Why Catholic Colleges Excel at Basketball

Long before a 98-year-old nun became the biggest star of the 2018 N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament, Immaculata, a small Catholic college outside Philadelphia, won the first three de facto national women’s basketball championships.  The Mighty Macs’ titles in the early 1970s, Bill Russell’s breakout success at the University of San Francisco in the 1950s and the presence of Villanova and Loyola-Chicago at this weekend’s Final Four are just three data points among many that prove an undeniable fact: In college basketball, Catholic schools have long punched well above their weight. The reasons stretch back a century — and, some would argue, to the New Testament itself.