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.
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.
The Kansas Jayhawks had won the national championship in 1988, under the leadership of Larry Brown and the star performance of Danny Manning. But Brown’s leadership also put the program on NCAA probation and he skipped town when Manning graduated that same year. The Jayhawks bottomed out and had to be rebuilt. It was Roy Williams who did the rebuilding and the 1991 NCAA Tournament was his coming-out party.
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 1989 Michigan basketball team was loaded with talent, from All-American forward Glen Rice to talented sophomore Sean Higgins, to the low post duo of Terry Mills and Loy Vaught to their fine point guard Rumeal Robinson. But after a third-place finish in the Big Ten, they looked ready to go into the books as an underachieving disappointment.
…It was a most improbable ride to a Final Four. A #6 seed had gone through the bracket playing no one seeded higher than fourth (Kansas State)
Rick Pitino and Billy Donovan have each made their mark on college basketball history. Pitino coached three Final Four teams at Kentucky, including a 1996 national championship. He went on to take Louisville to the Final Four in 2005 and 2012, and won the 2013 NCAA Tournament.
Donovan took over the Florida program, made the Final Four in 2000 and won consecutive national titles in 2006-07. The 1987 NCAA Tournament was where each one first made their mark and they did it together
The development of the NCAA Tournament as a time of Madness had taken place in phases since 1975, a year that marked both the end of the UCLA dynasty and the inclusion of multiple teams from each conference in the event. The 1983 N.C. State basketball team represented the culmination of that development
What happened on Monday night in Lexington was nothing short of electric. Villanova played the game of its life.