ONE ON ONE Dancing down memory lane

Sporting News, The, March 26, 2001 by Jeff D'Alessio

Remember when a Princeton kid set the record for most points in a Final Four game? When the Hoosiers were upset by the Cleveland State Vikings?

Bill Bradley, Mouse McFadden, Keith Smart, Bill Walton and Guy Lewis share their memories of classic NCAA Tournament moments in interviews with TSN senior editor Jeff D'Alessio.

With Bill Walton

Walton won three national player of the year awards (1972-74) and two national titles (1972, '73) while playing at UCLA.

TSN: Mike Tranghese told us that your 21-for-22 game against Memphis State in '73 is the best performance he's ever seen.

BW: Yeah, Coach (John) Wooden always tells me, "Bill, I used to think you were a good player until you missed that one shot." My most memorable one is March 23, 1974, when we lost to North Carolina State. That one and the Notre Dame loss in 1974. Coach Wooden told us every day, "Make sure you do your best and don't beat yourself. Because when you beat yourself, that's the worst kind of defeat you'll ever suffer." We thought he was a lunatic. We thought he was a walking antique. We didn't realize he was right on the mark until we started to lose.

TSN: What's your favorite quotation?

BW: From Coach Wooden: "Happiness begins when selfishness ends."

With Guy Lewis

Lewis, a former coach at Houston, went to five Final Fours. His Phi Slama Jama teams included Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon.

TSN: Did you teach the dunk?

GL: I sure did. I insisted on it. I think it's a very, very high-percentage shot, and when you get around the basket, you ought to explode up there and stick it in the hole. We worked on it.

TSN: Who's the best dunker you ever had?

GL: Oh, probably Elvin Hayes. But Hakeem, Clyde ... Man, I had a lot of guys who dunked. Dwight Davis. Dwight Jones. Ken Spain. I once had a white guy get 15 dunks in a half. Lyle Harger. He only had two points at the half. I told him not to do anything but dunk it the second half, and he ended up with 41 points.

TSN: What was it like ending UCLA's 47-game winning streak in "The Game of the Century?"

GL: There's no doubt that was the greatest win we ever had. My golly, that game changed basketball. There had never been a regular-season televised game before that. All the TV people thought basketball wasn't a viable product.

With Keith Smart

Smart's 16-foot baseline jumper with four seconds left in the 1987 championship game gave Indiana a title.

ISN: Where do you keep your ring?

KS: That ring and my World Basketball League ring were stolen from me in Canada. So my wife surprised me for Christmas. She called our trainer at IU and found out who the jeweler was that did it and got me a new ring. So I wear it now.

TSN: What's the angriest you ever made coach Knight?

KS: What day of the year do you want to talk about? There was one time when we were flying to play Notre Dame, and our bus hadn't arrived at the plane to take us to our hotel. I yelled from the back of the plane, "Hey Coach, this is just like junior college." And everyone held their breath. And then Coach shouts from the front, "Yeah, but your bus was yellow and it had `SCHOOL BUS' written on the side of it. You're in bigtime basketball now." He could be fun.

With Mouse McFadden

McFadden, a guard, and the 14th-seeded Cleveland State Vikings beat third-seeded Indiana in 1986.

TSN: Bet that was one nerve-racking Selection Sunday.

MM: The year before that, the guys had won the regular-season conference championship and went 21-8, and no one gave them any recognition. We were still in limbo. When they announced our team, oh man, we were so excited. Everybody was jumping up and down. And the first thing we all said was, "Indiana just lost. Little do they know." See, we were so good, and we were so cocky, we thought that if they let us in this tournament, we were going to shake some people up.

TSN: What made you think you could beat Indiana?

MM: Oh, we were good. Everybody we played that year, we pretty much blew them out of the gym. I remember how difficult it was for (Indiana) to get the ball past halfcourt against us. At that time, there was nobody in the country pressuring 94 feet for 40 minutes. Kevin Mackey really opened up another door. That's when Rick Pitino started to insert that into his system. I even remember Jerry Tarkanian coming down that summer, trying to get a couple of pointers from Kevin. They were upstairs shooting the breeze and Jerry told Kevin, "I can't get my kids to play that hard."

With Bill Bradley

Princeton's Bill Bradley still holds the Final Four record for most points in a game, 58 in 1965.

TSN: What's the best change they've made with the NCAA Tournament since you played in it?

BB: I think the best thing is the amount of attention players get today. I've never been able to get the film of that 58-point game. I've always wanted to show my daughter I could hit hook shots from the corner. I remember being at the Final Four. The night before the Michigan game, we flew out from New Jersey. My roommate and I checked into the room, and there were no beds. All we had were pull-out sofas.