The University of Hawaii men’s and women’s basketball teams both made NCAA tournaments this year, the first time that’s happened since 1994.

It made me think that there are many things about basketball, UH and teams we played that readers probably don’t know.

First and foremost, the sport of basketball has a Hawaii connection. Local boy Luther Gulick Jr. played a role in creating it. Gulick was the son of a missionary doctor, and a street in Kalihi is named for him.

After graduating from Punahou, Gulick became a physical education instructor at the YMCA in Springfield, Mass. Gulick noticed that YMCA staffers were bored with calisthenics in winter and asked his students to develop indoor games that were “interesting, easy to learn, easy to play in winter, and by artificial light.”

His student James Naismith came up with a game “as free from roughness as possible, adaptable to large and small groups of men, and (giving) all-around development.” His idea? Basketball. And it spread like wildfire through YMCAs across the country.

Five years later another student, William Morgan, came up with volleyball, which he originally called mintonette.

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On March 18 the UH men beat the University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley was named after Anglo-Irish Bishop George Berkeley, who pronounced his name “Bark-lee.”

Cal was the first of the University of California schools. It was founded in 1868.

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The UH Wahine played and lost to UCLA in the first round Saturday. UCLA was founded in 1882 as the southern branch of a Northern California school. Many think it was Berkeley but they’d be wrong. It was the southern branch of what today is San Jose State.

Back in 1862 San Jose State was the California State Normal School. Normal schools trained teachers.

UCLA began as the southern branch campus of the California State Normal School, in downtown L.A.

Forty years later it had outgrown its location and selected Westwood (instead of Palos Verdes) as its new campus. It moved there in 1929. The UC Berkeley student council suggested UCLA’s mascot be Bruins (another word for bears) as Berkeley was known as the California Golden Bears.

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The word “California” has an interesting history. It was created by Spanish writer Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo in 1510. His fictional book “The Adventures of Esplandian” suggested California was an island paradise inhabited solely by women. Their queen was named Calafia.

The book was popular in 1533 when Spanish explorers Becerra and Ximenez landed in what today is Baja California and thought it was an island.

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The name Los Angeles has a similar, interesting etymology. It was founded in 1771 by Junipero Serra, a Franciscan friar. He established what was called “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles del Rio de Porciuncula.”

Translated into English, it means “The Town of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels of the Porciuncula River.” “The Queen of the Angels” referred to the Virgin Mary. Porciuncula was the church founded by St. Francis of Assisi.

The Porciuncula River is today called the Los Angeles River, an unimpressive, narrow, concrete-lined channel.

Southern Californians argued for several decades about how to pronounce Los Angeles. The L.A. Times argued on its masthead throughout the 1920s and ’30s that it be the Spanish “Los An-hey-les.”

The debate was settled in 1934 when the English pronunciation was chosen by the United States Board on Geographic Names. It decreed that the name should be Anglicized to “Loss AN-ju-less.”

By the way, there used to be two Californias: Alta California in the north (capital was Monterrey) and Baja California in the south. Both were Spanish, then Mexican, until the Mexican-American War in 1848 when the U.S. took over.

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Several other California schools have interesting histories. The University of Southern California was founded in 1880. Its original nicknames were the Fighting Wesleyans and Fighting Methodists. Opposing teams must have shuddered in fear!

Where did USC get the Trojan nickname? USC was losing badly to Stanford in a 1912 track meet but fought valiantly and almost came from behind to win.

Los Angeles Times sportswriter Owen Bird related that the USC team “fought on like Trojans,” and the president of the university at the time, George F. Bovard, approved the nickname officially.

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UC Riverside began as the Citrus Experiment Station in 1907, where the country’s first navel oranges were developed.

UC San Diego was proposed to be named UC La Jolla in 1958. San Diego residents protested because La Jolla’s real estate and business practices were viewed as discriminatory to minorities. They convinced the UC regents to name it UC San Diego instead.

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Hawaii residents played a role in creating five major sports: surfing, basketball, volleyball, beach volleyball and baseball. Alexander Joy Cartwright left New York after laying down the rules of modern baseball in 1846 and took up residence in Hawaii. He became our fire chief.

Both our men’s and women’s basketball teams had great seasons, and I congratulate them.

Bob Sigall, author of the Companies We Keep books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.