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| Title | Division I Men's Basketball Championship First & Second Rounds |
| Creator (LCNAF) |
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| Publisher | National Collegiate Athletic Association |
| Date | March 15, 1990 - March 17, 1990 |
| Subject.Topical (LCSH) |
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| Subject.Name (LCNAF) |
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| Subject.Geographic (TGN) |
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| Genre (AAT) |
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| Language | English |
| Type (DCMI) |
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| Original Item Location | ID 2009-006, Box 7, Folder 7 |
| Original Collection | Athletics Department Records |
| Digital Collection | University of Houston Sports Championship Publications |
| Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/champ |
| Repository | Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries |
| Repository URL | http://info.lib.uh.edu/about/campus-libraries-collections/special-collections |
| Use and Reproduction | Educational use only, no other permissions given. Copyright to this resource is held by the content creator, author, artist or other entity, and is provided here for educational purposes only. It may not be reproduced or distributed in any format without written permission of the copyright owner. For more information please see UH Digital Library Fair Use policy on the UH Digital Library About page. |
| File Name | index.cpd |
| Title | Page 123 |
| Format (IMT) |
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| File Name | champ_201306_035_117.jpg |
| Transcript | Great Championship Games of the Past A View from the Southeast By RICK BOZICH Louisville Courier-Journal Bent Houston? Sure thing. You bet. No problem. Why not? Let's do it. Are you crazy? North Carolina State basketball coach Jim Valvano had a better shot to hire Dean Smith away from North Carolina as an assistant coach than he did to handle Houston in the 1983 NCAA championship game. Any of the dazzled 19,000 or so spectator packed in The Pit in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when Houston giggled at gravity and threw down 14 dunks in a 94-81 semifinal route of Louisville would testify to that. The world knew Valvano's team could not stop Guy Lewis' kids without FBI assistance. Lifting off on the shoulders of powerful Akeem Olajuwon and smooth Clyde Drex- ler, the Cougars rolled into the championship known as "Phi Slama Jama." FLY Dereck Whittenburg helped the Wolfpack slow the tempo to a crawl against Houston. SLAMA JAMA was more like it against Louisville. One press row wag held up a sign that said "Welcome to the 21st Century," as the Cougars dunked, dunked, dunked Louisville into submission. "I've watched every NCAA tournament since 1947 and that was the most exciting game I've ever seen," said Ed Steitz, secretary-rules editor of the NCAA Men's Basketball Rules Committee. "And I've never seen so many good athletes either." North Carolina State, meanwhile, had huffed and puffed its way past Georgia, 67- 60, in Saturday's other semifinal. Strictly ordinary people. The erratic Wolfpack had entered the championship with 10 defeats. They kept waiting for somebody to tell them it was time to go home. Each of their NCAA outings looked like risky business. North Carolina State needed two overtimes to beat Pepperdine in its championship opener. Then it beat Nevada- Las Vegas by one in the second round and Virginia by one in the West regional final. North Carolina State, 25-10, averaging 69 points a game in the championship versus Houston, a 31-2 group averaging 78 points. The Cougars had been top-ranked nationally for part of the season; North Carolina State was not even ranked first in its conference. It had all the elements of the most onesided matchup in NCAA championship game history. Instead, North Carolina State's jarring, 54-52 victory will forever be filed under "Most Memorable NCAA Moments." There are many reasons for that. The first is that North Carolina State's marvelous performance taught us, or at least warned us, that the upsets were possible. The surprises Villanova produced against Georgetown (1985) and Kansas dropped on Oklahoma (1988) were moments North Carolina State taught us to anticipate. In the 1980s, the NCAA final always entertained us, and often thrilled us. North Carolina State was the first to show us how. North Carolina State was the one that encouraged the dreaming that stirs schools like Seton Hall, Princeton and Vanderbilt every March. Another wonderful moment to remember from the game is that the Houston team that dunked 14 times against Louisville managed 1983 Championship North Carolina State 54 Houston 52 Site : Albuquerque , N.M. FG- FT- N.C. State FGA FTA REB PF TP Bailey 7-16 1-2 5 1 15 Charles 2-7 0-0 7 2 4 McQueen 1-5 2-2 12 4 4 Whittenburg 6-17 2-2 5 3 14 Lowe 4-9 0-1 0 2 8 Battle 0-1 2-2 1 1 2 Gannon 3-4 1-2 1 3 7 Myers 0-0 0-0 1 0 0 Team 2 Totals 23-59 FG- 8-11 FT- 34 16 54 Houston FGA FTA REB PF TP Drexler 1-5 2-2 2 4 4 Micheaux 2-6 0-0 6 1 4 Olajuwon 7-15 6-7 18 1 20 Franklin 2-6 0-1 0 0 4 Young 3-10 0-4 8 0 6 Anders 4-9 2-5 2 2 10 Gettys 2-2 0-0 2 3 4 Rose 0-1 0-0 1 2 0 Williams 0-1 0-0 4 3 0 Team 1 Totals 21-55 10-19 44 16 52 Halftime: North Caro St. 33, Houston 25 Of- ficials: Nichols, Housman, Forte. Attendance: 17,350. only three fast-break baskets against North Carolina State. The sport played in The Pit that night was basketball, not track. Purists celebrated the triumph of fundamentals over flash. Here was a North Carolina State team that needed to win the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament to secure its invitation to the championship, showing us it could stop a Houston squad that put four players into the National Basketball Association. This was the upset that nobody projected. And nobody had more fun with North Carolina State's underdog status than North Carolina State. Unless it was Houston. It makes wonderful reading to look back at some of the wild comments coming from the North Carolina State and Houston camps before the game. The words remind 1?0 |