Michigan's "Fab Five" made an improbable NCAA Tournament run in 1992.
We have entered the month of March which means one thing for diehard sports fans: March Madness.
The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is regarded as perhaps the greatest sporting event in America because of the great individual performances, mid-majors knocking off the giants of college basketball, and the many last-second buzzer beaters.
Here I have compiled the Ultimate March Madness List, a countdown of the 65 greatest moments, performances or stories to come out of the NCAA Tournament.
The reason I chose 65 is pretty obvious with there being 65 teams in the tournament.
Included in this list, all of the some greatest runs in the tournament in which a team complied more than one memorable moment during their journey in March.
Now that I have made myself clear, here is Part I of the Ultimate March Madness List, starting with moments 65-41.
65. 1981 Wichita State-Kansas
Living up to their nickname, the Wichita State Shockers upset their intrastate rival, the Kansas Jayhawks, 66-65 in their Sweet Sixteen matchup as Wichita State guard Mike Jones makes two baskets from more than 20 feet in the final 45 seconds.
64. 1986 Kansas-Michigan State
The Jayhawks, aided by 10 extra seconds of play while the game clock was stopped at 2:21, erase a six-point deficit in the final minute to force overtime where they would outscore the Spartans 16-6 in overtime for a 96-86 win in their Sweet Sixteen matchup.
This incident leads the NCAA to require that referees use television replays to fix timing errors. Read the rest of this entry →
Maya Moore and the UConn women's basketball team has towered over their competition for the last two years.
According to the old saying, the only things certain in life are death and taxes. It might be time to modify that phrase to make it death, taxes and a dominating victory by the Connecticut women’s basketball team.
The Huskies didn’t just defeat West Virginia to win their 72nd straight victory; they annihilated the eighth ranked team in the country 60-32 to claim their 16th Big East title.
The old adage of “on any given night” just doesn’t seem to apply to the Huskies as they have taken the game to a new level. Since the start of the 2008 season, the Huskies have been playing in a different stratosphere than all other teams in women’s college basketball.
The Huskies did not eclipse their own women’s basketball record for consecutive victories by posting a bunch of late game comebacks and last second victories.
To the contrary, they have won each of their 72 straight games by double digits and only 17 times (24%) has the victory margin been under 20 points. They have won eight games by more than 50 points and 41 (57%) by 30 or more points. Read the rest of this entry →
The 1991 NCAA Tournament win by Richmond over Syracuse marked the first time a 15 seed had ever defeated a number two seed.
When the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament begins later this month there will be lots of talk about Cinderella’s and which previously unknown teams from obscure conferences will shatter the Final Four dreams of schools from top-tier leagues.
For more than a quarter century, schools from one mid-level conference have set the standard for crashing the dance during March Madness.
Based in the mid-Atlantic region of the East Coast, the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) has created an impressive resume of NCAA Tournament upsets.
Even before the league officially formed in 1985, some of its original members were harassing the “big boys” during the NCAA Tournament.
Between 1981 and 1983, James Madison University (as a member of the CAA predecessor the ECAC South), made three consecutive trips to the NCAA Tournament and each season knocked off a big conference opponent. Their victims were all marquee programs in West Virginia, Ohio State and Georgetown.
JMU also nearly pulled off what would have gone down as one of the biggest upsets in tournament history as they gave eventual National Champion North Carolina all they could handle during the second round of the 1982 NCAA Tournament. UNC needed a controversial charge call on JMU in the final minute to pull out a 52-50 victory.
The University of Richmond (a member of the ECAC South and then a CAA member from 1985-2001) is now known as the only team in NCAA Tournament history to win games as a 12, 13, 14 and 15 seed, however, in 1984 they were a national unknown when head coach Dick Tarrant led the Spiders into the tournament. Read the rest of this entry →
Cornell point guard Louis Dale is part of a great senior class.
Ithaca, N.Y. has always prided itself on being home to Cornell University, a prestigious Ivy League School that has put the city on the map globally. Its’ rich academic history is reflected in its’ colleges such as The Johnson School of Management, The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and the College of Veterinary Medicine. Over the past decade, Cornell has had multiple students be named Rhodes Scholars and four faculty members receive the Pulitzer Prize.
While Cornell will always be recognized academically as one of the world’s premier research and land-grant universities, its’ visibility has also been enhanced by the success of its’ athletic program over the last several years which has added too its’ already great athletic history. The women’s ice hockey team just won its’ first ever Eastern College Athletic Conference regular-season title on Saturday Feb. 20 with a 6-1 win over Union (NY). The men’s lacrosse team has gone to the NCAA Final Four two out of the last three years including last year’s national championship game where they lost a 10-9 heartbreaker to Syracuse in overtime.
The men’s hockey team always plays before sellout crowds at Lynah Rink and has been dominant for decades. Wrestler Jordan Leen won the national championship at 157 pounds in 2008. The women’s basketball team won the Ivy League Championship – its’ first in the program’s history – in 2008. Speaking of basketball, the men’s team also won the Ivy League Championship with an unblemished 14-0 league mark in 2008, their first conference championship in 20 years. Read the rest of this entry →
Bobby Knight's chair throwing incident foreshadowed other outbursts to come.
Few figures in college sports have towered over the domain as forcefully as that of Bobby Knight over college basketball for more than 30 years. Known as “The General”, Knight is the all-time leader in coaching victories in Division I men’s basketball history with 903 and is also credited with ensuring that his players were not just athletes, but true student-athletes.
However, his legacy is forever tarnished by his reputation as a bully and inability to control his anger sometimes both on and off the court.
Today, February 23rd, marks the 25th anniversary of one of his most famous blowups and in many ways the event that foreshadowed his fall from professional grace.
During a Big Ten basketball game between Knight’s Indiana Hoosiers and the Purdue Boilermakers, Knight became frustrated with a call by the officials and received a technical foul. Irate, Knight turned to his bench, picked up a plastic chair and then flung it across the court. He received a second technical foul and ejection and was later suspended for a game and fined by the Big Ten.
Indiana ultimately lost 72-63 and Knight’s reputation for a quick temper was suddenly part of the national lexicon.
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It would take 15 years and a number of additional incidents, but Knight was eventually fired by Indiana University for his repeated outbursts, including incidents of laying hands on players.
He completed his coaching career at Texas Tech and is, ironically considering all the years he harassed the media, now working as a basketball commentator for ESPN.
Sherron Collins and the Kansas Jayhawks seem poised for the top seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Selection Sunday is getting closer and closer and the way things are shaping up I’m ready to make some NCAA Basketball predictionsfor the four teams that will be the number one seed in each region.
I’m really enjoying the way Kansas is playing right now, even though they had a few problems against Texas A&M they found a way to win and that gives me a feeling they are a championship caliber team.
Looking at their schedule I don’t see any team that can stop them until the tourney starts. They do go up against Kansas State, but that game is at home and I don’t think they will lose. That’s why I have Kansas as the top team in the Big 12 and in the country in general.
Kansas will lead the Midwest bracket.
I am a nut when it comes to sports and I look at every angle, and having said that I don’t trust Kentucky as much as other people. Read the rest of this entry →
