At that time, the tournament was at NBC, and they were covering games in the original regional style that CBS was doing up until their partnership with Turner Sports. These games were also not staggered so that they ended up ending at the same time. The first salvo of this insanity took place in Dayton when #1 seed DePaul (No, this is not a typo) was facing #9 seed Saint Joseph's. The game was close all day and with 12 seconds left, DePaul had a one point lead and the ball. St. Joe's had no choice but to foul Skip Dillard, an 85 % FT shooter, and send him to the line for a one and one. Remember this is before the advent of the 3 pointer, so if Dillard hit both, the game would have been iced. Bryant Gumbel with the highlights to start and Don Criqui has the call:
Ray Meyer came close a few times but never won a title with DePaul and after his retirement, his program slowly sunk into the nothingness that DePaul currently is.
And this was just the beginning.
The second and third acts of this "madness" took place almost simultaneously, which would force NBC to use its technological prowess. The two games were #5 seed Arkansas vs #4 seed Louisville (the defending champs) and #8 seed Kansas State vs. #1 seed Oregon State (again not a typo). Both of these games were close. Louisville had just taken the lead with 6 seconds to go, while KSU and OSU were tied with 90 seconds to go (Also remember, the NCAA would not introduce the shot clock for another 5 years so teams could just dribble and shoot with no urgency).
So NBC did something very bold. They switched away from the L'ville game to the K-State game for a few seconds as Arkansas was in a time out. They stayed there for 30 seconds as K-State had the ball and was dribbling, then went back to the end of the L'ville game. Marv Albert was on the call and this transpired.
US Reed would make plenty of due on that one shot. And Arkansas sent the defending champs home to bed. But what about the other game? Well, NBC switched back to that game. Jay Randolph is on the call, and THIS transpired.
Within a minute of each other, NBC had captured two of the greatest buzzer beaters in the history of college basketball and did it deftly. Oregon State, under Ralph Miller, would also get close and fail to reach the top. Incidentally, if you listened to Jay Randolph closely, he also mentioned that #3 seeded UCLA under Larry Brown also lost that day to #6 seed BYU.
While most people credit the 1979 NCAA final between Larry Bird's Indiana State Sycamores and Magic Johnson's Michigan State Spartans as the crux of college basketball's popularity in modern culture, I think this day does more because it provided the fever pitch that we are used to in the NCAA tournament. It's a place where any team on any day can lose and that is what makes it truly mad. It was not seen this past weekend. but hopefully we can see some good college basketball in the next round of games beginning on Thursday.
For more information on this particular day, read Tim Layden's SI article about the day and the broadcasting around it
Talk to you soon.
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