The Road To The 1986 Final Four
It would be Crum’s last dance on college basketball’s biggest stage. Krzyzewski was just getting started. Their ships passed in Dallas in 1986.
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The Seasonal Narrative Of 1979 Notre Dame Basketball
The 1979 Notre Dame basketball team came into the season with high expectations, coming off the first Final Four appearance in school history the previous year. The ’79 team spent much of the year mostly meeting expectations, until an NCAA Tournament loss to eventual national champion Michigan State signaled the end of an era in […]
The Greatest NCAA Championship Finish Ever
It’s easy to be prisoner of the moment and call the incredible ending of Villanova’s 77-74 win over North Carolina in last night’s NCAA final the greatest ever. It’s even easier though when that grandiose statement is exactly correct. We’ve seen a lot of great national championship games in college basketball over the years, but […]
North Carolina-Villanova History: Looking Back On 1985
North Carolina and Villanova have consistently managed to find each other in the NCAA Tournament over the years. They’ve played six times in March Madness covering a period from 1982 to 2013. Four of those games have been won by the eventual national champion and we know for a fact that it will be 5-for-7 […]
Was Virginia’s Collapse The Worst In Elite Eight History?
As I noted in yesterday’s post, Virginia’s loss to Syracuse was about as crushing a defeat as I could recall in a regional final. I spent the rest of the day turning games over in my mind to see if I was prisoner of the moment or if this was really a heartbreaker of epic […]
The 1996 Kentucky Wildcats Meet All Expectations
Rick Pitino came into the 1996 Kentucky Wildcats season feeling the pressure and—at least according to him—it was coming from some unlikely places. Pitino told a story of visiting Rome during the summer and meeting Pope John Paul II. As Pitino tells the story, he went over and kissed the pope’s ring. The Holy Father […]
2006 LSU Basketball: A Powerful Frontline Carries Them To A Final Four
Louisiana State has had mostly a rough go of it on the basketball court since the end of Dale Brown’s tenure in the late 1990s. But they’ve had one memorable March run since then—the 2006 LSU basketball team is obscured historically by the magic of George Mason that same year and by conference rival Florida […]
Three Forgotten Memories Of The 1991 NCAA Tournament
Duke’s epic upset of undefeated UNLV in the Final Four and Mike Krzyzewski ultimately winning the first of his five rings is the lasting memory of the 1991 NCAA Tournament. But on the 25th anniversary of that tournament, there’s three other moments that went down. None were “for the ages”, but all were pretty big […]
The Great Three-Way 1986 ACC Basketball Race
The Atlantic Coast Conference has produced some great basketball over the years and that includes some great conference races. The 30th anniversary of one such race is this year. The 1986 ACC basketball season saw Duke, Georgia Tech and North Carolina produced an excellent battle for the conference championship and that race included some key […]
40 Years Ago: When Rutgers Never Lost
This year marks the 40th anniversary of one of the great unknown stories in college sports—the 1976 Rutgers Scarlet Knights became the only team in the modern era to have an undefeated regular season in both basketball and football. The basketball team is the better known of the two, although even they’re buried beneath the […]
The 1981 Indiana Hoosiers Peak In March
It had been a tumultuous four years for Bob Knight and the Indiana basketball program since their unbeaten national title run of 1976. They missed the NCAA Tournament twice. In 1980, they won a Big Ten title, but lost to archrival Purdue in the NCAAs, then watched the Boilermakers and Iowa go to the Final […]
1979 Michigan State Basketball: Overcoming Obstacles On The Way To History
The 1979 Michigan State basketball team has become one for the history books. They won perhaps the most storied national championship game ever played, dominated the NCAA Tournament and sent Magic Johnson on to NBA greatness. But this Spartan team had its share of ups and downs along the way and it’s fair to wonder […]