-Year Scoring Whiz
The ultimate goal, when it comes to the game of basketball, is putting the ball in the hoop, and few players in the history of Whitman basketball did it any better than Bruce Bennett '70.
As good as he was on the basketball floor, Bennett never lost sight of the fact that his ultimate goal at Whitman was to get the best possible education.
That allegiance to the true spirit of college athletics is probably the only reason Bennett doesn't enter the Whitman's Athletics Hall of Fame as its all-time leading scorer in basketball.
While his mother taught in the tiny Umapine School District, Bennett enjoyed a stellar prep career at McLoughlin Union High School in nearby Milton-Freewater, Ore. The 6-foot-5 center then made the quick jump to Whitman where he continued to score baskets in bunches throughout his first three seasons.
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Bennett scoring two of many |
Bennett averaged 516 point per seasons over that time span, amassing a total of 1,549 points. He needed just 471 points as a a senior to become the all-time career scoring at Whitman, passing the record (2,019 points) established in 1968 by Don Woodworth.
What most basketball fans didn't know at the time, however, was that Bennett's education plans left no room for a senior season.
He left Whitman after his junior year, transferring to New York's Columbia University to pursue a cooperative 3-2 engineering program that still exists between the two schools.
Playing basketball at Whitman was " a tremendous amount of fun," he remembers, "but I was in college to get an education and begin a career."
After completing the 3-2 program, Bennett stayed at Columbia to complete his master's degree in engineering mechanics.
He earned his doctoral degree in applied mechanics at Stanford University, worked for an engineering consulting firm in San Francisco for 10 years, and then taught graduate-level engineering classes at Cal Poly from 1985 through 1988.
Bennett has lived in the Seattle area for the past two-plus decades, working as a structural engineer analyst for Boeing.
Bennett earned all-conference honorable mention honors in his first Whitman season (1966-67) while averaging 18.3 points and 11.1 rebounds.
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Bennett hook shot |
He led the league in rebounding during that rookie season and finished third in scoring. His 475 total points was a single-season record for a Whitman freshman.
Bennett scored 29 points in the final game of his sophomore season to reach the 1,000-point plateau in his first two years on the hardwood. He was named to the All-NWC First Team that season while averaging 20.2 points and 11.2 rebounds per game. He was the second-leading scorer in the conference, trailing only Woodworth, his teammate.
As a junior in 1968-69, Bennett topped the NWC in scoring at 22 points per game. He also averaged double-digit rebounds for a third straight season, and again made the All-NWC First Team.
He tallied 30 or more points five times as a junior, hitting a career-high 38 in one game. One of his many career highlights came in December of 1968 when he combined 34 points with 18 rebounds to spark Whitman's first-ever victory in its new Sherwood Center.
Bennett finished his three-year career with career totals of 1,549 points and 836 rebounds. Four decades after his graduation, he still ranks sixth in career scoring at Whitman based on his three superlative seasons.
