30 Years Later - Deserves Its Own Thread...

[billyjack]

As we all know, it has been 30 years since the Big East earned 3 spots in the Final Four.

Here are some quick, random bullet points on this topic... some have been mentioned before...

- in the three Elite-8 wins by Villanova, Georgetown and St John's, each beat an ACC team in their Final Four clinching game. This showdown between conferences, and ass-kicking by the Big East, was so thorough that the ACC has tried to destroy us for 30 psychotic years.

The game results were:
Hoyas 60, Georgia Tech 54 in the East.
Villanova 56, UNC 44 in the Southeast.
Johnnies 69, NC State 60 in the West.

Also:

- Boston College in 85 under Gary Williams made the Sweet-16, and lost to Final Four participant Memphis State by 2 in a see-saw lead-changing game. It was tied 31-31 at the half. Very easily BC could have given the BE all four Final Four teams. BC senior Michael Adams had made an Elite-8 in 1982 but lost to Houston.

- The first game on F4 weekend was Villanova's 52-45 win over Memphis State, meaning the Final 3 teams were from the Big East.

VILLANOVA:

VU's NCAA run included:
R64: VU 51, Dayton 49, in Dayton. Rollie's coaching was perfection the first 2 rounds.
R32: VU 59, Michigan 55. Wolverines were the 1-seed. MU had barely beaten FDU in Round-1.
R16: VU 46, Maryland 43. Len Bias was a junior.
E8: VU 56, North Carolina 44.
F4: VU 52, Memphis State 45.
NF: VU 66, Georgetown 64.

Villanova's lineup typically was:
PG - Gary McLain.
SG - Harold Jensen.
SF - Harold Pressley.
PF - Dwayne McClain. The "D-Train".
C - Ed Pinckney.
Bench: Dwight Wilbur, Mark Plansky. Plansky was also on the 1988 Elite-8 team.

Villanova was in the middle of a run of 9 NCAA bids in 11 years. Actually, from 1978 thru 1988, Rollie Massimino led VU to a National Championship in 85, but in addition to that, 4 other Elite-8's in 78, 82, 83 and 88. They also won at least 1 game in each of those NCAA bid years. They also never lost to a lower seed, while upsetting 10 higher seeds, including 81 Houston, 82 Memphis State, 85 Michigan, 85 Maryland, 85 UNC, 85 Memphis State, 85 Georgetown, 86 Virginia Tech, 88 Illinois and 88 Kentucky.

GEORGETOWN:

Georgetown was ranked #1 from pre-season til their late January losses at home to St John's by 1, and at Syracuse by 2. They then stayed at #2 til winning by 16 over SJU at MSG in late February on a Wednesday night, in the game where John Thompson wore a t-shirt to match Louie's sweater. The game had record viewers.

The Hoyas run to the title game included:
R64: Hoyas 68, Lehigh 43.
R32: Hoyas 63, Temple 46.
S16: Hoyas 65, Loyola Chicago 53. Loyola star was Alfrederick Hughes.
E8: Hoyas 60, Georgia Tech 54. Ga Tech has John Salley and Mark Price, and a 7 footer from Haiti named Yvon Joseph. They also had a soph co-ed in 85 that is now my wife...!
F4: Hoyas 77, St John's 59.
NF: VU 66, Hoyas 64.

Georgetown's lineup included:
G - Michael Jackson.
G - David Wingate.
G - Reggie Williams.
F - Bill Martin.
C - Patrick Ewing.
Bench was Horace Broadnax, Ralph Dalton (who had a milder Michael Graham type role i think), and others.

Patrick Ewing ('85) in 4 years made 2 NF's and 1 National Championship.
Reggie Williams ('87) in 4 years made 1 E8 (GU star), 1 NF, and 1 National Championship.
The Hoyas won the BET in 85; and lost only 3 games all year, by a combined total of 5 points.

ST JOHN'S :

St John's was in the middle of a run of 16 NCAA bids in 18 years. Lou Carnesecca started at SJU in 1966, spent 3 years in the ABA from 71 thru 73, then returned to SJU through 1992. One of the great college coaches of all time, great personality, great storyteller, one of the anchors of the Big East. Louie in 1985 won a big game early in the year (I've forgotten which one, GU maybe) while wearing a pretty ugly looking sweater, which he decided to keep wearing as the Johnnies streak extended into late February. It was dark brown with red and blue V-shapes on the front.

Sometimes forgotten, and always outstanding for decades, but SJU kickstarted this era of success with their 1979 run to the Elite-8. In the 2nd round in 79, they beat Duke in the state of North Carolina (sounds familiar) by 2, the same weekend that Penn beat UNC i think in the same building (it was definitely in North Carolina).

In 1983, St John's won the first BET to be held in MSG, and advanced to the Sweet-16, where they lost to lightly-regarded but eventual F4 team Georgia. Georgia had Vern Fleming and were coached by Hugh Durham (Durham had previously led Florida State to the 1972 final but lost to UCLA).

St John's run to the F4 in 85 included:
R64: SJU 83, Southern 59.
R32: SJU 68, Arkansas 65.
S16: SJU 86, Kentucky 70.
E8: SJU 69, NC State 60.
F4: Hoyas 77, SJU 59.

The Johnnies lineup included:
PG - Mark Jackson (unique free throw ritual).
SG - Chris Mullin.
SF - Willie Glass (made everything look effortless, smooth as Glass).
PF - Walter Berry (86 BE POY, known for blocking Pearl's layup to win 86 BET).
C - Bill Wennington (later on Chicago Bulls).
Bench: Mike Moses, Shelton Jones.

After 85 or 87, SJU went to more of a bruiser type style, less fluid. After Mullin left, by 87 or 88 SJU had like Matt Brust, Terry Bross and Marco Baldi.

Great years. If I've forgotten anything relevant, let me know...

[redmen9194]

Dave Gavitt told a story of that NCAA tournament. He was t one of the games when the Boston College half time score was shown in the arena. When the score was shown, the arena started to chant "Big East" over and over. The original game where Looie wore the sweater was against Pitt in Pittsburgh. He had a cold and grabbed the sweater which someone had given him. That was the start of it.