Everett Dean, "The Gentleman from Indiana" coached Stanford to the 1942 NCAA championship. With an average size of 6-foot-4 and led by five Bay Area natives, the Indians defeated Dartmouth, 53-38, in Kansas City, Mo., to win the championship. The Indians (28-4) beat Oregon State in a three-game series to move on to the West Regionals in Kansas City. With 6-3 forward Don Burness out with an ankle injury, the Indians advanced past Rice and Colorado. On the day of the final, Stanford was forced to play without 6-5 future Lakers' star Jim Pollard, because of the flu, and Burness. But it didn't matter in the Indians' easy victory. Dean, a future Naismith Hall of Famer, has the distinction of being the only coach in both the basketball and college baseball hall of fame, after leading Stanford to the 1953 College World Series.

With three-time All-American Hank Luisetti playing his final season on The Farm, the Indians won its second Helms Trophy in three seasons for head coach John Bunn, who would retire following the 21-3 season and become the Dean of Men at Stanford. The year belonged to Luisetti, who scored a single-game record 50 points against Duquesne. He twice was named National Player of the Year and during his three-year run, led the Indians to a 68-12 record. Luisetti never played in the NBA, which was created in the mid-1940s, but he still finished second to George Mikan in a 1950 Associated Press vote for the greatest basketball player of the first half-century.

With one of the sport's great innovators in his lineup, John Bunn's club won the Helms Trophy, the predecessor to the official national championship, in 1937. Bunn's teams emphasized defense, though his best player, Hank Luisetti, was one of the first to use the one-hand shot as an offensive weapon. Luisetti led the 1936-37 team to a 25-2 record and gained fame by engineering Stanford's 45-31 victory over Long Island before 17,623 at Madison Square Garden, snapping Long Island's 43-game winning streak. It was the first time a West Coast team had played in the storied venue and the publicity sent Luisetti's shooting style coast to coast. "That night, we changed the game," Luisetti said.