A special anniversary toast to. . .
Well, there are a lot of possibilities this season in college basketball, especially in the state of Connecticut. A batch of landmark moments to remember and honor and have the old guys in for a reunion.
10 years ago. . .
Seed-wise, it remains the most unusual national championship game ever played. A No. 7 seed vs. a No. 8, with 18 losses between them. something that sounds like it’d come out of the second round. Except the teams were Connecticut and Kentucky. The Wildcats, starting all freshmen, had survived-and-advanced their way to the final Monday night, winning five NCAA tournament games by a combined 18 points, with three consecutive last-minute critical shots by Aaron Harrison against Louisville, Michigan and Wisconsin. Would you believe Kentucky as . . . Cinderella? “We got here through an absolute mine field and happened not to step on a mine,” John Calipari said. “I don’t even know what to call it, what we just went through.”
They ran out of magic against Connecticut and Shabazz Napier, the Huskies winning the title 60-54 to become the only 7-seed champion in history. As anyone in Big Blue Nation will confirm with a grimace, Kentucky has not been back to the title game since.
20 years ago. . .
The epicenter of college basketball was clearly Storrs, Conn. On April 5, the Connecticut men beat Georgia Tech 82-73 for the national championship. The next night, the UConn women defeated Tennessee for the title 70-61. “It’s history,” Diana Taurasi said. Right. No Division I school had ever swept both in the same year. Remarkably, Connecticut would do it again 10 years later.
To make it happen the first time, the men had to drop a piano on Duke’s heads in the national semifinals, coming from nine points down in the final 4 ½ minutes with a 12-0 rush to win 79-78. “I don’t think anything will take this pain away,” Blue Devils guard Sean Dockery said. Mike Krzyzewski would not lose another Final Four game until his last one in 2022.
25 years ago. . .
You might notice a trend here. Connecticut again. It’s a big year for anniversaries in Storrs. This was the first championship for the men and Jim Calhoun, and Duke was again the unwilling co-star. This time the Huskies upset the top-ranked, 37-1 Blue Devils 77-74 in the championship game. In its 21st NCAA Tournament, UConn had moved to the A-list table, and would stay, with four more championships the next 24 years.
Two other harbingers for the future happened in 1999. A little-known school from the Northwest won its first-ever NCAA tournament game and actually advanced to the Elite Eight, seemingly coming out of nowhere as a 10-seed. It was called Gonzaga. The Zags would be considered an annual Cinderella story for years, until they won so often, the tag no longer fit. Also, a young coach named Tom Izzo coached his first Final Four team at Michigan State.
30 years ago. . .
It’s nice to have friends in high places. No sitting U.S. President had ever watched a championship game in person, but Bill Clinton wasn’t about to miss his beloved Arkansas Razorbacks go for the title. He was in the house when Arkansas outlasted Duke 76-72, saved by Scotty Thurman’s rainbow 3-pointer in the final minute, making Nolan Richardson the second Black head coach to win the championship. Charlotte hosted the Final Four, the last time the event was played in the hoop-happy state of North Carolina.
The year could have a group near-miss anniversary this year in Durham. Notice that with just a handful of different bounces, Duke could be celebrating the 20th, 25th and 30th anniversaries of three more titles.
40 years ago. . .
John Thompson broke down a barrier, becoming the first Black head coach to lead his team to the national championship when Georgetown and Patrick Ewing put away Houston and Akeem Olajuwon 84-75. The week before, No. 1 North Carolina had been bounced out of the Sweet 16 by Indiana, ending Michael Jordan’s college career.
Though no one really understood at the time, 1984 was a gateway to a new age for the NCAA tournament. The field would expand from 48 to 64 teams the next year, making room for more of the little guys. The chaos so many of those underdogs would cause in the future electrified the first weekend of the tournament. True March Madness was about to be born.
50 years ago. . .
A half-century has not done much to dull the pain Bill Walton feels from what happened on March 23, 1974. “It is a stigma on my soul,” he said many years later, “and there’s no way I can get rid of it.”
It was the day that UCLA’s aura of March invulnerability came tumbling down, after seven consecutive titles and 39 tournament wins in row. Such was the historic handiwork of David Thompson and a North Carolina State team that took out the Bruins 80-77 in double overtime in the Final Four. For the first time in eight years, the champion would not be UCLA, after the Bruins let a seven-point lead get away in the second overtime. John Wooden would not be accepting the trophy as coach, but Norm Sloan who, like Wooden, was an Indiana native. Walton said he will never get over it, though no one could question his effort — 29 points, 18 rebounds, all 50 minutes played. Thompson had 28 points, including the last four the Wolfpack needed to finish the task.
What time has blurred is the fact this was only the semifinals. As the Miracle on Ice USA hockey team still had to beat Finland for the gold medal after famously shocking the Soviets in the 1980 Olympics, North Carolina State had to win another game post-Bruins. A trivia question is whom? Marquette. It ended 76-64.
60 years go. . .
What was John Wooden to do? No UCLA starter was taller than 6-5, meaning it might be difficult to handle big teams in halfcourt. Assistant Jerry Norman had an idea. Zone fullcourt press. Use the Bruins’ heady quickness to cause turnovers and force the tempo. Wooden had to be sold on the notion but agreed. Months later, UCLA was 30-0 with its first-ever national championship, beating Duke 98-83 in the final.
Thus, with the suggestion of an aide, the Wooden dynasty was born. All was well in Westwood. A new basketball home, Pauley Pavilion, would soon be completed, the money to build it coming from a fund-raising effort led by H.R. Haldeman, who as chief of staff for President Nixon would forever be connected to Watergate. A tall high schooler across the continent in New York was starting to notice the Bruins and think of UCLA as a possible college choice. His name was Lew Alcindor.
How could college basketball guess what was coming? Eleven years later, Wooden would retire with 10 national championships. That was a long time ago, and here’s proof: Kansas’ Bill Self just signed a contract worth $53 million the next five years. Wooden’s high-water salary his final season was $32,000.
70 years ago. . .
La Salle defeated Bradley 92-76 in the championship game. Why should that be memorable seven decades later? Because of where you could watch it. Everywhere. The game was nationally televised to the entire country for the first time. Could TV timeouts be far behind?
80 years ago. . .
No team has ever gotten its NCAA tournament bid in the way Utah did. It had gone 18-3 against mostly service teams during the season because many schools shut down their programs for World War II. Utah then lost its first game in the NIT against Kentucky. So much for the 1943-44 season, right? Wrong. Someone else’s tragedy opened another door for Utah.
When a car accident claimed the life of an Arkansas basketball staffer and critically injured two players, the shocked and stricken Razorbacks dropped out of the NCAA tournament. The spot was given to Utah, with the team still in New York after its NIT defeat. The team on hopped a train to Kansas City, won two games, headed back to New York and beat Dartmouth 42-40 in overtime for the national championship. That’s the last time an Ivy League team played for the title.
Arnie Ferrin, who would one day chair the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee, led Utah with 22 points. But also to be noticed were the four points by 5-7 guard Wat Misaka. He was a second-generation Japanese American, and this was 1944. The U.S. and Japan were at war and many Japanese-American families had been sent to internment camps. The Misaka family from Utah had avoided that but he was still the target of considerable poison from basketball crowds, though his spot in the Utah lineup was an inspiration to many following the season from those internment camps. Misaka later served in the Army and was the first man of color to play in the NBA. And much later he bowled a 299 game at the age of 80.
Two days after winning the NCAA title, Utah defeated NIT champion St. John’s 43-36 in a Red Cross benefit game for the war effort. Utah was the undisputed champion of college basketball, but it would take 54 years for it to get back to the title game.
So it’s a season to look back and remember something important in Utah. Also in lots of places around college basketball.
