Bob Knight was coming off the roughest season of his career. The 1985 season had been marked by Indiana opening in the national top five and ending in the NIT. In between, Knight delivered his infamous chair throw. 1986 Indiana basketball convened with low expectations and the feeling that the program was being overtaken by […]
Indiana basketball was on a high after the 1981 season ended. The program had won its second national championship in six years. The Hoosiers had taken each of the two previous Big Ten titles outright. But the aftermath of that season created a lot of challenges for 1982 Indiana basketball to overcome. READ GREAT 1980s […]
Gene Keady was in his fourth year coaching at Purdue. He inherited a program that went to a Final Four in 1980, but had been gutted by departures. After two years of retooling, Keady returned the Boilermakers to the NCAA Tournament in 1983. The 1984 Purdue basketball team took the next step and won a […]
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. GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS Start reading today. UCLA The proud […]
It was the year Jerry Tarkanian finally won it all and when Duke was still a lovable underdog trying to get to the winner’s circle for the first time. It was a time that Nolan Richardson was on the rise and Georgia Tech drew its inspiration from a popular movie franchise. It was the 1990 […]
The 1991 Georgetown Hoyas began the season with great expectations and two of the best big men in college basketball. But though they often teased, they ended up riding an up-and-down roller coaster marked by missed opportunities. GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS Start reading today. Georgetown was anchored by Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo down low, both […]
Steve Fisher was one of college basketball’s great stories in 1989, but in three short years his seat had began to get a little warm. Fisher took over the Michigan program on an interim basis after head coach Bill Frieder left and promptly started his career 6-0 with a national championship. GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS […]
The University of Oklahoma has been much more renowned for its football program than what they do on the basketball court and that was certainly true in the 1980s when Barry Switzer had OU football rolling and won a national championship. But the 1988 Oklahoma Sooners basketball team were awfully good themselves and nearly gave […]
The basketball program at Kansas State has had a long and steady history of producing winning teams. What the school hasn’t done, at least in modern times, is make it all the way to the Final Four. Not since 1964 have the Wildcats danced on college basketball’s biggest stage. The 1988 Kansas State basketball team […]
It would be Crum’s last dance on college basketball’s biggest stage. Krzyzewski was just getting started. Their ships passed in Dallas in 1986.
The 1984 Final Four brought together two of the greatest big men to ever play the game, when Patrick Ewing’s Georgetown beat Akeem Olajuwon (he didn’t become “Hakeem” until he was in the NBA) and Houston in the NCAA final. GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS Start reading today. They were joined by two other high-profile college big […]
The first four days of the NCAA Tournament in 1981 were marked by a sequence of upsets and buzzer-beaters that was then unprecedented. But by the time the 1981 Final Four rolled around, the powers-that-be had emerged. Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia and LSU were all high seeds that won regionals. Let’s look back on the road all four teams took to Philadelphia.