Hall of Fame
Joseph McDermott, a two-time small-college All-American, joined the Belmont Abbey College basketball team as part of Al McGuire’s third recruiting class. During his three-year college career, he scored 1,587 points. After his junior year, he was selected to play on a U.S. team assembled by the State Department to go up against the Soviet Union National team. In 1963, McDermott was the second Abbey player drafted into the NBA, when he was selected in the fifth round as the first pick of the New York Knicks. In 2007, McDermott was one of thirteen of Al McGuire’s early recruits to be inducted into the Belmont Sports Hall of Fame. He retired after a 38-year career in the restaurant business.
