Warm up the Xerox. Strike up the Gonzaga fight song. Let the boss know you'll be taking an extended lunch Thursday.
March Madness is almost upon us, that one-of-a-kind time of year when heroes are born, brackets are busted . . . and Florida doesn't last past the first weekend.
These are a few of our favorite things about the NCAA Tournament:
1. Office pools. Yeah, technically they're illegal, but don't expect local law enforcement to come barging into your place of work to break up your March Madness ring. Assistant State Attorney Michael Hunt can't remember anyone being prosecuted for playing a tournament bracket in his 35-plus years on the job.
After all, they happen in every office, right?
"They do not happen here," Hunt said. "They best not happen here."
2. No best-of-seven format. "It's the ultimate one-and-done scenario," says ESPN's Gene Wojciechowski. "Better yet, there's a human element involved: the selection committee, as well as the players, coaches and fans. Put all of this into a martini mixer and you get upsets, upstarts, unlikely heroes, unlikely champions. It's match play on legal steroids."
3. No. 12 seeds. From Wisconsin-Green Bay (over Cal in 1994) to Wyoming (over Virginia in '87), you can always count on a No. 12 seed or two springing a first-round upset over a No. 5. "The format for college basketball is the best because it give the underdog a chance to beat the favorite every game," says Jack "Goose" Givens, the voice of the Magic and a March Madness legend himself for the 41 points he scored to send Kentucky past Duke in the 1978 final. "The excitement is unmatched and it gives the players that don't get a lot of publicity a chance to excel on the national stage."
4. The first two days of the tournament. There aren't a better 48 hours in sports. Hope you saved up some sick days.
5. The Drews. Nancy couldn't have come up with a better tale than this: In 1998, the coach's kid, Bryce Drew, drills a 3-pointer from the wing as time expires to lift 13th-seeded Valparaiso to its first-ever NCAA Tournament victory, 70-69 over Mississippi. Then, eight years later, dad Homer Drew comes out of retirement to coach the Crusaders for a year after his other son, Scott Drew, leaves Valpo to take over Baylor. This year, Pops has Valpo back in the dance.
6. No Brent Musburger. You can have him, college football.
7. Bird vs. Magic. Before they saved the NBA, Larry Legend and Magic Johnson treated us to one of the greatest NCAA finals ever.
8. Good basketball in Orlando. When's the last time you've seen that? The TD Waterhouse Centre is one of eight venues which will host first- and second-round action, which takes place Friday and Sunday. Tickets are $105 for a six-game package (only upper bowl seats behind the basket are available). Call the Waterhouse box office at (407) 849-2020 today (open from 1-4:30 p.m.) or weekdays (10 a.m. to 5 p.m.).
9. Upsets. We consulted Dick Vitale for his top five of all-time.
In no particular order . . .
N.C. State over Houston, 1983 final.
Villanova over Georgetown, 1985 final.
Santa Clara over Arizona, 1993 first round.
Richmond over Syracuse, 1991 first round.
Hampton over Iowa State, 2001 first round.
10. UCLA. Too bad the Bruins will sit out this dance. They're always good for a few thrills (Tyus Edney's coast-to-coast drive against Missouri, Bill Walton's 21-for-22 final against Memphis State, John Wooden's seven straight national titles) and spills (first-round losses to Princeton and Detroit).
11. Postgame press conferences. Our favorite Final Four quote came following the 1990 final from Larry Johnson, who starred for Jerry Tarkanian's UNLV Runnin' Rebels: "We wanted to win this championship bad so that the NCAA guys will have to stare at the trophy on Coach's desk when they ask all those questions during the next investigation."
12. The 1982 title game. Catch it on ESPN Classic if you can. No final has featured more talent, be it on the floor (Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, James Worthy and Sam Perkins were among the 19 draft picks) or the sidelines (Dean Smith and John Thompson were among six future national coach of the year award winners).
13. Cleveland State. Gonzaga before anyone knew there was a Gonzaga. Ken "Mouse" McFadden & Co. showed Indiana the door in a 1986 first-round game. It got the attention of Bob Knight's Hoosiers, who went on to win it all the next year.
14. David Robinson. The poor fella scored 50 against Michigan in 1987 -- and lost.
15. The terminology. Bracket busters . . . Cinderella . . . The bubble . . . March Madness. What other sporting event has its own lingo?
16. You can't buy an NCAA basketball championship. Just ask Michigan's Fab Five.
17. The great conference debate. Which is the best league in the land? Is it the ACC, which ranks No. 1 in the RPI, or the Big 12, which had two teams reach the Final Four a year ago? Some would argue it's the SEC, which has produced the most national champions over the last 10 years. Or is it the Big East, which has had two of the last five? We'll have you an answer on April 5.
18. Underdogs. You know one of these East Tennessee States or Eastern Washingtons is going to spring a first-round upset. The tricky part is picking which ones for your bracket. Ryan Jones, senior editor for SLAM Magazine, calls it "predictable unpredictability. There's no need to go in with a rooting interest because you'll find a team or five to root for soon enough. The scrappy underdog squad that presses or backdoors its way into the second round, the unknown sharpshooter or dunker from the MEAC or Ivy League or Southern Conference who catches your eye. You can count on seeing something you didn't expect, even though it happens every year."
19. The St. Joseph's Hawk. The hardest-working member of America's No. 1 team isn't point guard Jameer Nelson or the head coach Phil Martelli. It's the indefatigable Hawk mascot, which flaps its arms through the entire game and halftime.
20. There's hope for Florida State. Since 1960, 26 teams have made the field with losing conference records. Among them: the 1998 Seminoles, who went 6-10 in the ACC -- the same mark as this year's FSU bunch.
21. Selection Sunday. Tonight in Missouri, Maryland and Michigan, they'll be huddled around the big-screen TV waiting to hear their name called. But some bubbles will be burst at 6 p.m., when CBS unveils the brackets. To get you ready, CBS has the SEC Tournament final at 1 and the Big Ten battle at 3:30.
22. Rick Majerus. Here's hoping CBS brings him in for some between-game analysis. Our favorite Majerus studio show moment: When asked by Pat O'Brien how he handled tough losses, the Utah coach said, "Pat, win or lose, I eat my a-- off."
23. DirecTV. Fifty-nine bucks gets you every game in the tournament -- and it's not too late to get a dish installed (1-800-DIRECTV). Then again, there's always your neighborhood sports bar.
24. Bob Knight. "The General" is always in rare form this time of year. Our three favorite Bob Knight March Madness moments:
Quizzed in 2000 about a report claiming he choked ex-Hoosier Neil Reed, Knight asked a media gathering: "It amazed me in this TV thing, what is an 'unnamed source?' Is an unnamed source me standing up here and saying, 'I was just told outside by somebody not wishing to be named that 65 percent of the men in this room are having extramarital affairs with sheep'?"
After his Hoosiers lost to Colorado in the first round in 1997, Knight walked 2½ miles in the rain back to the team hotel. It was 1 o'clock in the morning.
An irate Dale Brown challenged Knight to a naked wrestling match after the Indiana coach banged his fist into the scorer's table in 1987 vs. LSU. Knight was fined $ 10,000 by the NCAA.
25. Texas Western 72, Kentucky 65. In a game that forever changed the face of college basketball, Texas Western's five black starters stunned Adolph Rupp's all-white Kentucky powerhouse for the 1966 title. (Fun fact: Bobby Joe Hill, a 5-foot-10 guard for Texas Western, is the shortest player to lead an NCAA champion in scoring average).
26. The NIT. Not a bad booby prize -- and not bad basketball, either. Our all-time NIT starting five: Ralph Sampson (Virginia), Reggie Miller (UCLA), George Mikan (DePaul), Lenny Wilkens (Providence) and Walt Frazier (Southern Illinois).
27. Mike Miller. What if the former Florida forward hadn't hit the shot that beat the buzzer -- and Butler -- in the first round of the 2000 tournament? "The Gators never would have made it to the championship game and would be going on four years in a row with early departures instead of having one magical year to hang our hats on," says Gator fan Stephen Link of Palm Bay.
28. Everyone gets a chance. This isn't the snooty Bowl Championship Series, where only teams from the top six leagues get a title shot. In college basketball, all 326 teams have a chance to play their way into the dance through conference tournaments.
29. Your chance to see the next Magic rookie. Orlando fans, pay particularly close attention to UConn center Emeka Okafor, Duke freshman forward Luol Deng, Arizona forward Andre Iguodala and St. Joseph's point guard Jameer Nelson.
30. Gonzaga. The school that's given us Bing Crosby, John Stockton and one magical March moment after another.
31. Neutral sites. Not since John Wooden's Bruins cut down the nets in LA in 1972 has a team won a title in its home city. Nothing says NCAA Tournament quite like a first-round Boston College-BYU matchup in Boise.
32. "One Shining Moment." Come on, everybody sing along.
The ball is tipped, and there you are. You're running for your life, you're a shooting star. And all the years, no one knows just how hard you worked, but now it shows . . . In One Shining Moment, it's all on the line. One Shining Moment, there frozen in time . . .
33. Jerry Tarkanian's towel
34. Chris Webber's timeout
35. Keith Smart's swish from the corner
36. Danny Ainge's drive
37. Rumeal Robinson's free throws
38. Christian Laettner's turnaround jumper. He catches Grant Hill's fullcourt pass, he twists, he shoots . . . he scores, beating Kentucky 104-103 in double-overtime. "Wow," Port St. John's Lenny Newsome says 12 years later. "What a game."
39. Loyola Marymount 149, Michigan 115, 1990. Jeff Fryer hit 11 of 15 3-pointers in the highest-scoring game in tournament history.
40. Stanford. You gotta love a program which, in the words of coach Mike Montgomery, "has not sacrificed its academic integrity for athletic success." Freshman student-athletes boast SAT scores of 1,100-plus and GPAs of 3.6. Not too shabby for an athletic department which has had its fair share of superstars (John Elway, Eric Heiden, John McEnroe, Mike Mussina, Tiger Woods).
41. Wall-to-wall basketball. The first two days, you can watch games from morning to midnight.
42. Danny and the Miracles. Yes, one great player can carry a team to a championship, as Danny Manning and Kansas taught us in 1988.
43. Jim Valvano. Where were you when the late, great N.C. State coach danced a jig at center court after his Wolfpack stunned Houston in the 1983 final on Lorenzo Charles' last-second dunk?
"I graduated from North Carolina State in 1984," says Melbourne's Brenda Pearce. "I think the game that really set the team in motion was the last N.C. State-North Carolina matchup in Raleigh. The editor of our student newspaper broke into UNC's gym, took off his clothes and laid on the floor where their school symbol was. He placed a basketball in front of parts that shouldn't be displayed in a newspaper and the photographer snapped away.
"The day of the game, all of us students opened our newspapers and we could not believe our eyes. There, was an almost-naked Dean Smith, coach of the Tar Heels. We were told to bring our papers to the game that night and when Coach Smith was introduced, to hold them up. After the game, Coach Smith said that it certainly was his face in the picture -- but not his body. He was a really good sport about it.
"That win, along with Derrick Whittenburg's return to the team after a broken foot, began the thrill we called 'The Cardiac Pack who brought it all back.' No one thought we could -- except Jimmy V."
44. April. The tournament's so good, they've extended it a month. This year's Final Four starts April 3.
45. Duke. Go ahead and pencil Mike Krzyzewski's Blue Devils in your Sweet 16. They've been there six straight years -- twice as many times as the next schools on the list (Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland).
46. CBS. We miss Al McGuire, but the network still does the tournament right. It better after forking over $6 billion in 1999 for the exclusive rights to broadcast the tournament for 11 years.
47. The 1983 national semifinals. Houston vs. Louisville. Phi Slamma Jamma vs. the Doctors of Dunk. Clyde "the Glide" Drexler vs. Darrell "Dr. Dunkenstein" Griffith. "When you were under the basket as the referee, you thought you were in London for the Blitzkrieg," longtime official Hank Nichols said. "We were running to get out of the way."
48. Darvin Ham's slam. In 1996, the Texas Tech high-flier brought down the house -- and the backboard -- against North Carolina in Richmond, Va.
49. Your Aunt Marge picking more games right than Billy Packer. "The receivings clerk who knows the least about the game usually winds up winning the office pool," says Sports Illustrated college basketball writer Alexander Wolff.
50. Sure shots. This is the time of year when shooting stars are born. In 1985, we watched Villanova sink 22 of 28 shots to stun Georgetown. Two years later, Indiana's Steve Alford made like Jimmy Chitwood in "Hoosiers," canning 7 of 10 3-pointers in the title game. Two years after that, Michigan's Glen Rice shot a stunning 55.1 percent from three-point country to set the all-time tournament scoring record (184 points in six games).
51. The play-in game. The madness now starts on Tuesday, with the worst two teams in the field duking it out to play the best. Enjoy, Florida A&M.
52. Georgetown 50, Princeton 49, 1989 first round. The greatest upset that never was.
53. Freshmen. March Madness is where we were introduced to a kid named Michael Jordan, who hit the game-winner against Georgetown in '82, and Carmelo Anthony, who carried Syracuse to the 2003 title.
LeBron, you don't know what you're missing.
54. UConn-Tennessee women. Yankees-Red Sox has nothing on this rivalry.
55. Nicknames. Remember Harold "The Show" Arceneaux, who torched North Carolina for 36 points in Weber State's upset win in 1999? This is where we first met "Never Nervous" Pervis Ellison, who led Louisville to the title as a freshman, and Akeem "The Dream" Olajuwon, Houston's Nigerian nightmare.
56. Bill Bradley. Before he went into politics, the pride of Princeton lit up Wichita State for a tournament-record 58 points.
57. Lew Alcindor. Before he became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the UCLA legend was a three-time Final Four MVP.
58. Dave Winfield. The only athlete to collect more than 3,000 hits in the majors after starting for a school making its first NCAA Tournament appearance (Minnesota '72).
59. Finally, something to watch on TV on Friday nights. Our apologies, "Joan of Arcadia" fans.
60. Tournament trivia. Do yourself a favor and order a copy of The NCAA Final Four Record Book ($12 by calling 888-388-9748). Then quiz your buddies throughout the month on the only bearded coach to advance to a Final Four (Seton Hall's P.J. Carlesimo) or the record for most blocked shots in a tournament game (Shaquille O'Neal, 11, vs. BYU).
61. Anyone can win. Well, not quite anyone. But this year more than any other, there are no clear-cut couple championship contenders. "It's the most wide-open tournament the NCAA's had in a long, long time," UCF coach Kirk Speraw says.
62. Richmond. The itsy-bitsy Spiders ended the collegiate careers of Charles Barkley (Auburn) and Billy Owens (Syracuse), and shocked third-seeded South Carolina in '98 and fourth-seeded Indiana in '88.
63. No goons slugging each other on their way downcourt
64. No University of Colorado
65. No shooting guards on steroids
http://www.floridatoday.com
March Madness is almost upon us, that one-of-a-kind time of year when heroes are born, brackets are busted . . . and Florida doesn't last past the first weekend.
These are a few of our favorite things about the NCAA Tournament:
1. Office pools. Yeah, technically they're illegal, but don't expect local law enforcement to come barging into your place of work to break up your March Madness ring. Assistant State Attorney Michael Hunt can't remember anyone being prosecuted for playing a tournament bracket in his 35-plus years on the job.
After all, they happen in every office, right?
"They do not happen here," Hunt said. "They best not happen here."
2. No best-of-seven format. "It's the ultimate one-and-done scenario," says ESPN's Gene Wojciechowski. "Better yet, there's a human element involved: the selection committee, as well as the players, coaches and fans. Put all of this into a martini mixer and you get upsets, upstarts, unlikely heroes, unlikely champions. It's match play on legal steroids."
3. No. 12 seeds. From Wisconsin-Green Bay (over Cal in 1994) to Wyoming (over Virginia in '87), you can always count on a No. 12 seed or two springing a first-round upset over a No. 5. "The format for college basketball is the best because it give the underdog a chance to beat the favorite every game," says Jack "Goose" Givens, the voice of the Magic and a March Madness legend himself for the 41 points he scored to send Kentucky past Duke in the 1978 final. "The excitement is unmatched and it gives the players that don't get a lot of publicity a chance to excel on the national stage."
4. The first two days of the tournament. There aren't a better 48 hours in sports. Hope you saved up some sick days.
5. The Drews. Nancy couldn't have come up with a better tale than this: In 1998, the coach's kid, Bryce Drew, drills a 3-pointer from the wing as time expires to lift 13th-seeded Valparaiso to its first-ever NCAA Tournament victory, 70-69 over Mississippi. Then, eight years later, dad Homer Drew comes out of retirement to coach the Crusaders for a year after his other son, Scott Drew, leaves Valpo to take over Baylor. This year, Pops has Valpo back in the dance.
6. No Brent Musburger. You can have him, college football.
7. Bird vs. Magic. Before they saved the NBA, Larry Legend and Magic Johnson treated us to one of the greatest NCAA finals ever.
8. Good basketball in Orlando. When's the last time you've seen that? The TD Waterhouse Centre is one of eight venues which will host first- and second-round action, which takes place Friday and Sunday. Tickets are $105 for a six-game package (only upper bowl seats behind the basket are available). Call the Waterhouse box office at (407) 849-2020 today (open from 1-4:30 p.m.) or weekdays (10 a.m. to 5 p.m.).
9. Upsets. We consulted Dick Vitale for his top five of all-time.
In no particular order . . .
N.C. State over Houston, 1983 final.
Villanova over Georgetown, 1985 final.
Santa Clara over Arizona, 1993 first round.
Richmond over Syracuse, 1991 first round.
Hampton over Iowa State, 2001 first round.
10. UCLA. Too bad the Bruins will sit out this dance. They're always good for a few thrills (Tyus Edney's coast-to-coast drive against Missouri, Bill Walton's 21-for-22 final against Memphis State, John Wooden's seven straight national titles) and spills (first-round losses to Princeton and Detroit).
11. Postgame press conferences. Our favorite Final Four quote came following the 1990 final from Larry Johnson, who starred for Jerry Tarkanian's UNLV Runnin' Rebels: "We wanted to win this championship bad so that the NCAA guys will have to stare at the trophy on Coach's desk when they ask all those questions during the next investigation."
12. The 1982 title game. Catch it on ESPN Classic if you can. No final has featured more talent, be it on the floor (Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, James Worthy and Sam Perkins were among the 19 draft picks) or the sidelines (Dean Smith and John Thompson were among six future national coach of the year award winners).
13. Cleveland State. Gonzaga before anyone knew there was a Gonzaga. Ken "Mouse" McFadden & Co. showed Indiana the door in a 1986 first-round game. It got the attention of Bob Knight's Hoosiers, who went on to win it all the next year.
14. David Robinson. The poor fella scored 50 against Michigan in 1987 -- and lost.
15. The terminology. Bracket busters . . . Cinderella . . . The bubble . . . March Madness. What other sporting event has its own lingo?
16. You can't buy an NCAA basketball championship. Just ask Michigan's Fab Five.
17. The great conference debate. Which is the best league in the land? Is it the ACC, which ranks No. 1 in the RPI, or the Big 12, which had two teams reach the Final Four a year ago? Some would argue it's the SEC, which has produced the most national champions over the last 10 years. Or is it the Big East, which has had two of the last five? We'll have you an answer on April 5.
18. Underdogs. You know one of these East Tennessee States or Eastern Washingtons is going to spring a first-round upset. The tricky part is picking which ones for your bracket. Ryan Jones, senior editor for SLAM Magazine, calls it "predictable unpredictability. There's no need to go in with a rooting interest because you'll find a team or five to root for soon enough. The scrappy underdog squad that presses or backdoors its way into the second round, the unknown sharpshooter or dunker from the MEAC or Ivy League or Southern Conference who catches your eye. You can count on seeing something you didn't expect, even though it happens every year."
19. The St. Joseph's Hawk. The hardest-working member of America's No. 1 team isn't point guard Jameer Nelson or the head coach Phil Martelli. It's the indefatigable Hawk mascot, which flaps its arms through the entire game and halftime.
20. There's hope for Florida State. Since 1960, 26 teams have made the field with losing conference records. Among them: the 1998 Seminoles, who went 6-10 in the ACC -- the same mark as this year's FSU bunch.
21. Selection Sunday. Tonight in Missouri, Maryland and Michigan, they'll be huddled around the big-screen TV waiting to hear their name called. But some bubbles will be burst at 6 p.m., when CBS unveils the brackets. To get you ready, CBS has the SEC Tournament final at 1 and the Big Ten battle at 3:30.
22. Rick Majerus. Here's hoping CBS brings him in for some between-game analysis. Our favorite Majerus studio show moment: When asked by Pat O'Brien how he handled tough losses, the Utah coach said, "Pat, win or lose, I eat my a-- off."
23. DirecTV. Fifty-nine bucks gets you every game in the tournament -- and it's not too late to get a dish installed (1-800-DIRECTV). Then again, there's always your neighborhood sports bar.
24. Bob Knight. "The General" is always in rare form this time of year. Our three favorite Bob Knight March Madness moments:
Quizzed in 2000 about a report claiming he choked ex-Hoosier Neil Reed, Knight asked a media gathering: "It amazed me in this TV thing, what is an 'unnamed source?' Is an unnamed source me standing up here and saying, 'I was just told outside by somebody not wishing to be named that 65 percent of the men in this room are having extramarital affairs with sheep'?"
After his Hoosiers lost to Colorado in the first round in 1997, Knight walked 2½ miles in the rain back to the team hotel. It was 1 o'clock in the morning.
An irate Dale Brown challenged Knight to a naked wrestling match after the Indiana coach banged his fist into the scorer's table in 1987 vs. LSU. Knight was fined $ 10,000 by the NCAA.
25. Texas Western 72, Kentucky 65. In a game that forever changed the face of college basketball, Texas Western's five black starters stunned Adolph Rupp's all-white Kentucky powerhouse for the 1966 title. (Fun fact: Bobby Joe Hill, a 5-foot-10 guard for Texas Western, is the shortest player to lead an NCAA champion in scoring average).
26. The NIT. Not a bad booby prize -- and not bad basketball, either. Our all-time NIT starting five: Ralph Sampson (Virginia), Reggie Miller (UCLA), George Mikan (DePaul), Lenny Wilkens (Providence) and Walt Frazier (Southern Illinois).
27. Mike Miller. What if the former Florida forward hadn't hit the shot that beat the buzzer -- and Butler -- in the first round of the 2000 tournament? "The Gators never would have made it to the championship game and would be going on four years in a row with early departures instead of having one magical year to hang our hats on," says Gator fan Stephen Link of Palm Bay.
28. Everyone gets a chance. This isn't the snooty Bowl Championship Series, where only teams from the top six leagues get a title shot. In college basketball, all 326 teams have a chance to play their way into the dance through conference tournaments.
29. Your chance to see the next Magic rookie. Orlando fans, pay particularly close attention to UConn center Emeka Okafor, Duke freshman forward Luol Deng, Arizona forward Andre Iguodala and St. Joseph's point guard Jameer Nelson.
30. Gonzaga. The school that's given us Bing Crosby, John Stockton and one magical March moment after another.
31. Neutral sites. Not since John Wooden's Bruins cut down the nets in LA in 1972 has a team won a title in its home city. Nothing says NCAA Tournament quite like a first-round Boston College-BYU matchup in Boise.
32. "One Shining Moment." Come on, everybody sing along.
The ball is tipped, and there you are. You're running for your life, you're a shooting star. And all the years, no one knows just how hard you worked, but now it shows . . . In One Shining Moment, it's all on the line. One Shining Moment, there frozen in time . . .
33. Jerry Tarkanian's towel
34. Chris Webber's timeout
35. Keith Smart's swish from the corner
36. Danny Ainge's drive
37. Rumeal Robinson's free throws
38. Christian Laettner's turnaround jumper. He catches Grant Hill's fullcourt pass, he twists, he shoots . . . he scores, beating Kentucky 104-103 in double-overtime. "Wow," Port St. John's Lenny Newsome says 12 years later. "What a game."
39. Loyola Marymount 149, Michigan 115, 1990. Jeff Fryer hit 11 of 15 3-pointers in the highest-scoring game in tournament history.
40. Stanford. You gotta love a program which, in the words of coach Mike Montgomery, "has not sacrificed its academic integrity for athletic success." Freshman student-athletes boast SAT scores of 1,100-plus and GPAs of 3.6. Not too shabby for an athletic department which has had its fair share of superstars (John Elway, Eric Heiden, John McEnroe, Mike Mussina, Tiger Woods).
41. Wall-to-wall basketball. The first two days, you can watch games from morning to midnight.
42. Danny and the Miracles. Yes, one great player can carry a team to a championship, as Danny Manning and Kansas taught us in 1988.
43. Jim Valvano. Where were you when the late, great N.C. State coach danced a jig at center court after his Wolfpack stunned Houston in the 1983 final on Lorenzo Charles' last-second dunk?
"I graduated from North Carolina State in 1984," says Melbourne's Brenda Pearce. "I think the game that really set the team in motion was the last N.C. State-North Carolina matchup in Raleigh. The editor of our student newspaper broke into UNC's gym, took off his clothes and laid on the floor where their school symbol was. He placed a basketball in front of parts that shouldn't be displayed in a newspaper and the photographer snapped away.
"The day of the game, all of us students opened our newspapers and we could not believe our eyes. There, was an almost-naked Dean Smith, coach of the Tar Heels. We were told to bring our papers to the game that night and when Coach Smith was introduced, to hold them up. After the game, Coach Smith said that it certainly was his face in the picture -- but not his body. He was a really good sport about it.
"That win, along with Derrick Whittenburg's return to the team after a broken foot, began the thrill we called 'The Cardiac Pack who brought it all back.' No one thought we could -- except Jimmy V."
44. April. The tournament's so good, they've extended it a month. This year's Final Four starts April 3.
45. Duke. Go ahead and pencil Mike Krzyzewski's Blue Devils in your Sweet 16. They've been there six straight years -- twice as many times as the next schools on the list (Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland).
46. CBS. We miss Al McGuire, but the network still does the tournament right. It better after forking over $6 billion in 1999 for the exclusive rights to broadcast the tournament for 11 years.
47. The 1983 national semifinals. Houston vs. Louisville. Phi Slamma Jamma vs. the Doctors of Dunk. Clyde "the Glide" Drexler vs. Darrell "Dr. Dunkenstein" Griffith. "When you were under the basket as the referee, you thought you were in London for the Blitzkrieg," longtime official Hank Nichols said. "We were running to get out of the way."
48. Darvin Ham's slam. In 1996, the Texas Tech high-flier brought down the house -- and the backboard -- against North Carolina in Richmond, Va.
49. Your Aunt Marge picking more games right than Billy Packer. "The receivings clerk who knows the least about the game usually winds up winning the office pool," says Sports Illustrated college basketball writer Alexander Wolff.
50. Sure shots. This is the time of year when shooting stars are born. In 1985, we watched Villanova sink 22 of 28 shots to stun Georgetown. Two years later, Indiana's Steve Alford made like Jimmy Chitwood in "Hoosiers," canning 7 of 10 3-pointers in the title game. Two years after that, Michigan's Glen Rice shot a stunning 55.1 percent from three-point country to set the all-time tournament scoring record (184 points in six games).
51. The play-in game. The madness now starts on Tuesday, with the worst two teams in the field duking it out to play the best. Enjoy, Florida A&M.
52. Georgetown 50, Princeton 49, 1989 first round. The greatest upset that never was.
53. Freshmen. March Madness is where we were introduced to a kid named Michael Jordan, who hit the game-winner against Georgetown in '82, and Carmelo Anthony, who carried Syracuse to the 2003 title.
LeBron, you don't know what you're missing.
54. UConn-Tennessee women. Yankees-Red Sox has nothing on this rivalry.
55. Nicknames. Remember Harold "The Show" Arceneaux, who torched North Carolina for 36 points in Weber State's upset win in 1999? This is where we first met "Never Nervous" Pervis Ellison, who led Louisville to the title as a freshman, and Akeem "The Dream" Olajuwon, Houston's Nigerian nightmare.
56. Bill Bradley. Before he went into politics, the pride of Princeton lit up Wichita State for a tournament-record 58 points.
57. Lew Alcindor. Before he became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the UCLA legend was a three-time Final Four MVP.
58. Dave Winfield. The only athlete to collect more than 3,000 hits in the majors after starting for a school making its first NCAA Tournament appearance (Minnesota '72).
59. Finally, something to watch on TV on Friday nights. Our apologies, "Joan of Arcadia" fans.
60. Tournament trivia. Do yourself a favor and order a copy of The NCAA Final Four Record Book ($12 by calling 888-388-9748). Then quiz your buddies throughout the month on the only bearded coach to advance to a Final Four (Seton Hall's P.J. Carlesimo) or the record for most blocked shots in a tournament game (Shaquille O'Neal, 11, vs. BYU).
61. Anyone can win. Well, not quite anyone. But this year more than any other, there are no clear-cut couple championship contenders. "It's the most wide-open tournament the NCAA's had in a long, long time," UCF coach Kirk Speraw says.
62. Richmond. The itsy-bitsy Spiders ended the collegiate careers of Charles Barkley (Auburn) and Billy Owens (Syracuse), and shocked third-seeded South Carolina in '98 and fourth-seeded Indiana in '88.
63. No goons slugging each other on their way downcourt
64. No University of Colorado
65. No shooting guards on steroids
http://www.floridatoday.com
