St. Bonaventure University basketball greats Sam Stith and Ronald “Whitey” Martin will be featured guests for a special program Saturday, Nov. 15, celebrating the induction of Bona legend Tom Stith into National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.
St. Bonaventure University basketball greats Sam Stith and Ronald “Whitey” Martin will be featured guests for a special program Saturday, Nov. 15, celebrating the induction of Bona legend Tom Stith into National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.
The two SBU Hall of Famers will share memories in a 90-minute video and interview program at the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts on the St. Bonaventure campus. The free program begins at 10:30 a.m.
The program will include rare historical film of Tom Stith and highlights from his play with Sam, his older brother, and classmate Martin. Tom passed away in 2010.
A two-time consensus All-American, Tom Stith graduated in 1961 after serving with Martin as co-captains on the Bonnies’ first-ever NCAA team. In only 77 games over three seasons, he scored more than 2,000 points and still holds the school’s top two season scoring records and highest single-season scoring average — 31.5 ppg in his junior year.
Together, the Stith brothers scored 3,163 career points, the highest total for two brothers in an NCAA program prior to the NCAA rule permitting four playing years in 1972-73. Sam captained the 1959-60 squad that finished fourth in the NIT, led by the Stith brothers’ combined 52 points per game.
In Martin and Tom Stith’s three seasons, the Bonnies won over 84% of their games, the best three-year span in program history. Martin, a 1961 All-American honorable mention, was, like the Stiths, a member of the university’s inaugural Athletics Hall of Fame class in 1969, had his Bona jersey number retired, and played for the New York Knicks.
At halftime of the Bonnies’ 4 p.m. game with Youngstown State on Nov. 15, members of the Stith family will receive Tom’s National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame induction award in an on-court ceremony. Stith was inducted in the 2024 Hall of Fame class.
The program is being produced by Mike Camoin, a 1988 St. Bonaventure graduate and award-winning independent producer.
His upcoming documentary, “Brown and White: The Heart of St. Bonaventure Basketball,” explores the impact of St. Bonaventure men’s basketball on the university and commitment to its Franciscan values. The documentary presents the extraordinary story of how a small college fought challenges to succeed on the national stage.
The program will be moderated Tom McElroy, a 1974 St. Bonaventure journalism graduate and the university’s former director of Public Relations and Sports Information. His 40-year career in collegiate athletics administration includes 20 years at the Big East Conference where, as the executive producer of the nation’s largest independent television network, he won an Emmy for live sports production.
The National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, located in Kansas City, Missouri, was created by the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) in 2006. Inductees include St. Bonaventure’s Bob Lanier; and Stith-era stars Oscar Robertson, Elgin Baylor, Bill Russell, John Havlicek, Lenny Wilkins, and Jerry West.
Among the inductees in Tom Stith’s 2024 Hall of Fame class was Sihugo “Si” Green, a New York City schoolboy contemporary of the Stiths, who starred for Duquesne University and was the first pick in the 1956 NBA draft.
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About the University: The nation’s first Franciscan university, St. Bonaventure is a community committed to transforming the lives of its students inside and outside the classroom, inspiring in them a commitment to academic excellence and lifelong civic engagement. Out of 167 regional universities in the North, St. Bonaventure was ranked #8 for value and #19 overall by U.S. News and World Report (2025).