In Penn basketball’s heyday, it was Steve Bilsky acting as floor general for the Quakers. Penn’s teams of 1970 and 1971, for which Bilsky started at point guard, compiled a 53-3 record, losing just one regular season game during those years.
Along with backcourt teammate and fellow inductee Dave Wohl, Bilsky guided the Red and Blue to a school-best No. 3 national ranking, taking his team to the Eastern Regional finals of the NCAA torunamnet, grabbing its second straight Ivy League and Big 5 championships along the way. Bilsky was named first team All-Ivy League his junior year, bookending that honor with second team All-Ivy status. Bilsky was also named to the Little All-American team and in 1971, he was the runner-up for the Naismith Award, given to the nation’s best player under six feet.
Bilsky’s most famous moment came his sophomore year, when he launched a 30-foot, buzzer-beating shot to break a 30-30 tie, as Penn defeated Villanova in the Palestra. For his career, Bilsky scored 1,108 points, averaging 13.9 points per game, in his three seasons on the hard-court. He is currently enshrined in the Big 5 Hall of Fame.
After serving several roles in Penn’s athletic administration and a stint as athletic director at George Washington University, Bilsky was named Penn’s eighth athletic director in the summer of 1994.
