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1995 Final Four

The Road To The 1995 Final Four

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The 1995 Final Four in Seattle was highlighted by a long-awaited UCLA revival and Arkansas’ bid for a dynasty. Here’s a look at the paths the Bruins & Razorbacks, along with North Carolina and Oklahoma State, took to reach college basketball’s biggest stage at the Kingdome.

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UCLA

The proud program had been in a dry spell. The Bruins had not won the NCAA championship since the end of the Wooden Dynasty in 1975. They hadn’t even reached a Final Four since 1980. Head coach Jim Harrick was in his seventh year. The pressure was on and there was a veteran group led by Ed O’Bannon, the forward who won National Player of the Year. O’Bannon was joined by point guard Tyus Edney, his own brother Charles and freshman Toby Bailey.

After a regular season of meeting expectations and getting the 1-seed in the West, UCLA was on the verge of disaster in the Round of 32. They trailed Missouri 74-73 with five seconds left. Edney made one of March Madness’ memorable plays, going coast-to-coast for the game-winner that saved his team’s season. UCLA closed out their regional run with an electrifying 102-96 win over a UConn team that had Ray Allen, Donyell Marshall and Kevin Ollie.

ARKANSAS

Arkansas brought the key pieces back from their 1994 national championship run and were the preseason #1 with heavy expectations of a repeat title. Corliss Williamson and Scotty Thurman were as good as they’d been in ‘94, averaging 20 points/8 rebounds and 15/4 respectively. But this Razorback team wasn’t quite as deep as the previous year and they had some hiccups in the regular season that resulted in losing the SEC title to Kentucky, both regular season and tournament, and settling for the 2-seed in the Midwest.

The Razorback ride through March was positively hair-raising. They edged Texas Southern 79-78 in the Round of 64, then needed overtime to get past both Syracuse and Memphis. Then a big break came—with the regionals behind held in Kansas City, top-seeded Kansas fell to Virginia in the Sweet 16. The Hogs beat the Cavs 68-61. In the four-game regional run Williamson scored 92 points and pulled down 38 rebounds and Arkansas had their third Final Four in six years.

NORTH CAROLINA

Another year, another loaded team for Dean Smith. This one had sophomores named Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace, who each had long NBA careers ahead of them. Stackhouse averaged 19 points/8 rebounds/3 assists, while Wallace was good for 16/8. UNC finished in a four-way tie for the ACC title, but a loss in the tournament final relegated them to the 2-seed in the Southeast.

After a slow start against Murray State where they trailed by a point at the half, the Tar Heels played some excellent basketball—particularly on the defensive end. In the regionals, they beat a Georgetown team with Allan Iverson 74-64. Then they forced top-seeded Kentucky into a 28 percent shooting performance. Stackhouse’s 18/12/6 line in the regional final secured Dean’s ninth Final Four trip.

OKLAHOMA STATE

It was a long time for Oklahoma State. They hadn’t been to a Final Four since Hank Iba’s glory days in the early 1950s. When Eddie Sutton arrived in Stillwater in 1991, they had reached just one NCAA Tournament since 1965. Led by 7’0” senior Bryant Reeves and guard Randy Rutherford, who each averaged 20ppg and combined for 18 rebounds a night, Okie State finished second in the Big Eight regular season, won the league tournament and was the 4-seed in the East.

The Cowboy run through the regionals was exceptionally impressive at the time and looks even better in the eyes of history. They beat top-seeded Wake Forest in the Sweet 16 and then knocked off 2-seed Massachusetts. The respective centers in those games were merely Tim Duncan and Marcus Camby. Rutherford went for 23/11 in the 71-66 win over Wake, while Reeves posted a 24/10 line in the 68-54 win over John Calipari’s UMass team that sealed the Final Four berth.

SEATTLE: THE 1995 FINAL FOUR

Second-half dominance was the story of all three games at the Kingdome. UCLA-Oklahoma State was tied at the half before the Bruins pulled away to win 74-61. UCLA forced 19 turnovers, while Edney and the O’Bannon brothers combined for 55 points. Arkansas trailed North Carolina 38-34 at the half in the prime-time game, but turnovers were again a big factor. The Hogs forced 15, got a 21/10 night from Williamson and won 75-68.

On Monday night, one team wanted to revive a dynasty and another wanted to establish one. UCLA held a 40-39 lead at the half, before one more potent second half run settled the championship. O’Bannon went off for a 30/17 night that was as good as any title game performance this side of Danny Manning in 1988. Freshman Toby Bailey was the X-factor with a 26/9 game himself. The final was 89-78 and for the only time in the post-Wooden era, the trophy was going to Westwood.

1995 Sports: Dynasties Built, Developed, Validated & Restored

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The year that was 1995 sports was one of the dynasty. All of the six major team championships—the Final Four, the Stanley Cup, the NBA Finals, the World Series, the college football title and the Super Bowl—had dynastic overtones to it. In some cases, the dynasty was known at the time, in other cases we know it from the perspective of history, in still others it was an old dynasty coming to life, but it looms over every single championship run.

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We knew at the time that the Dallas Cowboys were aiming for dynasty status. They had won the Super Bowl in 1992 and 1993 and reached the NFC Championship Game in 1994. One of the big sports stories of the year was the highly publicized pursuit of free agent cornerback Deion Sanders by owner Jerry Jones.
The acquisition of Deion gave the Cowboys the extra piece they needed to win a third Super Bowl in four years and earn dynasty status.
Read more about the 1995 Dallas Cowboys
The Nebraska Cornhuskers were already one of college football’s top programs, and a long-awaited national championship in 1994 had gotten the monkey off the back of their coach, Tom Osborne. It turns out, Osborne was just getting started. The 1995 edition of Nebraska football was one of the great college teams of all time. They won a repeat title and two years later, the Cornhuskers also completed a three crowns-in-four years run that earned them the dynasty tag.
Read more about 1995 Nebraska football
The period of NBA basketball from 1991 to 1998 was defined by Michael Jordan, with one notable exception—the interlude when he went to play minor league baseball. The Houston Rockets won the championship in the Jordan-less year of 1994. And though MJ returned in 1995, it was late in the regular season.
Houston again won a title and solidified themselves as the top alternative to the Jordan Bulls. And speaking of those Bulls…after Michael’s return, he played a marquee playoff series against the Orlando Magic of Shaquille O’Neal and came up short. It would be the last time Jordan came up short, as his own dynasty was back on track.
Read more about the 1995 Houston Rockets
Read more about the 1995 MJ-Shaq Playoff Battle
No dynasty ever dominated its sport the way the UCLA basketball program did under John Wooden, with their ten national championships from 1964-75. The dominance was so thorough, that an entire era of college basketball history is defined by its conclusion, and it serves as the marking point for where the modern era of the NCAA Tournament really begins.
But UCLA had never cut down the nets since Wooden’s departure. 1995 finally changed that. With Ed O’Bannon leading the way, the Bruins beat defending national champion Arkansas and UCLA was back atop the college basketball world.
Read more about 1995 UCLA basketball
I suppose it’s debatable whether the New Jersey Devils are a dynasty, and they certainly weren’t perceived as such when the 1995 Stanley Cup playoffs began. But what’s indisputable is that the Devils were embarking on an era where they would become one of the NHL’s great franchises—over the next nine years they would make the Finals four times and hoist the Cup on three of those occasions.
The first one came in 1995 when they upset the Detroit Red Wings in a shocking Stanley Cup Finals. It was the last shocker in a postseason that began when the Western Conference saw three first-round series go to Game 7s, and two of the top three seeds eliminated in them.
Read more about the 1995 Stanley Cup Finals
Finally, we come to the Atlanta Braves. Over the previous four years they had won two pennants, made three NLCS, and were in position to at least go back to the postseason in 1994 before the strike wiped out everything. In future years, they would continue to win NL East titles—every year through 2005—and win two more pennants.
But in only one of those years would they win a World Series and that was in 1995. Without this championship, Atlanta would have lived in sports infamy (I don’t condone that line of thinking, I’m merely acknowledging its reality). The Series they won in 1995 at least provided some inoculation against harsh judgment and validated their long dynastic run through the National League in general, and the Eastern Division in particular.
Atlanta’s World Series victory over the Cleveland Indians was cathartic for the franchise, but nothing was more cathartic for baseball fans—still wounded after the strike of 1994—then the excitement provided by the Seattle Mariners. The M’s staged a dramatic late-season comeback to win the AL West, and then one more dramatic comeback to upend the New York Yankees in a thrilling Division Series.
Read more about the 1995 Atlanta Braves
Read more about the 1995 Seattle Mariners