The 1977 Final Four was the year Al McGuire rode into retirement in a blaze of glory with the Marquette Warriors. It was also a year when Jerry Tarkanian made his first appearance on college basketball’s big stage, when Cornbread Maxwell led upstart UNC-Charlotte and when Dean Smith’s North Carolina team might have won it all if not for an untimely injury. Here’s a look back on the road all four teams took to Atlanta.
The place to be in 1977 wasn’t necessarily geographic. While the Yankees winning the World Series and the Cowboys winning the Super Bowl undoubtedly pleased those who bandwagon-hopped the country’s two most popular franchises, the ultimate place to be was a Jesuit priest in the Catholic Church. The Jesuit schools swept the national championships in both college football and college basketball as Notre Dame and Marquette brought home trophies. So while it helped to live in the Midwest, your ultimate place to be was a 400-plus year old religious order that spanned the globe