Final Four Memories That Still Resonate
This was supposed to be one of the best weekends of the season in college basketball. It was supposed to be four days of frantic first and second round NCAA Tournament games, of non-stop action, of near-upsets and some stunning wins. As pure a stretch of college hoops as there is in the sport.
The coronavirus pandemic has changed all that.
With the NCAA Tournament canceled due to COVID-19, there are some serious withdrawal pangs being felt by college basketball fans. All we have for now are memories and replays on ESPN of some of the greatest games in the event’s history.
During my 35 years as a sportswriter at The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., I was fortunate to cover 30 consecutive Final Fours, starting in 1980. As a college student working for the school newspaper, I had a courtside seat for the 1976 Final Four at The Spectrum in Philadelphia as well.
From those 31 Final Fours, these are my 10 favorites. They may not necessarily be the best Final Fours of all time or the most dramatic ones, but they still resonate with me for personal and professional reasons.
Here goes.
1989
If only referee John Clougherty had kept his whistle out of his mouth. In one of the worst calls in Final Four history, Clougherty opened the door for Michigan to win the national title over Seton Hall with his touch foul call on Gerald Greene that resulted in a pair of game-winning free throws by Rumeal Robinson with three seconds left in an epic championship game.
This one tops the list for both professional and personal reasons because I was the beat writer for Seton Hall at the time. No one saw this run coming (the Pirates were picked seventh in what was a nine-team Big East at the time) and the players and coaching staff made this team a joy to cover. They deserved a better ending.
1982
This was some of the talent on the floor at the Super Dome in New Orleans that year: James Worthy, Patrick Ewing, Sam Perkins, Sleepy Floyd, Michael Jordan, Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olujawan.
Ewing, the game’s most intimidating presence, was called for goaltending five times – on coach John Thompson’s instructions. Dean Smith won his first national championship. And the Georgetown-North Carolina final was a classic that signaled the arrival of Jordan, then a freshman. He hit the game-winning shot. Fred Brown’s errant pass to Worthy was an unfitting ending to a captivating 40 minutes.
1983
Almost everyone bought into the Phi Slamma Jamma hype. Houston was that good. Then Derrick Whittenburg’s pass/shot (it was a shot) was snatched out of the air by Lorenzo Charles for a dunk that gave N.C. State a 54-52 title game victory in what is still one of the great upsets of the tournament.
You know the iconic image by now of Jim Valvano running around the court looking for someone to hug after the improbable win.
And being in New Mexico for a week was a neat experience.
1985
It’s not just Villanova’s “perfect game” to beat Georgetown in another great title game upset that makes this so memorable. As someone who covered the Big East almost from its inception in 1979, the presence of three teams in the Final Four from a league formed only six years earlier was remarkable. That entire Big East season offered a hint that something special was coming.
With Villanova, Georgetown and St. John’s, the Final Four resembled the Big East Tournament. Imagine a team with Chris Mullin and Walter Berry, back to back national players of the year, not making the title game. By the way, Memphis (with Keith Lee) was the party crasher.
1976
As a student working for the school newspaper, I was able to chronicle most of Rutgers’ dream season, never fully understanding at the time what reaching the Final Four meant. It was still played in arenas then and wouldn’t become the spectacle it is now until three years later with Magic and Larry Bird (a year before I started covering Final Fours).
This is the last Final Four with two unbeaten teams, with Rutgers entering 31-0 and Indiana 30-0. Rutgers lost to Michigan and then had to come back and play a consolation game, losing to UCLA. Indiana, with Scott May, Kent Benson and Quinn Buckner, gave Bob Knight his first national championship in this one.
And I really did have a courtside seat at The Final Four working for the school newspaper. Times have changed a bit since then.
1991
Raise your hand if you saw unbeaten, defending national champion UNLV, led by Larry Johnson, losing in the Final Four. I didn’t think so. But there’s no better story line for someone from a New Jersey paper than having a Jersey kid like Bobby Hurley starring for Duke (along with Christian Laettner, of course). Duke beat UNLV, 79-77 – and that was in the semifinal. The Blue Devils still had to handle Kansas (which they did) to give Mike Krzyzewski the first of his five national championships. UNLV finished 34-1.
1981
Confusion, fear, uncertainty, concern. That’s what stands out about this Final Four in Philly. Less than three hours before LSU and Virginia were scheduled to tip off in the semifinal word came out that there was an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life. This was pre internet so the assembled media was left scrambling for whatever bits of information it could get. For a while there looked to be a chance the Final Four would be postponed.
Reagan’s life was deemed not to be in danger and the games went on, with Indiana and Isiah Thomas winning the national championship.
1999
It was easy to see how good Connecticut was from covering the Big East that year. But I’m not sure nationally people were quite buying it. Duke was the No. 1 overall seed, carried a 32-game winning streak into the title game and was a 9½-point favorite over a school making its first Final Four appearance.
Then Richard Hamilton and Khalid El-Amin took over the game against a Duke team that featured five future Top 15 NBA draft picks. In a pre-game poll by the Tampa Bay Times of 50 media members, 47 picked Duke to win. I was one of the three who guessed right in print.
1980
Forty years later I still remember enough of the details of my first Final Four as a professional sportswriter. Market Square Arena. Louisville, the Doctors of Dunk, led by Darrell Griffith. UCLA, coached by Larry Brown. Purdue and Iowa rounded out the field.
One of my sidebars prior to the final was about how Louisville’s Wiley Brown left his artificial thumb on the breakfast table, with a team manager eventually retrieving it from the trash. Louisville was a deserving national champion, though it’s hard to remember which Cardinals titles have been vacated and which have not.
1996
The games are not what makes this as memorable as the setting: Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, N.J. It was impressive to see the newspaper staff mobilize for this type of event in state. It’s also the last time the Final Four has not been played in a dome. The four teams were about as unlikely a quartet as you could find, too: Kentucky (coached by Rick Pitino), UMass (coached by John Calipari), Syracuse and Mississippi State.