Vadal Peterson was scrambling. It was the fall of 1943 and Utah’s basketball coach had one scholarship player — freshman Dick Smuin — for the 1943-44 season. The American war machine had decimated his ranks by snatching up more than a few good men. Many schools faced the same predicament; Most of Utah’s fellow Big Seven schools disbanded, including 1943 NCAA champion Wyoming.

But Peterson thought if he could field a team he would, so he posted a notice on the bulletin board announcing tryouts.

“I went (to Utah intending) to play basketball, most of the players did,” says Arnie Ferrin, who was a two-time All-State player at Ogden High. “I don’t think (Peterson) knew who I was, maybe he did. I went to his office and told him who I was. … As I was walking away, he called after me and said, ‘You’ve got your own shoes haven’t you?’ ”

When the 6-4 blond Ferrin arrived at tryouts, he ran into a 5-7 son of Japanese immigrants, or Nisei, Wat Misaka, who had played at Ogden High two years ahead of Ferrin, and Herb Wilkinson, a star forward in the local Salt Lake Mormon leagues, whom Peterson had asked to try out.

“I really hadn’t intended on continuing basketball,” says Misaka, who New York fans may recall more as the first non-caucasian to play in the NBA in a short stint with the Knicks. “I was just thinking about trying to get my engineering degree.”

The program didn’t have much of anything left. The gym had been commandeered for use as an Army barracks and there wasn’t much of a budget for equipment. So Ferrin and Misaka and the others tried out in what Misaka calls a “little cracker-box gym the women used.”

Just a few months later, this “rag-tag” group as Misaka likes to say, or more affectionately known to their fans as the “Whiz Kids,” “Blitz Kids,” “Zoot Utes” or “Live Five with the Jive Drive” among other nicknames, stunned the basketball world at Madison Square Garden, becoming the first true Cinderella in  NCAA Tournament history.

After bowing in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament, Utah, starting four freshmen, was a substitute entry in the NCAAs. The Utes won the Western Regional in Kansas City, returned to New York and captured the city’s underdog spirit in beating a Dartmouth team full of New Yorkers, 42-40, for the NCAA championship and then NIT champ St. John’s, 43-36, in the second annual Red Cross Benefit for the “mythical national championship.”

Ferrin scored 22 points in the NCAA final to earn the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player award and then went for 17 in the Red Cross game. As the Daily News said, “Most deserving and most applauded of all was Arnold (Whitey) Ferrin, a gangly, tousled-haired 18-year-old who dominated every minute of play… This performance, atop his 22 points in Utah’s NCAA title victory over Dartmouth, makes him the standout player of the postseason play on the Garden floor.”

Misaka, who is now 90, and Ferrin, 88, may have both grown up a few miles apart in Ogden in the 1930s, but it was worlds apart as far as their lives were concerned.

Wat and his family lived in the small rooms below his father Fusaichi (Ben) Misaka’s barber shop on 25th St. “Two-Bit Street,” as the locals called it, still resembled a western train depot town full of vices like prostitution and gambling.

“I was born in the ghetto,” Misaka says, “But they didn’t call it that. It was kind of a bad area. Of course, Arnie, he had a five-car garage with a basket nailed to it where he could practice.”

Ferrin lived on the other side of the tracks, and didn’t personally know Misaka, who was two years older and ran in different social circles, but he knew who he was.

“I used to ride my bicycle to go watch him play at Weber State. He used to pass the ball more then,” jokes Ferrin, who would one day room with Misaka at Utah.

Misaka’s parents, as poor as they might have been, tried as hard as they could to give their sons an American upbringing, making sure they got an education and providing whatever else they could. His mother made all of his clothes with a Singer sewing machine.

“I don’t remember having a store-bought shirt until after I got out of high school,” says Misaka, whose given name Wataru was shortened by his best friends, who included a Mexican and two whites, all of whom  couldn’t pronounce it.

Ben died when Wat was 15. After he convinced his mother not to take the family back to Japan, she took up barbering so he could stay in school, encouraging him to attend Weber just a few blocks away and live at home.

Then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

Since he didn’t live along the Western seaboard, Misaka and his family avoided the internment camps. Misaka couldn’t understand why the country of his parents could attack the country of his birth.

As much as he could notice the differences he now faced in America, Misaka didn’t let it affect him outwardly. He just wanted to be one of the guys.

“I don’t think he knew he was Japanese,” says Ferrin.

The friendships on the team were more valuable to him than anything. During those times, the Utes looked out for their friend, especially Smuin.

“For some reason or other, he took it upon himself to be my guardian during these tough times in the war,” Misaka says of Smuin, who died in 2001. “Everywhere I went, Dick was with me. I didn’t know that it was his personal mission. One thing that he had decided to do. He was just such a good buddy and always good-natured.”

The bonding of the Utes was vital since they played their home games at Deseret Gym in Salt Lake City, Peterson having to put the schedule together almost from game-to-game, playing against teams with professional players and military teams.

The starters were freshmen Ferrin, Wilkinson, Bob Lewis, and Smuin and sophomore center Fred Sheffield. Misaka was a key reserve.

Despite the circumstances, the Utes finished the regular season 17-2 and were given the option of playing in the NIT or the NCAA tournaments. With the guarantee of $3,500 for the school and the prospect of a week-long trip to New York City, the Utes chose the former, since most of the players and staff hadn’t even been east of the Mississippi River.

It seemed everything on their trip conspired against the Utes. The trains often would be delayed as they gave way to troop transports.

When the Utes arrived in New York ahead of their luggage, they scrimmaged fellow NIT participant Oklahoma A&M with borrowed equipment. During that training, Sheffield sprained his ankle, which opened the door to a more featured role for Misaka. Peterson, knowing nothing about first opponent Kentucky, bought a scouting report on Adolph Rupp’s team for $25 off the street. Kentucky won, 46-38, ending the Utes’ season quickly.

“When we played Kentucky, we were really blown away at the size of the place,” Wilkinson says. “And there was so many people smoking. There was so much smoke. We couldn’t believe they could do that there.”

As legend has it, after the game, Peterson and graduate assistant Keith Brown were walking on the city sidewalks when Brown happened upon a small soldier’s Bible in the snow. From that point, fortunes seemed to change for the Utes when an unlikely option came their way, albeit via another team’s tragedy.

As Arkansas’ team took several cars to a scrimmage in preparation for the NCAA Western Regional, one of the cars got a flat tire. As two players and a team staff member were changing the tire on the side of the road, a car plowed into the car, killing the staffer and injuring the two players. Thus, the Razorbacks had to withdraw from the tournament, leaving the NCAA rushing to fill their place.

The school gave the boys the option of staying in New York for 2-3 more days.

“It wasn’t a vote. I think I just said why don’t we do both. Why don’t we go to K.C. and come back and play in the Garden again,” says Ferrin, who would later come to understand the complexities of an NCAA tournament bid as a member of the selection committee for six years as the athletic director at Utah.

So the Utes got back on the train — during the 16 days they spent away from Salt Lake City, more than half of it was spent on the rails — to Kansas City to face Missouri in the Western Regional semifinal, where they won, 45-35, to set up a final with Iowa State, which they beat, 40-31, and they boarded the train again for New York.

Awaiting Utah was Eastern Regional champ Dartmouth, which was basically an all-star team of New Yorkers who were training in the U.S. Navy’s V-12 program on Dartmouth’s campus while being allowed to continue their education: Long Island native Aud Brindley at center, former Andrew Jackson High star Bob Gale, former NYU star Harry Leggat, St. John’s Dick McGuire, and Fordham’s Walter Mercer.

On March 28 (70 years to the day before the Garden hosts the Sweet 16), the Garden fans were rewarded with “the tensest, most searing drama prevailed right through this, the greatest court game of the season,” according to the Daily News.

Forty-three years before Keith Smart’s legendary shot lifted Indiana to an NCAA crown, there were Dartmouth’s McGuire and Utah’s Wilkinson in the same game, an NCAA final.

McGuire’s one-handed halfcourt shot forced overtime at 36-36. In the extra session, Ferrin (22 points) made four free throws before the Daily News observed, “Cinnamon-haired Herb Wilkinson cleanly snagged the cords with a set shot from 20 feet away — with just three seconds to go!” for a 42-40 Utah victory. Ferrin scored his 22 points, but it was Wilkinson who was carried off the Garden floor by his teammates.

“I was fairly wide open,” says Wilkinson, who took the pass from Bob Lewis way beyond the top of the key. “There was only three seconds left, so I decided I better try to shoot it instead of passing and working it in.”

Two days later, the Utes played in the Red Cross Benefit game against two-time defending NIT champion St. John’s, a bit of a Cinderella itself after beating Kentucky and George Mikan’s DePaul team to win the title.

But New Yorkers know how to embrace a good story, and it helped that many fans in attendance normally rooted for St. John’s rivals.

“I guess those fans of St. John’s cheered for them, but it seemed like every other New Yorker that wasn’t a fan of St. John’s was cheering for us,” says Misaka, who would sub into tournament games shortly after the injured Sheffield took the opening tip.

Although the Daily News misspelled his name, it said of Misaka in the second half: “A one-hander by Wat Masaki (sic) ... slipped the Utes into the lead again (much to the delight of the crowd which was rooting for the under dog).”

“He was a little guy, but he could play,” said Jack Kaiser, St. John’s athletic director emeritus, who was in the Garden that night as a St. John’s Prep student.

“There was a time where I felt like sports transcended war because of the way (Misaka) played basketball,” says Ferrin, whose basketball career took him to two championships with the Minneapolis Lakers. “His hustle and everything about him was when the Garden people cheered at a time there were not a lot of people cheering anyone Japanese.”

After the game was tied at 19 at halftime, the Utes jumped out to lead by as many 10 points in the second half before the 43-36 final triumph.

Said the Daily News: “There really was stardust in the eyes of these happy youngsters as they left the floor with the victory. For this had climaxed an uphill battle for recognition the like of which collegiate basketball has never known.”

Misaka’s love for his country shone when he entered the Army for a two-year stint. He spent time with U.S. occupation forces interviewing survivors from Hiroshima, his mother’s native city.

Misaka told Sports Illustrated in 2010 that it was “ ‘a personal no-man’s land’ of the emotional territory he covered during that period.”

He then rejoined Ferrin and Sheffield for a final run with the Utes to New York, this time for the 1947 NIT championship. It was as if they had never left.

“(New Yorkers) would call us by name, and remember us from three years before,” says Misaka, who notes that the Utes again stayed in the Belvedere Hotel just like in 1944. “It almost felt like we were in our hometown.”

It was that popularity that Garden promoter Ned Irish, now also president of the Knicks, hoped to bank on when he selected Misaka as a regional pick that spring the same summer Jackie Robinson was breaking the color barrier across the East River. The Knicks let Misaka go after he played in just three games.

“Thinking back on it later, he wasn’t so much interested in me as a basketball player to bolster their team because they already had four or five shorter people on the team. I think he was thinking that I might help at the gate because (the Utes) was so popular in New York,” says Misaka, who remembers the outdoor training camp at Bear Mountain. “Since I didn’t have many people buying tickets to see me, he decided to go in another direction.”

When Misaka returned to Utah, he found the job market a little unforgiving, so Ferrin stepped in and helped him get connected to a mining equipment and manufacturing company. Misaka later returned the favor when he was part of the alumni search committee that hired Ferrin as AD.

Wilkinson followed his brother to Iowa to study dentistry, where he became a three-time All-American for the Hawkeyes and would play with the Lakers, and Sheffield played with the NBA’s Warriors on weekends while going to medical school.

Misaka is still working to this day, even playing a role in his local bowling league — he bowled a 299 at age 80. Like his teammates, the Blitz Kids memories stay with him the most.

“It was stupendous for a little Japanese country boy,” Misaka says. “You just can’t imagine how lucky I’ve felt to be in the situations I’ve been and the friends I’ve made all because of my experiences and notoriety with basketball.”

As we count down to the NCAA tournament's return to Madison Square Garden, the Daily News is bringing you the best of 2014 March Madness and historical coverage of the greatest moments at the Garden. Read more:

Kenny Sailors and the Jump Shot Heard 'Round the World by Ian Powers

Garden Crusade: The 1947 NY Champions of Holy Cross by Ian Powers

The Triumph & Tragedy of the 1950 City College Grand Slam by Ian Powers

New York Daily News Sports