Maryland won the first NCAA basketball championship in program history, and the first for their coach, the respected veteran Gary Williams, at the 2002 Final Four. What’s more, the events of the previous year made the long-awaited title even sweeter.
Michigan State was gaining steam as a basketball power under young head coach Tom Izzo. After being irrelevant through much of the 1990s, the Spartans made the Sweet 16 in 1998 and the Final Four in 1999. The 2000 Michigan State basketball team was ranked #3 to start the season and eyeing the big breakthrough.
Duke and UConn spent the entire 1999 college basketball season circling each other and eyeing the other up. One or the other was at the top of the polls every week, and it ended with a much-anticipated Showdown in St. Petersburg, at the 1999 Final Four.
The Kentucky Wildcats had won the national championship in 1996 and been to the title game in 1997. The 1998 team was a different animal though. There were no great players and Rick Pitino was gone to the NBA. Tubby Smith was the new coach and even though the roster might not have been loaded, Tubby made sure the beat went on in Lexington.
The UCLA Bruins hadn’t won a national championship since John Wooden retired on top following the 1975 season. The Bruins had made the Final Four a couple times in the immediate aftermath, in 1976 and again in 1980, but had otherwise been alarmingly absent from the national stage.
Prior to the 1994 Final Four, there was only one other occasion when a sitting president had been on hand to watch his home state team play for a championship. That was in 1980, when Jimmy Carter watched Georgia football beat Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl. Bill Clinton duplicated the “feat” in 1994 when […]
Webber came barreling over the half-court line, looking completely uncomfortable. He was pinned into a corner and stopped to call for a timeout…except there were none left.
Jerry Tarkanian, head basketball coach at UNLV, was a character seemingly straight out of Damon Runyon, right down to his “Tark The Shark” nickname. Tark had been chasing college basketball nirvana for a long time. He’d brought favored teams to the Final Four in 1977 and 1987, but come up short. The 1990 UNLV basketball was one that had the horses to go the distance and Tark proved to be an able jockey.
The 1979 Final Four was a landmark in the history of college basketball. The national championship game of Michigan State-Indiana State, with Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, remains the most-watched college basketball game ever. But there were other great stories that have been lost to history–1979 was the last year an Ivy League team made the Final Four, and it was the one appearance on college basketball’s grand stage for a venerable coach. Here’s a look back at how all four–Michigan State, Indiana State, Penn and DePaul made it to Salt Lake City.
Never before, at least in the modern history of the NCAA Tournament, had all four #1 seeds advanced to the Final Four. 2008 was the year that broke the mold, and when the four power teams of college basketball came to San Antonio, they produced an epic finish.