The men’s basketball teams at Tennessee State in a three-season span from 1956 through 1959 were nearly unbeatable and somehow largely unnoticed.
They had a coach in John McLendon who would be enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach and contributor. They had five players who would play in the NBA, one of them a future All-Star. They won three consecutive national titles in the NAIA, the governing body for small colleges. TSU won 94 of 102 games during that stretch.
