Bill Bradley was a three-time All-American at Princeton.
In honor of the upcoming NCAA “March Madness”, we recognize as the March Sports Then and Now Vintage Athlete of the Month a former college basketball superstar who helped lift a college not known for its basketball prowess to unprecedented heights.
Bill Bradley embodied the true meaning of the term student-athlete. A Rhode scholar, Bradley was a three-time All-American at Princeton University and was the College Basketball Player of the Year as a senior in 1965.
Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a game on March 2, 1962.
Given his larger than life personality and talent, it is very possible that were he playing in today’s modern media era, Wilt Chamberlain would dwarf Kobe, LeBron, D-Wade, Shaq and the rest both on and off the court.
At 7-foot-1, Chamberlain was a scoring machine like no other. For much of his career, scoring as many as 50 or 60 points in a game wasn’t a “special” night, it was a routine. During the 1961-62 season, Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points per game and became the only NBA player to top 4,000 points in a season.
In fact, his career scoring average of 30.1 points is actually higher than the 2009-10 average of the NBA’s current leading scorer (LeBron James averaging 30.0).
It was 48 years ago today that Chamberlain had his finest offensive night and one that will certainly never be duplicated.
As a member of the Philadelphia Warriors, Chamberlain scored 100 points on March 2, 1962 against the New York Knicks in a game played at Hersheypark Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
The late season game wasn’t expected to be overly exciting and in fact there is no known video from the game. There is a radio broadcast that I have included below.
Chamberlain scored 41 points in the first half, which wasn’t overly exciting considering he had topped 60 points 17 times already during the season and 32 times in his three year NBA career.
However, Warriors coach Frank McGuire instructed his players to keep feeding Chamberlain the ball during the second half and the points started to pile up.
As he neared 100 points, the Knicks started fouling the other Warrior players to keep Chamberlain from getting the ball. The Warriors then started fouling the Knicks to slow down the game and give Chamberlain more chances.
He finally reached 100 points in the final minute and the game was halted for nine minutes as fans ran onto the court to celebrate Chamberlain’s milestone.
What made Chamberlain’s 100 point game possible was his uncanny free throw shooting for that game. Chamberlain converted 28 of 32 foul shots (.875), which is far greater than his career average of .511 from the line. He also connected on 36 of 63 field goal attempts in the 169-147 victory.
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Below are some audio and video clips that remember Chamberlain and his record setting night: 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 →
Roy Williams and the defending NCAA Champion North Carolina Tar Heels have struggled in 2010.
To start this off I am going to tell you UCLA and Kentucky are the teams with more action and most championships titles after they survived March Madness, here are some things that I have considered before my making my final March Madness picks:
Kansas, with 3 titles, is one of my favorites for March Madness. The Jayhawks are gunning for a perfect regular season and are trying to make this season their best conference performance ever; they are leading the nation in scoring and victory margin, winning eleven straight games. Kansas is ranked at number one, meaning they are always favorites in any NCAA basketball odds.
UCLA, the team with eleven Big Dance victories in college basketball, is having an embarrassing campaign this season. With 12 wins and 13 losses, the Bruins haven’t improved their work, and I can’t even imagine them in the final 64. The Bruins seem to be far away from the glory days and the good times in the past, their last title was in 1995.
