William M. Bishop, Class of ‘55
William M. Bishop has been selected as one of the 16 charter members of Allegheny College’s Athletic Hall of Fame.
Bishop was a basketball and baseball standout at Allegheny from 1951 through 1955. A 1955 graduate of Allegheny with a bachelor of science degree in chemistry, Bishop earned four varsity letters on the basketball team and four letters on the baseball team and served as captain of both squads his senior year.
After scoring 124,210,416, and 434 points, respectively, in each of his four seasons on the cage squad, Bishop became only the second player in Allegheny’s history to score more than 1,000 points. Bishop ended his career with 1,184 points, second behind teammate Eugene p. “Bud” McIndoe, ’53, who scored 1,244 points.
For 25 years McIndoe and Bishop ranked one-two on Allegheny’s All-Time Basketball Career Scoring List. Not until 1980 was the record broken, by two ‘80 graduates, Eric Lindberg (1,289 points) and Jim Wheeler (1,282 points).
Bishop currently ranks fourth on AC’s Career Scoring List as only six Gators have surpassed the 1,000-point mark and just 15 Allegheny players have scored more than 700 points.
Also, Bishop’s 434 points in 20 games his senior year ranks third among single-season Gator Scoring leaders. Wheeler totaled 459 points in 24 contests in 1978-79 and McIndoe tallied 458 pints in 19 games in 1952-53. Bishop’s 416 points in 20 games and in 1953-54 also ranks fifth on the list.
Serving under Coach Robert M. Garbark (Allegheny, ’32), Bishop led the Gators in scoring in his junior and senior seasons. Bishop, who scored a personal game high of 36 points against Edinboro which remains as a Montgomery Gymnasium record today, was named to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette All-District Player of the Week, and was among the top three scorers of the paper’s Tri-State Little Eleven.
Also playing under Garbark in baseball, Bishop pitched and played the outfield. In his senior season, Bishop recorded a 7-0 mark from the mound including a 0.746 earned run average in 67 innings pitched and 87 strikeouts, and he tallied a 0.333 batting average and the team lead in a runs batted in.
Bishop was vice-president of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity as an undergraduate. Originally from Karns City, Pa.,
Bishop attended Karns City High School.
