During his brief time on the Georgetown basketball roster, Marvin Ritch was referred to as "Rebel", a nod to his Southern background but a foreshadowing of his career after basketball.

As an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina, Ritch led efforts to initiate basketball as an intercollegiate sport, and is recognized as the founder of the UNC basketball program, which debuted on Jan. 27, 1911 versus what is now Lynchburg College. Ritch was its the first team captain and the leading scorer that season, but opted to transfer to Georgetown to pursue a law degree and serve on the staff of Congressman Edwin Y. Webb (D-NC). Ritch, whose college nickname of "Philly" did not follow him to Washington, was sidelined by a hernia upon transferring and played in just one game at Georgetown, failing to score.

Ritch enjoyed a long and varied career as an attorney in Charlotte. Described as a "leading and brilliant" attorney by one contemporary account, Ritch earned a reputation as a defender of unpopular causes, representing mill workers seeking to organize and a streetcar workers rights case where Ritch was arrested for inciting a riot. A Democrat, he further irritated leaders by representing Republican candidates for the state legislature whose seats were being held up by legislative maneuvering.

Ritch won two non-consecutive terms in the North Carolina General Assembly from 1939 through 1942, but received less than three percent of the vote in the 1944 Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate. Ritch would run in three other state legislative races from through 1958 but lacked Democratic party support, failing to receive more than 35 percent of the vote in any subsequent race. Ritch died in 1971 following nearly 60 years as an attorney.

A founder of basketball in Chapel Hill, Marvin Ritch is also credited with being one of the founders of the University of North-Carolina-Charlotte, helping support the nascent Charlotte College until such time as the state assembly approved funds for the school to join the UNC system in 1965. The university is currently the third largest in the state, which almost 30,000 students.