BLOOMINGTON, IN — The six of them stand in perpetuity in the south lobby of Indiana’s Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. Four have their we’re-No. 1 fingers in the air, and always will. The two in the middle — Scott May and Quinn Buckner — are forever huddled around the national championship trophy.
One wanted to ask their reaction Wednesday about the previous night’s score from the Tennessee-Florida game, but they wouldn’t have much to say, since they’re made of granite. Still, it seemed a good night to notice them anew, given that Tennessee’s thumping leaves nobody with a spotless record this season. These six players were the core of the 1975-76 Indiana Hoosiers. The last unbeaten men's basketball national champion.
➡️ READ MORE: No. 1 Tennessee falls on the road, spoils undefeated record
Why bring it up now? With the Vols’ demise, that team’s reign has been extended to at least 2026. In other words, it’s now officially gone 50 years, a half-century, and counting. A long time to be the last of anything in college basketball, let alone the last example of a season without a flaw.
Did it seem like the statues were standing a little taller Wednesday night, May and Buckner and Kent Benson and Bob Wilkerson and Tom Abernethy and Jim Crews? They should have been. What they accomplished is almost undoable, which has now been re-proven 49 times since. The faces from that team are starting to disappear. Bob Knight, who coached them, died in 2023. But the aura of being the last goes on, now to 50.
Mike Woodson was a high school star in Indianapolis in 1976. Now he’s the coach at his alma mater. He looks at those statues all the time, especially since he’s good friends with May and Buckner.
Quinn Buckner (21) during the 1976 NCAA men's basketball championship game
“It’s special. It means a great deal to me. I just wish the guy who made that happen was still with us. Make no mistake about it, I say it all the time, Indiana basketball is Bob Knight,” Woodson said after his Hoosiers defeated USC Wednesday night. Funny, Knight not being included among the statues, but then he requested it that way. It is to be for all time a players’ only meeting. Woodson went on, “I joke with Scott May and Quinn Bucker all the time that that record will probably never be broken. Here it is 50 years, I say it every year. So, for 50 years I’ve been saying the same damn thing.”
There was some irony in Wednesday’s Assembly Hall opponent. USC has won 113 NCAA team championships across its athletic department but the men have never done it in basketball. In one of the more inexplicable dry spells of March, the Trojans — a historical juggernaut in nearly everything else — have not been to the Final Four since 1954.
No such problem here. The final count for the 1976 Hoosiers was 32-0, with St. John’s, Alabama, Marquette, UCLA and Michigan as their NCAA tournament stepping stones to perfection. By the Final Four, they were on a roll to history, too close to be stopped. Defending national champion — and John Wooden-less — UCLA went down by 14 points in the semifinal. Michigan, a dangerous Big Ten colleague who had taken Indiana to overtime in Assembly Hall in February, was beaten by 18.
The deed done, Indiana’s players gathered on the court of the Philadelphia Spectrum to celebrate the journey's end and mission accomplished. Photos from that trophy presentation were used as the basis for the statues. By the way, the Final Four returned to the Spectrum five years later and Indiana won it again. A statue commemorating Isiah Thomas making a layup against North Carolina in the title game is now at one end of the Assembly Hall lobby. Steve Alford and Keith Smart shooting jumpers as a tribute to the 1987 champions are at the other end. But it is the 1976 bunch who are in the middle, impossible to miss.
They knew what they had done in ’76, though it wasn’t all that unique back then. There had been six unbeaten champions in the previous 20 years, four by UCLA. So who could have imagined a half-century later, college basketball would still be waiting for the next one?
“I’m not surprised,” Woodson said. “It’s that special.”
They’re still waiting in men’s college basketball, that is. The women stamp out perfect records like cars off the assembly line. There have been 10 since 1982, including South Carolina last April.
A few men’s teams have challenged Indiana’s last-to-do-it designation, but not many. Five teams since 1976 have gone into the NCAA tournament without a loss, and two made it to the championship game. The first was Indiana State and Larry Bird in 1979, but Michigan State and Magic Johnson took care of them. The second was Gonzaga in 2021, seemingly a train on the way to supplanting the Hoosiers until Baylor derailed the Zags by 16 points in the title game.
Turns out that the city of Indianapolis has become an effective wall in protecting its state school’s hold on history. Gonzaga lost in the Final Four in Indy. So did Kentucky in 2015 and UNLV in 1991. Downtown Indianapolis has been the place where clean records go to be sullied before they get in Indiana’s way.
That happens in other places, too. Tennessee was buried by 30 points in Gainesville. So take a bow, you six statues, if only you could. Safe another year. It would be easy to imagine the Hoosiers of 1976 keeping track of the unbeaten teams each winter, perhaps sharing a smile when the last one falls. Not so, according to Woodson.
“They don’t say a whole lot about it,” he said. “But I do.”
Woodson’s team whisked past USC Wednesday night in the first meeting between the programs since 1974 — when North Carolina State won the title and now remains the last one-loss national champion, so apparently that’s even harder to do than what Indiana accomplished. Wednesday was the Hoosiers’ ninth victory in 10 games, so the fans left happy. As they trudged into the cold night, many of them exited out the south lobby and walked right by the monument to 1976. Six silent men of granite who, a half-century later, still stand alone.
