It was somewhere deep into a cool March night, 1954, when the blue-and-white Boalsburg bus chugged into State College with a handful of weary bodies. They had no idea they were heroes. They just wanted to sleep.

They were an eclectic bunch, these heroes. Jesse Arnelle, the superstar and soon-to-be student body president. Jack Sherry, the no-holds-barred captain with the football mentality. Jimmy Brewer, the walk-on with the lightning hands and the wide-eyed grin. And so on.

They were as varied as they come. But they were a team. They were, in fact, the greatest basketball team in Penn State history. But they did not know that yet.

At that moment, they were simply the Penn State Nittany Lions, and they were beaming with pride, having just fought their way to the Final Four with improbable victories over highly regarded Louisiana State and Notre Dame.

But they expected no victory celebration. It was, after all, nearly 2:30 in the morning.

What they got was beyond the unthinkable.

"Four-thousand people were in the streets," Sherry recalled. He still seems shocked. "That was probably the greatest highlight of my life."

The town pounded on the windows of that old blue-and-white bus, shook it around, and danced well into the night.

It will be 40 years this month, and the 1954 team will reunite at halftime of the 1994 team's game with Michigan State on Mar. 12.

They have all traveled their separate ways. They have all made their own successful livings. But ask them about 1954, and they have not forgotten.

They were inseparable. They rode cross-country on trains, in station wagons and on buses. They were conditioned to learn each other, backward and forward. They were forced to love each other.

And so they dealt with adversity together. That is what Jimmy Brewer will never forget.

It was Brewer who was expelled from a restaurant in Morgantown, W.Va., because of the color of his skin. It was his teammates who followed him out the door, and drove across the state line to Uniontown to get a meal.

"It was teamwork," said Brewer, who retired from Michigan Consolidated Gas Company in December.

They were not that tall, and they were not that quick. They relied on a stifling zone defense concocted from the ingenious mind of Coach Elmer Gross. Let the teams take the shots. Gross' team would control the boards.

They would do it however they had to. A handful of these guys, including Arnelle and Sherry, were in school on football scholarships. They knew how to box out. Drive the lane, and they'd knock you down. Drive the baseline, and they'd knock you clean into the stands.

Hustle and muscle. The perfect tools for Gross to mold.

"He had a very keen sense of the game," Arnelle said of his coach. "He just kind of understood in ways that other people didn't."

And he understood who his main man was. They all understood that Arnelle was the key.

Jesse Arnelle has seen most of the bright side of success -- vice president of Penn State's Board of Trustees, senior partner in a San Francisco law firm, a college football and basketball letterman.

Yet 1954 may be his most wealthy memory.

At 6-foot-5, Arnelle was the Lions' tallest player. He was also their best, pouring in over 2,000 points in his career.

He was in college on a football scholarship. He played basketball for the love of the sport. And he played it well.

"He was 6-foot-5, but he played like he was 6-foot-9," Brewer said.

Until 1954, no one knew who he was. There was no television to spread the word, to show highlights of Jesse Arnelle dominating the boards or muscling the ball to the hoop.

He was as strong as an ox. Jimmy Brewer's front teeth can attest to that. A forearm shiver from the big man left them lying cleanly on the floor. Apparently, Arnelle had gotten a little angry.

"He was tough," Brewer said. Then he chuckled.

Penn State looked a little out of place at the Eastern Regional semifnials in Iowa City, Iowa, that year. Indiana, Notre Dame, Louisiana State -- and the Lions, an unknown commodity among this potpourri of powerhouses.

The Lions weren't even supposed to be there. They snuck their way into the NCAA Tournament after an up-and-down 14-5 season. An upset victory over Toledo in the first round had propelled them into this dreamland. There they were, surrounded by future Hall of Famers and bright lights and big-budget programs, and they could barely afford to send their assistant coach, John Egli, on the trip.

"That's how cheap Penn State was," Sherry said.

In the Eastern Regional, the Lions "held" Tiger star Bob Pettit and his deadly jump shot to 34 points. The full-court zone defense worked again. Penn State 78, LSU 70. Arnelle finished with 24 points.

"We were just loosey-goosey," Sherry said. "We went out there like nobody gave us a chance."

The Lions would face powerful Notre Dame next. The Iowa fans hated Notre Dame -- an old football grudge. So they took to Cinderella.

Sherry led the Lions out of the tunnel, spotlights shining in his face and 10,000 fans, who did not know his name, cheering for him. He glided to the hoop for a smooth layup, and fell flat on his rear end.

The Lions would not falter again that night. Irish star Dick Rosenthal's 14 points were not a factor. Arnelle scored 22, and Sherry, Jim Blocker and Ed Haag scored in double figures. Penn State 71, Notre Dame 63.

"Penn State was able to come in there and just kind of steal the regional," said Bob Brooks, an Iowa broadcaster for the past 50 years.

And so they came home as heroes. Suddenly, they had dozens of followers. But the Lions' work was not finished.

Members of Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity chartered a TWA flight to Kansas City, Mo., to watch the Lions take on Tom Gola and LaSalle in the Final Four.

The Lions would lose to the eventual national champions, before defeating Southern Cal for third place.

Forty years have passed, and Penn State has never again found the fit for that glass slipper.

And so 1954 has become buried underneath the lore of Penn State football.

"Nobody believes Penn State went to the Final Four," Sherry said.

The 1954 team would be the one of the last Penn State basketball teams to include football players on its roster. The University, Sherry says, made a commitment to football. It still irks him.

"They didn't think they could support two sports," Sherry said. "They never got the basketball program going. How much is it going to cost the University to give five or 10 scholarships?"

Egli took over the program in 1955, and became the winningest coach in Penn State history. He led the team to one NCAA Tournament appearance, in 1965. The Lions lost to Princeton.

From there, the program continued to slide. Penn State would not make the NCAA Tournament again until 1991. That was when Coach Bruce Parkhill led the Lions to a miraculous upset of UCLA in the tournament's first round.

"I think Parkhill's a hell of a coach," Sherry said. "He just has lousy athletes."

Today, the Lions struggle to emerge from the cellar of the Big Ten conference. It is a conference replete with unbelievable athletes and incredible exposure. Every game is on TV, every newspaper covers their every move. Today, the athletes are stars.

"We were just basketball players," Brewer said.

But to a town caught up in Cinderella dreams, they were heroes.