#oneshotatforever

[amthoughtsintowords]

One Shot At Forever

We’re counting down to a crossroads in hoop history; a collision of the present and the past; a Monday night drive in the ol’ time machine. Gonzaga 2021 and Indiana 1976. Unbeaten to this point against unbeaten forever.

Sure, tonight’s game is Gonzaga against Baylor in what should be a great matchup.  But it’s the outcome of this contest that has the implications. Nothing against Baylor – it’s their first men’s Final Four since 1948 – but they carry not only the weight of that 73 years of nada, but also of the most cherished jewel in the proud history of Indiana basketball.

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I can still see the April 5, 1976 cover of Sports Illustrated:  Great Scott, It’s Indiana! Admittedly, that issue contains one of my favorite articles, John Underwood’s profile of Missouri’s Jim Kennedy. Kennedy and the Tigers had surprised everyone that season and clawed their way to the regional finals, where despite 43 points from guard Willie Smith they fell short against Michigan. Underwood painted a portrait of the juggling act a student-athlete had in that time; a really nice bit of reporting in what S-I called their ”takeout” piece.  But those Hoosiers were the cover story for a reason – unbeaten, unrivaled and unfazed by achieving perfection. Coached by the enfant terrible Bobby Knight, they capped a 32-0 season by beating that very same Michigan team in the championship game. Several teams had come close to perfection in later years but didn’t get there. It is a mark that has grown in stature and risen in its unreachability. In today’s age of one-and-done players, the notion of a group of 18-year-olds melding into a championship team and not just catching regular season lightning in a bottle was becoming less and less likely to ever happen again.

Gonzaga has now reached the precipice; and wouldn’t you know it? The Zags are beating the odds in this unprecedented COVID cloud we’re all living under.  It is a program that has grown from the quiet 152 acres in Spokane, Washington, from the cute underdog to the perennial tournament participant to annually among the elite.

Mark Few’s team has practically run the table – picked as number one to begin the season, they haven’t had a slip up.  45 years ago, Indiana began the year at the top and marched into the final without a stumble. A year earlier, Knight’s team was in the process of doing the same thing; they were even deeper and more formidable than the team that followed. Leading scorer May broke his arm late in the regular season, tried to come back in the regional final against Kentucky, but wasn’t the same and with the chemistry off just a tick the Wildcats won by two. With May and three other starters returning, Knight set the tone right from the get-go; he told his squad on the first day of practice that the bar certainly wasn’t the Big Ten title, it wasn’t even the championship that had slipped away seven months earlier – it was perfection.

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Few hasn’t disclosed what the message was to his team, but the Bulldogs have been just that going through the season. In fact, they have won virtually all of their games by double digits. As we saw on Saturday night, it took a surface-to-air missile from Jalen Suggs to avoid a second overtime against UCLA. Otherwise, they trampled their other four opponents by an average of 24 points. Conversely, the Hoosiers had to pass through a gauntlet to get to the finals in ’76. The NCAA built their bracket much differently then as opposed to now, where saving the best matchups for the end is the priority.  To win their regional, Indiana had to beat 23-5 St. John’s, 23-4 Alabama, 27-1 Marquette, and then defending champion UCLA, 28-3 in the first year after the retirement of John Wooden; St. John’s and UCLA were repeat victims, but the average margin of victory in the tournament for Indiana to that point was 12 points.

Gonzaga has won with a trio of All-Americans: senior Corey Kispert was a first teamer, while Suggs and sophomore Drew Timme made the second team. Indiana featured two All-Americans in May and center Kent Benson but the unsung heroes of that team were senior guards Quinn Buckner and Bobby Wilkerson.  Wilkerson was nicknamed “Spiderman” for his long arms and ability to guard anyone on the floor – from the post to the point. Buckner was athletic enough to lead the football Hoosiers in interceptions as a freshman and sophomore. It was Buckner’s leadership abilities that made him an essential component for the basketball Hoosiers; Knight used Buckner’s example to define leadership for every Indiana team after he graduated.

So while the Zags are now set up to face the “other” number one team in the land, Baylor – the Bears weathered their own COVID storm to go 27-2 – Indiana had to beat Michigan in the finals. The Wolverines had lost twice to Indiana in the conference season by a combined eleven points – once in overtime. The adage remains that it is hard to beat a team a third time in a season, and that seemed to be the case at the Spectrum in Philadelphia on Monday, March 29, 1976. One of the reasons is familiarity but another is unknown adversity. Early in the game Wilkerson was toppled over and landed on his head; he was taken to a hospital with a concussion and subsequently Michigan had Indiana in dire straits, leading by six at the half.  At that point, Knight told his now-suddenly vulnerable team if they wanted to be considered one of the greatest in basketball history they had twenty minutes to prove it. Otherwise, they had wasted what they had spent six months working toward.

Sixth man Jim Crews, who later coached at Saint Louis U., put it more succinctly: “We had one shot at forever.”

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Gonzaga seemed to be in that spot against UCLA. The Bruins played a sensational game, never letting the Zags get out of sight and responding with a grit and determination of their own. It took Suggs and his 40-footer to pull his team out of the fire. A freshman had shown them the way.

Back in Philadelphia it was a group of seniors – May, Buckner, Crews, Tom Abernethy – and junior center Kent Benson that took their coach’s words back on to the court.  Even without Wilkerson it was as dominating a second half as you might ever see.  The Hoosiers set a record by scoring 57 points in the second twenty minutes, winning the game by 18. As Knight and his captains, Buckner and May, stood on the podium to accept the championship trophy, the coach was certainly relieved and gratified – but this was Bobby Knight – he reminded everyone listening that “it should have been two (titles).”

Indiana made good on their one shot at forever.  Since then, even the great Larry Bird and his ’79 Indiana State team couldn’t finish the job, losing in the finals.  UNLV, Kentucky, Wichita State – they all had shots, too, but lost in the semifinals. And now Gonzaga takes their shot.

Unlike the 1972 Miami Dolphins, unmatched in their perfection for a half-century now and very public in drinking a toast when the last undefeated NFL team goes down each season, the ’76 Hoosiers are much more sedate but just as proud of their achievement.

Perfection happened in college basketball six times in a 17-year span, from the San Franciso Dons in 1956 to UCLA in 1973; the Bruins did it three times under Wooden. Now, with a span of nearly fifty years gone by since the last time, can Gonzaga make history?

If so, “One Shining Moment” takes on special meaning tonight in Indianapolis.