Kyle Neddenriep

IndyStar

It’s an enduring tradition this time of year in college basketball: The cutting of the nets by the national championship team.

It’ll happen Monday night in Houston, at the conclusion of the men’s Final Four. And again on Tuesday at Bankers Life Fieldhouse after the women’s national championship. It’s even become a commercialized event. Since 2008, coaches and players for the men’s and women’s tournaments, have climbed Pennsylvania-based Werner Ladders to cut the winning nets.

UConn women’s coach Geno Auriemma – the overwhelming favorite to cut down the net on Tuesday – signed both ladders used to cut down the nets after last year’s national title. The ladders were later auctioned off by the school.

So, where did the tradition of cutting down nets begin? It can be traced to Indiana high school basketball and Anderson native Everett Case.

In 1947, after Case’s North Carolina State team won the Southern Conference title, he wanted a souvenir. The players lifted Case up on their shoulders and he cut the net down.

“He wanted to show it as a sign of winning the championship,” then-North Carolina State senior associate athletic director Frank Weedon told USA TODAY in 2005.

The tradition continued as Case, nicknamed “Grey Fox”, led N.C. State to prominence – relying heavily on former Indiana high school stars – with Southern Conference championships in 1948, ’49, ’50, ’51 and ’52 and then Atlantic Coast Conference titles in ’54, ’55, ’56 and ’59.

In 1964-65, Case was diagnosed with cancer. His first public appearance came during the ACC tournament in Raleigh, where he sat in a wheelchair near the bench. After the Wolfpack upset top-seeded Duke in the championship, the players hoisted Case on their shoulders to cut the final piece of net.

Many of those same players served as his pallbearers when Case died 14 months later at age 65.

While Case is often cited as the inventor of net-cutting in college basketball, it’s unclear if he started the tradition as a coach in Indiana or brought it with him.

Case won four state championships as a high school coach at Frankfort in 1925, ’29, ’36 and ’39. There is evidence that Frankfort clipped the nets after the 1939 championship, though it wasn’t Case that cut them down.

On March 27, 1939, under IndyStar’s headline, “To the Victors Go the Trophies – Down Come the Nets”, Frankfort student manager Leon Brower was photographed clipping the net at then-named Butler Fieldhouse as he was hoisted by an unidentified Indianapolis fireman.

The caption read: “Always one of the prized trophies going to the state championship basketball teams are the nets through which the victorious basketeers poured the winning goals.”

It wasn’t until decades later that teams began using ladders instead of shoulders to reach the nets. It’s still not a perfect science. North Carolina coach Roy Williams cut his pinky finger instead of the net last week after his Tar Heels defeated Notre Dame to advance to the Final Four.

Call IndyStar reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649. Follow him on Twitter: @KyleNeddenriep.