The 1985 Michigan basketball team came into the season poised for a breakthrough. The program hadn’t made the NCAA Tournament since their 1977 Big Ten championship, a year that culminated a four-year run that included a trip to the NCAA final in 1976. The coach who accomplished that, Johnny Orr, had gone to Iowa State […]
Gene Keady was in his fourth year coaching at Purdue. He inherited a program that went to a Final Four in 1980, but had been gutted by departures. After two years of retooling, Keady returned the Boilermakers to the NCAA Tournament in 1983. The 1984 Purdue basketball team took the next step and won a […]
Illinois basketball was on hard times when Lou Henson took over in 1976. The Illini hadn’t made the Final Four since 1952 and had only been sporadically good in the ensuing quarter century, bottoming out at 13-36 over the final two years before Henson arrived in Champaign. By 1979, Henson had won 19 games. By […]
The late 1970s were a dry time for football in East Lansing. The program had not seen the national elite since Duffy Daugherty’s big years in 1965 and 1966. Daugherty’s successor, Denny Stolz had a couple seven-win seasons, but also left the program on NCAA probation that barred it from postseason play. The 1978 Michigan […]
Gene Keady inherited a Purdue basketball program that reached the 1980 Final Four and kept the tradition of success going in West Lafayette. Over the ensuing seven years, in a competitive era of Big Ten basketball, Keady’s teams made the NCAA Tournament every year and won a piece of two Big Ten championships. But success […]
Bob Knight’s Indiana basketball program was on a good roll coming in the early 1980s. They had won Big Ten titles in 1980 and 1981, the latter being punctuated with a dominating run to the national championship. Even a step-back in 1982 was modest, as the Hoosiers still tied for second in their league and […]
Bo Schembecler’s Michigan program entered the season with a good bit of momentum on their side. The legendary “Ten-Year War” between Bo and Ohio State’s Woody Hayes was nearing the end and the tide was moving in the Wolverines direction. They had won two consecutive Big Ten titles. The 1978 Michigan football team was aiming […]
The Boston Celtics are the NBA’s most decorated franchise, but the team that represents America’s most Irish Catholic city found themselves in Purgatory during the late 1970s. After winning the championship in 1976, they had slipped to a mediocre 44-win season in 1977. The next two years were spent looking for the right coach and […]
The Indiana Hoosiers had slipped a bit after their glorious run of 1975 and 1976, where they posted undefeated seasons and in ’76 capped it off with a national championship. They missed the NCAAs in 1977 and 1979. Even allowing for a Sweet 16 run in 1978 and the fact that punching a ticket to […]
The city of Pittsburgh owned the National League East in the early 1970s. They won five division titles between 1970-75, including a 1971 World Series title. But in the latter part of the decade, things changed. The Pirates continued to play good baseball, winning 90-plus games, even as they changed managers from Danny Murtaugh to […]
USC was in their third year under the coaching stewardship of John Robinson. In his rookie year of 1976, Robinson beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl and finished #2 in the nation. Even though the Trojans slipped in 1977, expectations were still high. The 1978 USC football team was ranked ninth in the preseason polls. […]
The 1978 Alabama football team felt like they had something to prove. They finished #2 in the polls in 1977 and felt like they were robbed of the top spot. They had gone undefeated in 1966 and been overlooked. While Bear Bryant’s program had consistently dominated the SEC over the past several years, they were […]
