| Transcript |
Sixteen Who Were Invincible
Throughout the 51-year history of the NCAA championship, 16 teams entered the tournament unbeaten in regular-season play. Seven of those unbeaten squads completed the long
haul with unblemished records. Listed below are the championship results of each of those
teams:
Championship Final
Result Record
Lost 79-71 to Illinois — NCAA first - round 23-1
Defeated Iowa 83-71 — NCAA championship 30-0
Defeated Kansas 54-53 (3 ot) — NCAA championship 32-0
Lost 70-65 (ot) to Cincinnati — NCAA championship 27-1
Defeated Michigan 91-80 — NCAA championship 30-0
Defeated Dayton 79-64 — NCAA championship 30-0
Lost 101-69 to UCLA - NCAA semifinal 31-2
Lost 91-72 to North Carolina — NCAA second-round 23-2
Lost 60-59 to Ohio State — NCAA second-round 28-1
Lost 90-47 to Villanova — NCAA regional championship 28-1
Defeated Florida State 81-76 — NCAA championship 30-0
Defeated Memphis State 87-66 — NCAA championship 30-0
Lost 92-90 to Kentucky — NCAA regional championship 31-1
Defeated Michigan 86-68 — NCAA championship 32-0
Lost 86-70 to Michigan — NCAA semifinal 31-2
Lost 75-64 to Michigan State — NCAA championship 33-1
Regular-
Season
Year
School
Record
1951
Columbia
23-0
1956
San Francisc
3 26-0
1957
North Caroli
la 28-0
1961
Ohio State
24-0
1964
UCLA
26-0
1967
UCLA
26-0
1968
Houston
29-0
1968
St. Bonaventi
ire 22-0
1971
Marquette
26-0
1971
Pennsylvania
26-0
1972
UCLA
26-0
1973
UCLA
26-0
1975
Indiana
29-0
1976
Indiana
27-0
1976
Rutgers
28-0
1979
Indiana State
29-0
Ah, but Taylor and Ohio State, with John
Havlicek and Jerry Lucas, had already won
the NCAA title in 1960. And McGuire and
Marquette would win theirs in 1977.
Knight's unbeaten championship team of
1976 was actually the extension of an even
better team that was 31-0 on the season before being stunned by Kentucky in the regional final in 1975.
History coughs up its perfect-record
teams grudgingly. Five years after Columbia first made "unbeaten" part of the championship lexicon, San Franciso, coached by
Phil Woolpert, led by Bill Russell and
Jones, stretched a two-season victory string
to 55-straight by beating Iowa, 83-71, for
the Dons' second-straight title. Because of
the 6-10 Russell's dominance — and, maybe, because none of them had HIM —
Woolpert's fellow coaches voted to widen
the three-second lane from six to 12 feet
after that game.
San Francisco's victory string ended at 60
with a resounding 62-33 loss to Illinois in
the fifth game of the 1956-57 season. But
another story with a perfect ending was in
the making. To Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where transplanted New Yorker Frank
McGuire had brought a team recruited from
the sidewalks of New York. The Tar Heels
went 31-0 when they beat Michigan State,
74- 70, in three overtimes in the national
semifinals.
That sent them up against Kansas in the
final, setting up what would become a familiar scenario later in the NBA, Russell
against Wilt Chamberlain.
To tip off against the game's Goliath,
McGuire sent up the runt of his litter, 5-10
Tommy Kearns. "Anything," said
McGuire, "we could do to harass him
would help." Then the Tar Heels sagged
around Chamberlain. And sagged. And
sagged. Chamberlain scored 23 points but
North Carolina won, 54-53, when Joe
Quigg made two free throws with six seconds left in the third overtime. In just two
nights, Carolina played 110 minutes of basketball — the equivalent of nearly three
games — and won two games and the national title.
"What happened that year couldn't happen again in a thousand years," McGuire
said.
That depends on how you look at it.
Starting in 1964, ending in 1975, UCLA
won 10 national championships, four with
30-0 teams. History bows first to the 1964
Bruins, minus a starter over 6-5. Then to
the 1967 team of Lew Alcindor, later to be
the indomitable Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It
curtsies twice more to the 1972 and 1973
teams of Bill Walton. Most of all, it bows
low to the grand architect of them all,
Wooden.
In the 15 seasons leading up to 1963-
1964, Wooden laid the perfect foundation.
"I knew that 1963-64 team was going to
be a good one," he says. Built around senior Walt Hazzard, it did not have a starter
over 6-5. But it was skillful and quick and,
most of all, supremely athletic. It had everything it needed to make the zone press —
the famed and suffocating "Bruin Blitz" —
work. Wooden had always wanted to use the
press but never felt he had the personnel to
do it. "Now, I felt for the first time I had
the players that were just admirably suited
for it," he says.
"I knew we would be a strong contender.
But, goodness no, I didn't think we would
go through undefeated."
Nor did he in 1966-67, with Alcindor, or
in 1971-72 with Walton, or even in 1972-
73, when the Walton Gang brought Wooden
his final unbeaten season and UCLA its
seventh-straight title. Were there ever a season when Wooden thought his Bruins might
tend toward the unbeatable, it was 1968 —
the year Houston's Cougars figured THEY
would be. The Bruins had beaten the Cougars and Hayes in the 1967 semifinals. That
Bill Russell, San Francisco's dominating
center, led the Dons to a perfect 30-0 season in 1956.
28 |
