SWC75
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The Dawn
Niagara had been probably our best rival since the Calvin Murphy era. But they were starting to fade. St. Bonaventure was another school, like Providence that had played at the highest levels of basketball in recent years, but which had not played SU, despite being in the same state, until this year. They had no losing records from 1954-86, (and only one even year). They had an 86-17 run from 1958-61 under Eddie Donovan, led by All-American brothers Sam and Ton Stith. Then under Larry Weise and led by Bob Lanier at center and with Jim Satalin in the backcourt, they had an undefeated regular season in 1967-68 and went to the Final Four in 1970, (but without Lanier who had been injured in the Eastern Regional Finals.
Jim Satalin, at age 28, was now their coach. They no longer had the Stith brothers or Bob Lanier, but they still had good teams and would play SU several times over the next few years, displacing the Purple Eagles as our main in-state rival. This tournament was a sort of passing of the baton. But for SU, it was a coming together. The key in the post season is to get hot at the right time, and SU did, polishing off both the Eagles and Bonnies with surprising ease, 90-72 and 100-81. No blown leads there.
That put SU in the NCAAs and a rematch with LaSalle, this time in Philadelphia. Jim Boeheim described the first game, an 82-78 SU win at Manley: “I think LaSalle played the most perfect game of basketball I’ve ever seen here. LaSalle played great. And we beat them. We played a great, great game and we beat them”. The Explorers through this era had been our leading out-of-state rival. They had won the last national title by an eastern team to that point, during the Tom Gola era, and had had several nationally ranked teams since then, none better than the one with 6-10 Joe Bryant, who averaged 22 points and 11 rebounds and was thus a classic match-up for Rudy Hackett. Jimmy the Greek announced LaSalle as a one point favorite, surely as good a piece of news as we could have asked for.
This classic would feature 13 tie scores and 11 lead changes. SU never led by more than 8 points and LaSalle never by more than 4. Joe Bryant had a monster first half, scoring the Explorer’s first 8 points and had 17 at the break. Amazingly, Hackett was scoreless at halftime, leading Jimmy Lee to say later “at the beginning of the week, Coach was trying to get our confidence up by saying, you know, ‘just a game: there’s only five guys out there’. Well, I don’t know, but at halftime we were down only one point and Rudy didn’t score the whole first half. Well, THEN we thought we had a good chance!”
Rudy scored 30 points from that point on, Bryant 8. But Joe had a chance to win the game when LaSalle set up a play with the game tied 71-71 with seven seconds left in regulation. “Let’s drop it in low”, said Coach Paul Westhead. Bryant’s five-footer barely rimmed out and Hackett grabbed the rebound. Bryant fouled out with 1:42 left in overtime and SU leading 81-77. Jimmy Lee got him on a head fake. But Charlie Wise took up the slack with a couple of long range jumpers to tie it at 81, (no treys in those days). With 35 seconds left, SU ran a play that got the ball into Hackett and then back out to Kevin King, who had transferred from LaSalle. King drove through an opening in the defense created by the attention on Hackett and laid the ball in. Lee’s two free throws, the 12th and 13th straight for SU, sealed the deal with 12 seconds left, 87-83. (There have been times this year - 2014-15 - when I thought this year’s team reminded me of the ’75 team with Rakeem Christmas in the Rudy Hackett role and Trevor Cooney as Jimmy Lee. That never really developed but the potential was there.)
Westhead said after the game: “We got exactly what we wanted. Joe Bryant gets the ball six feet from the basket with five seconds left. He takes his turnaround shot, on target, with a soft delivery. We’ve done the same thing a million times before…. I think we played better than (the previous game). And so did Syracuse.” Considering that Jim Boeheim had pronounced the Explorer’s performance in that first game “perfect”, that was something. Mark Meadors said: “That was a dog fight. The whole game, it was really tough. But you know, after we won, we sort of thought we COULD go all the way.” I remember being in a state of blissful fatigue, emotionally exhausted but on a natural high. In terms of the quality of play and the closeness and importance of the game, that was the best SU game I had ever seen. There have been others to come but this one still ranks very high. The question is, after seven straight wins and the exhaustion and euphoria, would SU have anything left the next week? Maybe it didn’t matter. We were playing North Carolina.
A Rochester newspaper did the Orange a favor by announcing that Syracuse had absolutely no chance to win the game. Their sentiments were understandable. Other than UCLA, there was no more glamorous program in college basketball at that time. They’d been to four final fours in the previous 8 seasons. They had two 6-10 guys inside in Mitch Kupchak and Tom LaGarde and an All-American small forward in Walter Davis. They had their famous “four corners” offense which they used to protect leads and Phil Ford, one of the nation’s top point guards, to run it. Syracuse seemed to offer little trouble for such a team. And the game was being played at the scene of one of SU’s disasters of that season, the Providence Civic Center.
SU was used to playing taller teams in that era. That’s why they played a 2-3 zone, to prevent the ball from getting inside and allow the game to be decided in the backcourt, where we could match-up with anybody. Still, Kupchak and Lagarde got 24 points and 15 rebounds against us between them . They led the Tar Heels to score the first 6 points, (as SU would do 12 years later), and built up the lead to nine points twice. They also double-teamed Hackett, holding him to a pitiful 6 points and a single rebound for the whole game. But Walter Davis was also a non-factor with 4 points and 2 rebounds. The Tar Heel’s attempt to press Syracuse was a disaster thanks to Bug, sorry- Jim, Williams and SU got 10 points out of steals from the 2-3 zone.
This was a game controlled by the backcourts. Phil Ford and Brad Hoffman shot an incredible 17 for 22 between them and scored 44 points. Dean Smith didn’t believe Jimmy Williams could shoot but the little guy went 9 for 11 and scored a career-high 19 points. But the star of the game was Jimmy Lee, who bombed from outside for 24 points on 12 for 18 shooting, (he never went to the foul line because he didn’t have to go to the basket to score). The starting backcourts scored 87 of the 154 points scored in the game and shot 75% from the field between them.
Led by Lee and Williams and Earnie Seibert, who took advantage of the double-teaming of Hackett to score 6 points and take down 9 rebounds, perhaps the best game he ever had, SU got the score to 41-42 at the half. Danforth noted that again Hackett had contributed little in the first half and we were only down by one, so maybe we could win. Chris Sease, despite a toe injury and Kevin King both hit for double figures, with 10 and 12 points respectively. Still, UNC was up one with about a minute and a half left when they turned the ball over to Phil Ford and their famous four corners.
But SU found a way to beat it when Jimmy Lee did what Joel Mareiness called a “seat of the pants slide” and drew the charge on Ford. With 1:12 left. But SU couldn’t covert and Ford found himself back on the line with 40 seconds left. He made his 9th and 10th straight free throws of the game to give the Tar Heels a 73-76 lead. Chris Sease went up on his bad toe to can an 18-footer with 32 seconds left. 75-76. Then SU harassed Ford into a bad inbounds pass and the ball went out of bounds.
SU passed the ball around the court for then next 27 seconds. Then they got the ball into Hackett and the Tar Heels collapsed around the big guy. Rudy then flipped the ball back out to a suddenly open Jimmy Lee who, in one motion caught the ball, jumped up and fired the ball at the basket. No matter how much better you are supposed to be than your opponent, if you let it go down to whether their best shooter is going to miss or not, you deserve what you get….SWISH!
Dean Smith hastily set up a sucker play on the inbound pass to try to draw a foul and go to the line. An appropriately named guy named Kuester got in Bob Parker’s way and did a seat-of the pants slide of this own. The refs didn’t go for it and unfortunately for the Tar Heels, the ball just went out of bounds. They fouled Williams, who made one and missed one. There was a scramble for the rebound but the buzzer sounded before anybody could gain control of the ball. SU had slain the giant and had the biggest victory in its history to date.
The Eastern Regional Finals seemed like an anti-climax, yet SU had to win or the luster of the UNC win would be tarnished forever. As golfing great Byron Nelson often said, all a great shot does is give you an opportunity to make a great put. This was the first year that teams were sent out of their region to balance the field and Kansas State, who had finished second in the Big Eight had beaten Boston College to make it to the finals, was the opponent. It was a battle between a team with seven losses, (SU at 22-7) and a team with eight, (K-State with 20-8). Their point guard, Mike Evans, was wearing a mask to protect a broken nose that made him look like the guy in the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. No David vs. Goliath here. If we could just play our game, we were on our way to San Diego. For a change, SU was favored, by 3 points.
But these guys almost stole our dreams before we stole them back again. Evans and Chuckie Williams may have been the best backcourt in the country that year. They were certainly superb in the tournament. They averaged 39 ppg between them. Their Williams was the MVP of the regional with 87 points in three games. Evans directed the attack and scored 20 himself vs. SU, (to Williams’ 35). Their frontcourt was hardly imposing but 6-5 Dan Droge hustled his way to 18 rebounds, leading the Wildcats to a 54-49 board edge.
But Rudy Hackett, apparently disgusted by his lack of contributions vs. UNC, came up big for the Orange with probably the best performance of his career, scoring 28 with 16 rebounds. K-State’s center, 6-10 Carl Gerlach, didn’t score a point and had only 4 rebounds. And Jimmy Lee buried 10 jumpers and five free throws for 25 points. But they weren’t alone as three other Orangemen reached double figures. Chris Sease had 12 points and 10 rebounds and Jimmy Williams and Kevin King had ten apiece.
This time Syracuse dominated the early going, scoring nine straight to take an 18-9 lead. Then Chuckie Williams began to chuck it up. He hit three straight jumpers to close it to 27-23. SU’s offense could not respond but steals by Lee and King produced two fast breaks and a 31-23 lead. Williams and Evans then scored the next 23 points for their team, extending into the second half. They brought the halftime score to 36-38. (SU was down at the half in every NCAA game they played that year- ironic for a team that had been known for blowing halftime leads).
Williams and Evans started the second half the same way they ended the first and K-State’s lead grew to 38-44. It was still 58-64 when “Rocketman” Chris Sease struck. He scored, intercepted the inbounds pass and scored again. Then Sease scored again in the same instant Hackett was fouled. Two free throws completed the rare four-point play and SU had the lead. The Wildcats took back the lead and were up until two free throws by Lee tied it at 74 with 1:05 left. K-State then patiently worked the ball around, (there being no shot clock), until there were seven seconds left. The man they wanted, Chuckie Williams, got the ball in the very edge of the left corner, 25 feet from the basket. No matter how much better you are supposed to be than your opponent, if you let it go down to whether their best shooter is going to miss or not, you deserve what you get….SWISH!
But we had a Williams, too. Ours was perhaps not as good. But he was faster. Nobody was faster than the Bug. “I was going upcourt and I was going to penetrate as far as I could and pass off if somebody was free and, if nobody was free, I was going to shoot.” Jimmy took the inbounds pass in the foul lane and shot past a couple of defenders in a blur. Past midcourt, he spotted Hackett at the top of the key and rifled a pass to him. For an agonizing instant, Rudy struggled to gain control of the ball. He succeeded, took a step toward the basket and whipped up an old fashioned hook shot which, with his long arms almost reached the front rim before he let it go. It whistled through the basket and the buzzer sounded with the score 76 all.
That was it as far as suspense, which we’d had quite enough of. SU jumped out in front in OT and closed out the deal in style. Lee hit Hackett for a lay-up and “Chuckie” countered with a jumper. SU then went on a 13-3 run to a 91-81 lead and a minute left and it was over. Williams hit from 28 for K-State’s only basket while SU kept feeding the ball to their big man in side. Hackett also dominated the defensive boards and the Wildcats got only one shot per possession. When the dust had cleared SU had punched its ticket to San Diego with a 95-87 win.
I remember walking around campus that day. The final exams of my senior year were just around the corner and I was already considering job offers. It was, as usual in late March in Syracuse, overcast and drizzly, but it hardly seemed to matter. The reality of SU’s first trip to the Final Four was such an uplifting thing that all the gray old buildings seemed to be smiling at me. Despite all the trials that had preceded triumph, this turned out to be a world of possibilities after all. It was as good a lesson that my time at SU could ever have taught me before I went out into the world.
Niagara had been probably our best rival since the Calvin Murphy era. But they were starting to fade. St. Bonaventure was another school, like Providence that had played at the highest levels of basketball in recent years, but which had not played SU, despite being in the same state, until this year. They had no losing records from 1954-86, (and only one even year). They had an 86-17 run from 1958-61 under Eddie Donovan, led by All-American brothers Sam and Ton Stith. Then under Larry Weise and led by Bob Lanier at center and with Jim Satalin in the backcourt, they had an undefeated regular season in 1967-68 and went to the Final Four in 1970, (but without Lanier who had been injured in the Eastern Regional Finals.
Jim Satalin, at age 28, was now their coach. They no longer had the Stith brothers or Bob Lanier, but they still had good teams and would play SU several times over the next few years, displacing the Purple Eagles as our main in-state rival. This tournament was a sort of passing of the baton. But for SU, it was a coming together. The key in the post season is to get hot at the right time, and SU did, polishing off both the Eagles and Bonnies with surprising ease, 90-72 and 100-81. No blown leads there.
That put SU in the NCAAs and a rematch with LaSalle, this time in Philadelphia. Jim Boeheim described the first game, an 82-78 SU win at Manley: “I think LaSalle played the most perfect game of basketball I’ve ever seen here. LaSalle played great. And we beat them. We played a great, great game and we beat them”. The Explorers through this era had been our leading out-of-state rival. They had won the last national title by an eastern team to that point, during the Tom Gola era, and had had several nationally ranked teams since then, none better than the one with 6-10 Joe Bryant, who averaged 22 points and 11 rebounds and was thus a classic match-up for Rudy Hackett. Jimmy the Greek announced LaSalle as a one point favorite, surely as good a piece of news as we could have asked for.
This classic would feature 13 tie scores and 11 lead changes. SU never led by more than 8 points and LaSalle never by more than 4. Joe Bryant had a monster first half, scoring the Explorer’s first 8 points and had 17 at the break. Amazingly, Hackett was scoreless at halftime, leading Jimmy Lee to say later “at the beginning of the week, Coach was trying to get our confidence up by saying, you know, ‘just a game: there’s only five guys out there’. Well, I don’t know, but at halftime we were down only one point and Rudy didn’t score the whole first half. Well, THEN we thought we had a good chance!”
Rudy scored 30 points from that point on, Bryant 8. But Joe had a chance to win the game when LaSalle set up a play with the game tied 71-71 with seven seconds left in regulation. “Let’s drop it in low”, said Coach Paul Westhead. Bryant’s five-footer barely rimmed out and Hackett grabbed the rebound. Bryant fouled out with 1:42 left in overtime and SU leading 81-77. Jimmy Lee got him on a head fake. But Charlie Wise took up the slack with a couple of long range jumpers to tie it at 81, (no treys in those days). With 35 seconds left, SU ran a play that got the ball into Hackett and then back out to Kevin King, who had transferred from LaSalle. King drove through an opening in the defense created by the attention on Hackett and laid the ball in. Lee’s two free throws, the 12th and 13th straight for SU, sealed the deal with 12 seconds left, 87-83. (There have been times this year - 2014-15 - when I thought this year’s team reminded me of the ’75 team with Rakeem Christmas in the Rudy Hackett role and Trevor Cooney as Jimmy Lee. That never really developed but the potential was there.)
Westhead said after the game: “We got exactly what we wanted. Joe Bryant gets the ball six feet from the basket with five seconds left. He takes his turnaround shot, on target, with a soft delivery. We’ve done the same thing a million times before…. I think we played better than (the previous game). And so did Syracuse.” Considering that Jim Boeheim had pronounced the Explorer’s performance in that first game “perfect”, that was something. Mark Meadors said: “That was a dog fight. The whole game, it was really tough. But you know, after we won, we sort of thought we COULD go all the way.” I remember being in a state of blissful fatigue, emotionally exhausted but on a natural high. In terms of the quality of play and the closeness and importance of the game, that was the best SU game I had ever seen. There have been others to come but this one still ranks very high. The question is, after seven straight wins and the exhaustion and euphoria, would SU have anything left the next week? Maybe it didn’t matter. We were playing North Carolina.
A Rochester newspaper did the Orange a favor by announcing that Syracuse had absolutely no chance to win the game. Their sentiments were understandable. Other than UCLA, there was no more glamorous program in college basketball at that time. They’d been to four final fours in the previous 8 seasons. They had two 6-10 guys inside in Mitch Kupchak and Tom LaGarde and an All-American small forward in Walter Davis. They had their famous “four corners” offense which they used to protect leads and Phil Ford, one of the nation’s top point guards, to run it. Syracuse seemed to offer little trouble for such a team. And the game was being played at the scene of one of SU’s disasters of that season, the Providence Civic Center.
SU was used to playing taller teams in that era. That’s why they played a 2-3 zone, to prevent the ball from getting inside and allow the game to be decided in the backcourt, where we could match-up with anybody. Still, Kupchak and Lagarde got 24 points and 15 rebounds against us between them . They led the Tar Heels to score the first 6 points, (as SU would do 12 years later), and built up the lead to nine points twice. They also double-teamed Hackett, holding him to a pitiful 6 points and a single rebound for the whole game. But Walter Davis was also a non-factor with 4 points and 2 rebounds. The Tar Heel’s attempt to press Syracuse was a disaster thanks to Bug, sorry- Jim, Williams and SU got 10 points out of steals from the 2-3 zone.
This was a game controlled by the backcourts. Phil Ford and Brad Hoffman shot an incredible 17 for 22 between them and scored 44 points. Dean Smith didn’t believe Jimmy Williams could shoot but the little guy went 9 for 11 and scored a career-high 19 points. But the star of the game was Jimmy Lee, who bombed from outside for 24 points on 12 for 18 shooting, (he never went to the foul line because he didn’t have to go to the basket to score). The starting backcourts scored 87 of the 154 points scored in the game and shot 75% from the field between them.
Led by Lee and Williams and Earnie Seibert, who took advantage of the double-teaming of Hackett to score 6 points and take down 9 rebounds, perhaps the best game he ever had, SU got the score to 41-42 at the half. Danforth noted that again Hackett had contributed little in the first half and we were only down by one, so maybe we could win. Chris Sease, despite a toe injury and Kevin King both hit for double figures, with 10 and 12 points respectively. Still, UNC was up one with about a minute and a half left when they turned the ball over to Phil Ford and their famous four corners.
But SU found a way to beat it when Jimmy Lee did what Joel Mareiness called a “seat of the pants slide” and drew the charge on Ford. With 1:12 left. But SU couldn’t covert and Ford found himself back on the line with 40 seconds left. He made his 9th and 10th straight free throws of the game to give the Tar Heels a 73-76 lead. Chris Sease went up on his bad toe to can an 18-footer with 32 seconds left. 75-76. Then SU harassed Ford into a bad inbounds pass and the ball went out of bounds.
SU passed the ball around the court for then next 27 seconds. Then they got the ball into Hackett and the Tar Heels collapsed around the big guy. Rudy then flipped the ball back out to a suddenly open Jimmy Lee who, in one motion caught the ball, jumped up and fired the ball at the basket. No matter how much better you are supposed to be than your opponent, if you let it go down to whether their best shooter is going to miss or not, you deserve what you get….SWISH!
Dean Smith hastily set up a sucker play on the inbound pass to try to draw a foul and go to the line. An appropriately named guy named Kuester got in Bob Parker’s way and did a seat-of the pants slide of this own. The refs didn’t go for it and unfortunately for the Tar Heels, the ball just went out of bounds. They fouled Williams, who made one and missed one. There was a scramble for the rebound but the buzzer sounded before anybody could gain control of the ball. SU had slain the giant and had the biggest victory in its history to date.
The Eastern Regional Finals seemed like an anti-climax, yet SU had to win or the luster of the UNC win would be tarnished forever. As golfing great Byron Nelson often said, all a great shot does is give you an opportunity to make a great put. This was the first year that teams were sent out of their region to balance the field and Kansas State, who had finished second in the Big Eight had beaten Boston College to make it to the finals, was the opponent. It was a battle between a team with seven losses, (SU at 22-7) and a team with eight, (K-State with 20-8). Their point guard, Mike Evans, was wearing a mask to protect a broken nose that made him look like the guy in the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. No David vs. Goliath here. If we could just play our game, we were on our way to San Diego. For a change, SU was favored, by 3 points.
But these guys almost stole our dreams before we stole them back again. Evans and Chuckie Williams may have been the best backcourt in the country that year. They were certainly superb in the tournament. They averaged 39 ppg between them. Their Williams was the MVP of the regional with 87 points in three games. Evans directed the attack and scored 20 himself vs. SU, (to Williams’ 35). Their frontcourt was hardly imposing but 6-5 Dan Droge hustled his way to 18 rebounds, leading the Wildcats to a 54-49 board edge.
But Rudy Hackett, apparently disgusted by his lack of contributions vs. UNC, came up big for the Orange with probably the best performance of his career, scoring 28 with 16 rebounds. K-State’s center, 6-10 Carl Gerlach, didn’t score a point and had only 4 rebounds. And Jimmy Lee buried 10 jumpers and five free throws for 25 points. But they weren’t alone as three other Orangemen reached double figures. Chris Sease had 12 points and 10 rebounds and Jimmy Williams and Kevin King had ten apiece.
This time Syracuse dominated the early going, scoring nine straight to take an 18-9 lead. Then Chuckie Williams began to chuck it up. He hit three straight jumpers to close it to 27-23. SU’s offense could not respond but steals by Lee and King produced two fast breaks and a 31-23 lead. Williams and Evans then scored the next 23 points for their team, extending into the second half. They brought the halftime score to 36-38. (SU was down at the half in every NCAA game they played that year- ironic for a team that had been known for blowing halftime leads).
Williams and Evans started the second half the same way they ended the first and K-State’s lead grew to 38-44. It was still 58-64 when “Rocketman” Chris Sease struck. He scored, intercepted the inbounds pass and scored again. Then Sease scored again in the same instant Hackett was fouled. Two free throws completed the rare four-point play and SU had the lead. The Wildcats took back the lead and were up until two free throws by Lee tied it at 74 with 1:05 left. K-State then patiently worked the ball around, (there being no shot clock), until there were seven seconds left. The man they wanted, Chuckie Williams, got the ball in the very edge of the left corner, 25 feet from the basket. No matter how much better you are supposed to be than your opponent, if you let it go down to whether their best shooter is going to miss or not, you deserve what you get….SWISH!
But we had a Williams, too. Ours was perhaps not as good. But he was faster. Nobody was faster than the Bug. “I was going upcourt and I was going to penetrate as far as I could and pass off if somebody was free and, if nobody was free, I was going to shoot.” Jimmy took the inbounds pass in the foul lane and shot past a couple of defenders in a blur. Past midcourt, he spotted Hackett at the top of the key and rifled a pass to him. For an agonizing instant, Rudy struggled to gain control of the ball. He succeeded, took a step toward the basket and whipped up an old fashioned hook shot which, with his long arms almost reached the front rim before he let it go. It whistled through the basket and the buzzer sounded with the score 76 all.
That was it as far as suspense, which we’d had quite enough of. SU jumped out in front in OT and closed out the deal in style. Lee hit Hackett for a lay-up and “Chuckie” countered with a jumper. SU then went on a 13-3 run to a 91-81 lead and a minute left and it was over. Williams hit from 28 for K-State’s only basket while SU kept feeding the ball to their big man in side. Hackett also dominated the defensive boards and the Wildcats got only one shot per possession. When the dust had cleared SU had punched its ticket to San Diego with a 95-87 win.
I remember walking around campus that day. The final exams of my senior year were just around the corner and I was already considering job offers. It was, as usual in late March in Syracuse, overcast and drizzly, but it hardly seemed to matter. The reality of SU’s first trip to the Final Four was such an uplifting thing that all the gray old buildings seemed to be smiling at me. Despite all the trials that had preceded triumph, this turned out to be a world of possibilities after all. It was as good a lesson that my time at SU could ever have taught me before I went out into the world.
