It is 40 years ago, an hour or so before Georgetown is to face Houston for the national championship in the Seattle Kingdome. John Thompson walks into the Georgetown locker room and the Hoyas coach seems something of a mess. He’s been that way all day.
“He looked very nervous,” Georgetown star Patrick Ewing would remember years afterward. “I said, 'Coach, we’ve got this.’”
Later that night, the deed done and history assured with an 84-75 win over Houston, Thompson would look back on those calming words from his center. “When the big fella said that,” Thompson said as a new champion, “I figured I’d just let him take care of the rest.”
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And so ended one team’s journey to a landmark moment, at a Final Four that in many ways represented a door to the future.
College basketball was a very different world in 1984. No 3-point arc, no shot clock and only 53 teams in the NCAA tournament. The Big Ten actually had 10 teams. The ACC had eight.
And no Black man had ever coached a national champion. Not one of the first 45 winners.
Forty years ago, the Georgetown Hoyas chased their dream with a relentless purpose. They were physical and intimidating, with a mission as subtle as a hockey body check: Defend the opponents into submission, squeeze the life from their offensive confidence in the way a python suffocates its prey. Such an approach would deliver a 34-3 season, including 10 games when the opponent could not reach 50 points, four of those in the NCAA tournament. And in the end, it would deliver much more than that.
Rick Carlisle now coaches the Indiana Pacers and won an NBA title at Dallas. Back then he was a Virginia Cavalier guard who played against Georgetown. “It was hard just getting the ball inbounds against those guys, let alone trying to get shots,” he said. “They were highly competitive, physically dominant and played with attitude. It was pretty clear they were the best team.”
On April 2, 1984, in a Seattle Kingdome that no longer exists, that became official. When Georgetown blew past Houston in the national championship game, it was the first title for the Hoyas, first for the young Big East, and first for a Black coach. Thompson did not altogether welcome that last notation and, in fact, did not take kindly to the many questions on the subject during Final Four week in Seattle. He found the topic rather complicated.
“Well, I was proud of winning the national championship and I was very proud of the fact that I was a Black American," he said years later in an interview. "But I didn't like it if the statement implied that I was the first Black person who had intelligence enough to win the national championship.
“I might have been the first Black person who was provided with an opportunity to compete for this prize, that you had discriminated against thousands of my ancestors to deny them this opportunity. So I felt obligated to define that.”
However one views that broken barrier, college basketball’s landscape would never be the same after 1984. The next year saw a 64-team bracket and more room for the smaller fry. The following two years would bring the shot clock and 3-pointer. Within 14 seasons of Thompson’s blazed trail, Nolan Richardson and Tubby Smith would become other Black coaches with titles, at Arkansas and Kentucky. Kevin Ollie would follow in 2014 at Connecticut.
Georgetown's championship is where it began.
The Hoyas had stormed onto college basketball’s main stage in 1982 with Ewing as a freshman, powering to the title game and having the national championship within their grasp, until a jump shot by a North Carolina freshman named Michael Jordan made it disappear. The next season’s spotlight was on big men in the East — Ewing at Georgetown, Ralph Sampson at Virginia. They met in a mega-hyped showdown in December and the Cavaliers won 68-63. The nation waited to see a rematch in the Final Four, but neither team made it there.
Sampson was gone for the 1983-84 season but Ewing was back as a junior, with a strong supporting cast. How good could the Hoyas be? It was hard to tell early. Thompson was notorious for frontloading his schedule with soft targets. Georgetown started 5-0 against Hawaii-Hilo (playing twice), Morgan State, Saint Francis and Saint Leo. The Hoyas finally met a ranked opponent in their sixth game and lost at DePaul by two points. But any doubts about Georgetown quickly crumbled as the Hoyas plowed through the Big East schedule, winning 24 of their next 26 games.
They arrived in the NCAA tournament ranked No. 2 and seeded No. 1 in the West. Thompson’s penchant for shielding his players from the media and for quartering them in distant places from tournament sites to avoid any glare drew much reaction. Hoya paranoia became the catch phrase. Nothing cuddly about Georgetown, either. Thompson could be most blunt in his interviews and the Hoyas were unapologetic aggressors on the court. Roll all that together and Georgetown was hardly the most beloved team in the bracket. “He did it his way,” Ewing said of Thompson. “There weren’t just some critics, there were a whole lot of critics.”
It was all part of the plan, Thompson would suggest decades later in an interview. “I functioned better when I thought people didn’t like me,” he said, “than I did when I thought they did.”
Nothing flashy about Georgetown’s offensive numbers. Ewing averaged 16 points a game, guards David Wingate and Michael Jackson 11 and 10. But they all were expected to play the flavor of defense that could paralyze an opponent, from team captain Gene Smith to freshman Michael Graham, an imposing physical presence off the bench. The Hoyas allowed only 39.5-percent shooting during the season, lowest in the nation.
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Their glorious March almost ended the first night as they had to escape an SMU slowdown — no shot clock, remember — and slid by 37-36, Ewing saving the day with a late tip-in after a missed free throw. The Sweet 16 was a defensive seminar, first 62-48 over UNLV and then 61-49 over Dayton to get back to the Final Four. With the first round in Pullman, Washington, regional in Los Angeles and the Final Four in Seattle, the Georgetown team had become West Coast citizens. A continent away from home for three weeks, sequestered Heaven (and John Thompson) knows where, the players only grew tighter.
The foursome who gathered in Seattle represented an intriguing bunch.
Kentucky was there as a No. 1 seed with a 29-4 record, having survived an epic 54-51 Elite Eight struggle against Illinois at Rupp Arena. That was another imminent change. The Wildcats would be the last team ever allowed to play a regional on their homecourt. “I don’t know if we could have beat Illinois on a neutral floor. They weren’t afraid of us,” Wildcat guard Dicky Beal says now.
Virginia was there, having found a different formula to win the year after Sampson left. The Cavaliers struggled so much at the end of the season to finish 17-11 that coach Terry Holland was making NIT plans. But they were granted an at-large bid as a No. 7 seed and then simply refused to lose. They beat Iona by one point, No. 2 seed Arkansas by two in overtime, No. 3 seed Syracuse by eight and then Indiana in the regional final 50-48 when former walk-on Kenton Edelin, a 46-percent free throw shooter, made three absolutely critical attempts from the line. That was two days after the Hoosiers had shocked top-ranked North Carolina 72-68 in Jordan’s last college game. “There is life after Ralph,” read one banner in the Virginia student section the day the Cavaliers advanced to the Final Four. “Not a lot was expected of us,” Carlisle says now. “It was a Cinderella type thing. We had won a lot of big games.”
Houston was there, burning to atone for being on the wrong end of North Carolina State’s magic in 1983. The replays of Lorenzo Charles’ championship dunk and Jim Valvano racing around the court had already become NCAA tournament lore a year later. Some of the Phi Slama Jama victims of that upset were gone in 1984 but such key names as Akeem Olajuwon, Michael Young, Alvin Franklin, Reid Gettys and Benny Anders were still around. In 1983 Olajuwon was named Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four even though his Cougars didn’t win the title, the last man to do that.
So the storylines were set for Seattle, which hadn’t hosted a Final Four in 32 years. Anyone who wanted to see spectacular offense and exploding scoreboards had come to the wrong place for the national semifinals.
First, Houston made it past Virginia 49-47, and the teams had to go overtime to score that many. Holland’s defense forced Olajuwon into eight turnovers and only five shots. It would have worked well enough for a victory, except the Cavaliers shot 39 percent. The Cougars won with their five starters going 224 of a possible 225 minutes.
“The thing I really remember is the contrast between our team and Houston,” Carlisle said. “We were on the small side, we were a team that had gotten hot at the right time and ridden a hot streak to the Final Four. Houston had been the team that had been highly touted all year.
“We made it exactly the kind of game that we wanted to make it; we wanted to make it a low-possession game where decision-making and experience were the main factors because we had those things. It just didn’t quite happen for us.”
Next, Georgetown vs. Kentucky. The Wildcats had a terrific start, pulling ahead by 12 points in the first half with Ewing on the bench after his third foul. Big trouble for the Hoyas. Then the Ice Age hit Kentucky.
The Wildcats missed a shot. Then another and another and another, until finally it seemed like the rim must have been six inches across. In one stretch, they missed 23 of 24 shots. In the second half, they were 3-for-33 and their starters were 0-for-21. Georgetown used a 33-11 second half to win going away 53-40.
How to explain it? Georgetown defense? Kentucky nerves? Something otherworldly? Back then Beal called it “spooky.” Other views from that day:
“I’d like to attribute everything that happened to our defense,” Georgetown’s Bill Martin said. “Once they missed a few shots and threw away a few passes, they lost confidence. Then we worked a psych job on them.”
Thompson: “We like to tease our enemies, make them happy and think they will blow us out. Then we come back.”
Ewing: “We trapped them, we pressed them, we forced them into turnovers. We just played Hoya defense.”
Kentucky coach Joe B. Hall: “I’ve never seen a team shoot like we did today. There had to be some electronic device sending out sounds around the basket. Some kind of extraterrestrial phenomenon. That’s the only explanation I have.”
Four decades later, Beal can still see the Kentucky jumpers clanging away.
“It was just so weird, so weird. We’re talking about Melvin Turpin who was the best shooting big man in the country, the best shooter I’ve ever been around. He was getting point-blank range shots that he would make all the time. So was Kenny (Walker). A lot of that had to do with Ewing and Michael Graham being there. They were pretty active. But it wasn’t to the effect that they were just so dominant defensively that we couldn’t score. It was one of those phenomenons, I can’t’ explain it.”
Turpin was 2-for-11, Beal 2-for-8, Sam Bowie — destined to be the No. 2 pick in the NBA draft, picked ahead of Michael Jordan — was 3-for-10.
“It hurts because we knew that we just didn’t play well the second half and that’s something that stays with me today,” Beal says now. “At the end of the day you want to give Georgetown credit because they deserve it, but I just felt like, and so did all the guys, we just didn’t make shots. Period, point blank."
“I’ve never watched the second half. I probably need to get over that after 40 years. It’s still painful. That’s probably stupid but it’s the truth. That was a team destined to win the championship, but we didn’t.”
March had turned into April and the only game left was battle of giants from other lands. Ewing was born in Jamaica, Olajuwon in Nigeria. Their matchup was easy to hype — only five years after Magic Johnson vs. Larry Bird — but Ewing would say much later, “That wasn’t on my radar screen.”
He was there to win a championship, never mind the opponent. But the game didn’t start that promising. Georgetown's emotional leader Gene Smith was out with a foot injury and Houston jumped to a 14-6 lead. But the Hoyas had come too far to let anything stand in their way. Their defense and depth took over the Kingdome — Georgetown would have a 43-13 gap in bench points — and Olajuwon picked up his fourth foul only 23 seconds into the second half. Where the night was going seemed pretty certain.
Ewing finished with 10 points, nine rebounds three assists and four blocks. Olajuwon had 15 points and nine rebounds. Reggie Williams scored 19 points off the bench for the Hoyas. The post-game individual hardware seemed so "Georgetownish." Ewing was named Most Outstanding Player, even though he had only 18 points in two games. He also had 18 rebounds and was the heart of the defense with 15 blocks. On the five-man all-Final Four team, Houston had three players, the Hoyas only two, Ewing and Graham. They had done it as they had always done it, as a collection of bodies riding a wave of will. Not one Georgetown individual scored 20 points in a game in the tournament, and over the first four wins, the Hoyas had someone break double figures only seven times.
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“They do everything a great team should do,” Olajuwon said after the game. “They don’t care who scores, who takes the shots. That’s the difference. They aren’t a selfish team.”
Among the memorable scenes afterward was Thompson embracing guard Fred Brown. They had hugged two years earlier, following the national championship game when Brown had thrown the infamous wrong-team pass to North Carolina’s James Worthy in the final seconds. That hug was to comfort, this one to celebrate. “I’m sure it meant a lot to Fred after all that he went through,” Ewing said years later.
The teams went their different ways from Seattle. Guy Lewis had led Houston to five Final Fours in a futile chase after a title. He would never be back. Indeed, the Cougars would not win another NCAA tournament game for another 33 years. Virginia would not return to the Final Four until Tony Bennett’s bunch won the title in 2019. Kentucky had plenty of glory ahead but this was Hall’s last Final Four. Thompson, Ewing and much of the 1984 Georgetown cast would be back in 1985, seemingly headed for a repeat until Villanova’s immaculate upset in the title game, when the Wildcats missed one shot in the second half and six all night. The irony was impossible to miss. What Villanova did to the Georgetown defense was a 180-degree turn of fate for the Hoyas from the Kentucky game in Seattle.
That defeat ended the Ewing era, with one national title and two championship game losses by a combined three points. A legendary career in the NBA awaited, as it did for Olajuwon. “I should have won three national championships,” Ewing would say 30 years later. “Unfortunately, we came away with one, so I definitely cherish the one that I do have.”
Thompson’s last Final Four was 1985 as well. He led the Hoyas program to the cusp of the 21st century but would never again have the degree of success in March he saw in the early 1980s. He died in 2020.
But that Monday night in April will always belong to him and his Hoyas, not only because of how they did it but what it meant. Some liked the Georgetown Hoyas, others didn’t. But everyone respected them, or should have,
“There was nothing anybody could say, we were national champions,” Ewing said. “People talked about Hoya paranoia and all that stuff. We had shut everybody up by winning it.”
Thompson told the Washington Post that April evening, “At times I've been obsessed by the national championship, I've awakened in the middle of the night in the summer saying national championship. Now I have one. I don't want 10 like John Wooden, I just wanted to get one."
One is what he got. It helped transform the game.
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