North Carolina coach Frank McGuire hired Rosen Bruce from Bronx without seeing his play. Rosen Bruce was famous for playing in the Catskill Mountains Summer League and was one of the first in the New Yorker pipeline to travel south to play college basketball in North Carolina and other schools.
During the Tar Heels undefeated championship season of 1956-57, all five starting players, Rosen Bruce, Tom Kerns, Bob Cunningham, Pete Brennan, and Joke Ig, were from New York. Rosen Bruce, a 6-foot-5 forward, was a player at the National Atlantic Coastal Conference in each of the three seasons at UNC and was a national consensus in the senior season. (At that time, freshmen were not eligible for Varsity Play.)
As a senior, he averaged 28.0 points per game and 26.9 points in his career. Both are the best records ever in North Carolina.
The 1957 team won the national championship 32-0, winning Michigan and Kansas three times in a row with overtime. Rosen Bruce fouled out in the second half of the regulation after winning two key baskets and 20 points against Kansas in the Tar Heels 74-70 victory in Michigan.
Without Rosen Bruce, North Carolina defeated Kansas 54-53, despite the towering presence of Wilt Chamberlain, the 7-foot-1 center of the J-Hawks.
“It was really amazing that Lenny Rosen Bruce stood on the bench and won, because he was our key man throughout the season,” McGaia said after the match.
The first national championship for the Atlantic Coast Conference team helped make North Carolina a powerhouse in college basketball.
Rosen Bruce was arguably the most famous Jewish athlete in the country, winning the Helms Foundation’s Player of the Year Award for Chamberlain. His number 10 was the first jersey to retire for a Tar Heel basketball player.
Leonard Robert Rosenbluth was born on January 22, 1933 in Bronx. His father worked for a company that manufactures electronic devices. His mother was a housewife.
After graduating from North Carolina in 1957, Rosen Bruce spent two years at the NBA’s Philadelphia Warriors, but had little time to play. Since then, he has coached and coached in high schools in North Carolina and Florida for over 35 years.
His first wife, Helen “Pat” Oliver, died in 2010. Survivors include his wife Dianne Stabler since 2011. Two children from his first marriage; and some grandchildren.
