I’m a sucker for a good underdog story. I wrote an entire book (The Boys of Winter) about the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey team’s victory over the evil Soviets in Lake Placid. I wrote another book (They Said It Couldn’t Be Done) about the 1969 New York Mets, a sad-sack bunch who were 100-to-1 shots to win the World Series, and then took out the mighty Baltimore Orioles in five games. I pulled hard for David over Goliath.
I’ve covered more than 20 NCAA basketball tournaments in my sportswriting career, and one of the reasons it has long been my favorite annual sporting event is the way it delivers delicious underdog stories just about every year. Here’s hoping this year’s tournaments, which begin this week, are no exception. I mean, how can you not love the University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) becoming the first No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1 when it routed, Virginia, 74-54, in the first round of the 2018 tournament? Or the mind-boggling run that 15th-seeded St. Peter’s went on two Marches ago, beating No. 2 Kentucky, No. 7 Murray State and No. 3 Purdue to get to the final eight?
On the women’s side, what about 16th-seeded Harvard beating No. 1 Stanford, 71-67, in the 1998 tournament, or No. 13 Wright State knocking out Arkansas, 66-62, in 2021?
For me, though, the most unforgettable NCAA games I’ve witnessed courtside both involve the Princeton men, who were seeded No. 13 in the 1996 tournament when they were matched up with No. 4 UCLA in Indianapolis. UCLA, the defending NCAA champions, had four future NBA draft picks in the starting lineup. Princeton had barely gotten into the tournament, beating Penn for the Ivy League title with its best game of the season. A day before the game, according to the Daily Princetonian, Indiana Pacers guard (and former UCLA star) Reggie Miller visited Princeton’s practice and spent much of the time mocking the Tigers and telling them they had no chance. It was a widely held opinion, but Princeton did its thing, playing stout defense and crisply executed offense, full of screens and motion and well-timed backdoor cuts. UCLA looked to be in a good place with a 41-34 lead and 5 ½ minutes to play, only to see Princeton go on a 7-0 run to tie it. And then, on the Tigers’ last possession, center Steve Goodrich hit freshman forward Gabe Lewullis with a backdoor bounce pass. Lewullis – now an orthopedic surgeon - banked in the layup in heavy traffic. The crowd went crazy, and so did the Princeton bench. After UCLA missed its final shot, Princeton coach Pete Carril, a brilliant basketball Yoda famous for his unruly hair, raspy voice and persistent pessimism, had the 525th, and last, victory of his legendary coaching career.
It may have been Carril’s single greatest triumph, but the Princeton game I remember most vividly was played on St. Patrick’s Day, 1989, in the Providence Civic Center. The opponent was the top-ranked Georgetown Hoyas, a team that had Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo, both of whom would become NBA stars. Carril had his team prepare for the two giant shot-blockers by having an assistant coach stand under the basket with a broom.
“I think we’re a billion-to-one to win the whole tournament,” Carril said before the game. “To beat Georgetown, we’re only 450 million to one.”
Sports Illustrated and Time magazine would later refer to that night as “The Game That Saved March Madness,” and it’s not an overstatement. The richest and most powerful conferences were pushing the NCAA hard to scale back automatic bids to the smallest conferences because they were tired of seeing strong, major programs get closed out of the tournament money pot by the Woffords and Fairleigh Dickinsons and yes, Princetons, of the world. In the previous three years, this argument went, the Ivy League champions had lost in the first round by an average of 40 points. How was that good for anyone?
CBS didn’t carry the whole tournament then, and didn’t want to interrupt its primetime lineup to show Princeton-Georgetown. By the time the game was over, there was a whole new appreciation for the essential magic of what was becoming March Madness: the chance, however remote, for a Little Guy to knock out a Big Guy.
ESPN, still far from a cable staple, picked up the Princeton-Georgetown broadcast, and its reward was the highest rating it ever had for a college basketball game. My friend, Sean Gregory, renowned sportswriter for Time and a reserve on that 1996 Princeton team, wrote a superb piece with SI’s Alex Wolff about the impact the Princeton-Georgetown game had. CBS executives watched the ESPN telecast, saw the ratings and suddenly had new-found motivation to buy into the whole tournament, from the first tip of the first game.
“In a pre-internet age, word of mouth spread about the game, via landline telephone or maybe carrier pigeon,” Gregory said. “ ‘Do you see what’s happening in Princeton-Georgetown? If you don’t have ESPN … get to a bar that has it, fast!’ It was a viral phenomenon before that was even a thing.”
CBS soon made a billion-dollar investment in the tournament, which in Gregory’s view, “helped elevate the first two days of March Madness into a near-national holiday.”
As for the game, Princeton appeared to be on the verge of the unthinkable when it moved out to a 10-point lead early in the second half, but Georgetown closed to within two, mostly because of the dominant play of Mourning. He hit two free throws, and then added another one with 23 seconds to play. Princeton’s best outside shooter, Bob Scrabis, had a good look from the top of the key with 15 seconds left, but Mourning charged out and swatted it away, one of his seven blocks. Princeton got one last possession after a loose-ball scramble. Center Kit Mueller launched a three-pointer from the wing, Mourning contesting again. Mourning looked to hit Mueller’s shooting hand, but there was no whistle.
“It would be an understatement to say Princeton deserved to win this game,” said Georgetown coach John Thompson, whose son, John III, played for Carril and graduated Princeton a year earlier.
In the locker room, I asked Mueller if he got hit.
“It’s hard to say. I think he may have hit my hand,” he said.
Carril was standing nearby.
“It’s not what he told me,” the coach said.
The fairy-tale ending didn’t materialize, but even Mourning was caught up in the wonder of it all.
“You just look at their team and just look at our team and you say, ‘Wow, we should be overpowering them.’ It was kind of unbelievable.”
Underdogs and Other Things
I’m a sucker for a good underdog story. I wrote an entire book (The Boys of Winter) about the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey team’s victory over the evil Soviets, the greatest hockey team ever assembled, in Lake Placid. I wrote another book (They Said It Couldn’t Be Done) about the 1969 New York Mets, a sad-sack bunch who were 100-to-1 shots to win the World Series, and then took out the mighty Baltimore Orioles in five games. I pulled hard for David over Goliath.
I’ve covered more than 20 NCAA basketball tournaments in my sportswriting career, and one of the reasons it has long been my favorite annual sporting event is the way it delivers delicious underdog stories just about every year. Here’s hoping this year’s tournaments, which begin later this week, are no exception. I mean, who can forget University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) becoming the first No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1 when it routed, Virginia, 74-54, in the first round of the 2018 tournament? Or the mind-boggling run that 15th-seeded St. Peter’s went on two Marches ago, beating No. 2 Kentucky, No. 7 Murray State and No. 3 Purdue to get to the final eight?
On the women’s side, what about 16th-seeded Harvard beating No. 1 Stanford, 71-67, in the 1998 tournament, or No. 13 Wright State knocking out Arkansas, 66-62, in 2021?
Still, for me, the most unforgettable NCAA games I’ve witnessed courtside both involve the Princeton men, who were seeded No. 13 in the 1996 tournament when they were matched up with No. 4 UCLA in Indianapolis. UCLA, the defending NCAA champions, had four future NBA draft picks in the starting lineup. Princeton had barely gotten into the tournament, beating Penn for the Ivy League title with its best game of the season. A day before the game, according to the Daily Princetonian, Indiana Pacers guard (and former UCLA star) Reggie Miller visited Princeton’s practice and spent much of the time mocking the Tigers and telling them they had no chance. It was a widely held opinion, but Princeton did its thing, playing stout defense and crisply executed offense, full of screens and motion and well-timed backdoor cuts. UCLA looked to be in a good place with a 41-34 lead and 5 ½ minutes to play, only to see Princeton go on a 7-0 run to tie it. And then, on the Tigers’ last possession, center Steve Goodrich hit freshman forward Gabe Lewullis with a backdoor bounce pass. Lewullis – who is now an orthopedic surgeon, banked in the layup in heavy traffic. The crowd went crazy, and so did the Princeton bench. After UCLA missed its final shot, Princeton coach Pete Carril, a brilliant basketball Yoda famous for his unruly hair, raspy voice and persistent pessimism, had the 525th, and last, victory of his legendary coaching career
.
It may have been Carril’s single greatest triumph, but the Princeton game I remember most vividly was played on St. Patrick’s Day, 1989, in the Providence Civic Center. The opponent was the top-ranked Georgetown Hoyas, a team that had Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo, both of whom would become NBA stars. Carril had his team prepare for the two giant shot-blockers by having an assistant coach stand under the basket with a broom.
“I think we’re a billion-to-one to win the whole tournament,” Carril said before the game. “To beat Georgetown, we’re only 450 million to one.”
Sports Illustrated and Time magazine would later refer to that night as “The Game That Saved March Madness,” and it’s not an overstatement. The richest and most powerful conferences were pushing the NCAA hard to scale back automatic bids to the smallest conferences because they were tired of seeing strong, major programs get closed out of the tournament money pot by the Woffords and Fairleigh Dickinsons and yes, Princetons, of the world. In the previous three years, this argument went, the Ivy League champions had lost in the first round by an average of 40 points. How was that good for anyone?
CBS didn’t carry the whole tournament then, and didn’t want to interrupt its primetime lineup to show Princeton-Georgetown. By the time the game was over, there was a whole new appreciation for the essential magic of what was becoming March Madness: the chance, however remote, for a Little Guy to knock out a Big Guy.
ESPN, still far from a cable staple, picked up the Princeton-Georgetown broadcast, and its reward was the highest rating it ever had for a college basketball game. My friend, Sean Gregory, renowned sportswriter for Time and a reserve on that 1996 Princeton team, wrote a superb piece with SI’s Alex Wolff about the impact the Princeton-Georgetown game had. CBS executives watched the ESPN telecast, saw the ratings and suddenly had new-found motivation to buy into the whole tournament, from the first tip of the first game.
“In a pre-internet age, word of mouth spread about the game, via landline telephone or maybe carrier pigeon,” Gregory said. “ ‘Do you see what’s happening in Princeton-Georgetown? If you don’t have ESPN … get to a bar that has it, fast!’ It was a viral phenomenon before that was even a thing.”
CBS soon made a billion-dollar investment in the tournament, which in Gregory’s view, “helped elevate the first two days of March Madness into a near-national holiday.”
As for the game, Princeton appeared to be on the verge of the unthinkable when it moved out to a 10-point lead early in the second half, but Georgetown closed to within two, mostly because of the dominant play of Mourning. He hit two free throws, and then added another one with 23 seconds to play. Princeton’s best outside shooter, Bob Scrabis, had a good look from the top of the key with 15 seconds left, but Mourning charged out and swatted it away, one of his seven blocks. Princeton got one last possession after a loose-ball scramble. Center Kit Mueller launched a three-pointer from the wing, Mourning contesting again. Mourning looked to hit Mueller’s shooting hand, but there was no whistle.
“It would be an understatement to say Princeton deserved to win this game,” said Georgetown coach John Thompson, whose son, John III, played for Carril and graduated Princeton a year earlier.
In the locker room, I asked Mueller if he got hit.
“It’s hard to say. I think he may have hit my hand,” he said.
Carril was standing nearby.
“It’s not what he told me,” the coach said.
The fairy-tale ending didn’t materialize, but even Mourning was caught up in the wonder of it all.
“You just look at their team and just look at our team, our team and you say, ‘Wow, we should be overpowering them.’ It was kind of unbelievable.”
******
If you are interested in ordering one of my ‘underdog’ books, the links are below. Remember, if you become an annual paid subscriber, you will get a free autographed copy (free shipping, too). Coffey Grounds believes in supporting underdogs, which makes sense, because we are an underog ourselves.
https://www.amazon.com/Boys-Winter-Untold-Olympic-Hockey-ebook/dp/B000FC2PK6
Clearly, you’re in your element. Feels like I’m court side.
Another wonderful piece, Wayne.