2020 Holiday Auction Closing December 12-13
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 12/12/2020
Offered is LaSalle College basketball star Tom Gola’s “Robert V. Geasey Award to College Player of Year 1952-53-1953-54-1954-55” by the Philadelphia Basketball Writers Association. The annual award, since continued by the Philadelphia Sports Writers Association, was presented to the Philadelphia native, high school and college legend three times in his LaSalle College (now University) career with the Explorers. The 8 x 8½ x 27-inch gold metal and wood trophy includes a 7½-inch figure of a basketball player with the ball raised high in his right hand atop a gold metal cup with laurel handles, mounted on a gold metal columned podium. The trophy is mounted on a brown wood-grained metal base with a 3 x 5¼-inch gold metal plaque engraved in black with the legend “Robert V. Geasey Award to College Player of the Year 1952-53-1953-54-1954-55 Tom Gola LaSalle Philadelphia Basketball Writers Association”. Gola led the Explorers to the 1954 NCAA Championship and was voted Most Outstanding Player of the 1954 Final Four, led LaSalle to the 1952 NIT Championship (and was the ’52 NIT Co-MVP), was the Helms Foundation Player of the Year in 1954, the UPI Player of the Year in 1955, and was a three-time consensus first team All-American (1953, 1954, 1955). He was inducted into the La Salle Hall of Athletes in 1961 and the Philadelphia Big 5 Hall of Fame in 1986.