Great article about Drake-UCLA in 1969

[Mr. Neutral]

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnis ... rake_N.htm

I remember that game, and how close "little" Drake came to toppling superpower UCLA.

Check out Willie McCarter's statement towards the end of the article about how he "choked" in that game. I'm not sure if I can recall a player saying that about his own performance.

[gundun]

I was a grad student at MSU and went to the game. Don't think it was on national TV in those days, only the final game.
Funny, but when I was single and teaching at Drake, Dolph Pulliam became a great friend and later my roommate.
The NY Times featured that Drake team several weeks ago.

[Mr. Neutral]

Yeah, it's amazing how much more media coverage we have now. At most, we'd have 1-2 college games a weekend, and, of course, they'd always feature North Carolina, UCLA, Notre Dame, etc., so we had no idea how the lesser-known (we didn't have the term "midmajor" then) teams were.

[gundun]

Bob Knight like to point out that when OSU won the NCAA in 1960, I was lucky cause I got to watch it via a Columbus station because it wasn't nationally televised. Yet, our NIT game in 58 was nationally televised. (But then wasn't the KU/UNC NCAA championship game nationally televised?)
TV was a mess then

[Mr. Neutral]

On a much smaller level, I'm still happy that I can pick up WLW or WKRC crystal-clear on the Net after years of walking around my house (and on my porch) trying to pick up the WLW signal with the one crappy portable radio I had that seemed to get WLW.

And I used to go to the public library and read week-old copies of the Enquirer and Post. Now, we read them online as the story is being written. Amazing.

Or quite a few of us would go sit in our cars and try to pick it up that way. On rare occasions, I'd drive up and down Lake Shore Drive to avoid the interference from downtown buildings.

Sad but true.

[Wisexuowl]

I was there and I remember it well. Drake was a power, and they were the champions of one of the best four conferences (Missouri Valley) in the country at that time, and in no way were they thought of as "small."
While the Big Ten had just two year in and year out powers, OSU and IU, the Pac 8 (then) was all about UCLA and Cal, the SEC had yet to figure out the game, other than UK, the MoVal was made up of Drake, St Louis, Bradley, Wichita, St Louis, Oklahoma St., Houston, and North Texas State. Five or six of those schools could be found every week in the Top Twenty, and with coaches like Maurice John, John Bennington, Ed Hickey, Chuck Osborne, George Smith, Ed Jucker, Henry Iba, and Guy Lewis, it is just unbelievable that anyone would refer to Drake as "little" or "lesser known" in the sense mid-major had yet to become part of basketball vocabulary. The MoVal, and Drake were MAJOR as they come ...

Gun .. that was a Saturday afternoon game, and I think it might well have been the first year the NCAA went to the Saturday-Monday format, thus becoming the first year the Final Four was nationally televised by NBC .. the two games on Saturday and the Monday night finals. Curt Gowdy was the play by play guy and Tom Hawkins (ND) did the color ... and they were better than today's Nantz/Packer

The XU NIT game was nationally televised, and the reason was fans considered it to be the national championship game, and there was little interest in the NCAA tournament. Hell, I remember in the early 60's you could walk up and buy tickets at the window to the NCAA Finals in Kansas City, and that is why they started taking the show on the road .. To Louisville ... to DC ... to LA ...

Back to the Drake game. They had 75% of the 16,000 people there screaming their heads off for them. Everyone wanted to see UCLA fall. Drake played great (so did UCLA) but in the end Drake got jobbed and Maurice made no bones about it to the media.

One last remembrance. At practice on Friday I was sitting with Ray Marquette of the Indianapolis paper (and a super basketball and auto racing writer who tragically was killed in a private plane crash in 1978) watching Purdue and he started mumbling ... 17 .. 18 ... 19 ... 20 .. and I said what they hell are you doing .. between numbers he said he was counting the consecutive shots made by Rick Mount, who for my money was the greatest pure shooter ever in college basketball. Anyway, Rick made 29 in a row, and he didn’t take one any closer than a foot inside what is today’s three point line. Ray told me what he did was a “thing” media people did at Purdue practices the day before they played, and said one night, the streak hit 41.

But the next day, in the first half, Rick couldn’t get untracked, and after he missed three or four in a row, Purdue fans behind the bench started calling him a “hotshot” and a “Bum” etc. The best player on their team, and a first team all-American, the nation’s leading scorer. In my recent years, reflecting back on it, I figured they were somehow ancestors of Mr Neutral?. You think maybe?

BTW, some years ago SI did a story on the game’s greatest shooters and went to the Purdue basketball office and they pulled out every PU game that Rick played in and via the shot charts, estimated that in today’s game with the three point rule, Rick would have averaged something like 12 more points a game over his career.
Rick didn’t have a very long NBA career, and his life had a lot of sour spots since …. But wow, could he ever shoot!

[Mr. Neutral]

<<In my recent years, reflecting back on it, I figured they were somehow ancestors of Mr Neutral?. You think maybe?>>

Once again, in a thread that had no mention of Wise, he decides to bring me into it. The man just never changes-or learns.

[gundun]

Wise,

Hate to disagree with you but I thought it was a Thursday/Saturday tournament. Also, the USA Today article was wrong cause on Saturday after Drake kicked UNC's butt and Purdue was getting their whipping, the Purdue fans started chanting "WE'RE # 2!" and the UCLA fans replied "DRAKE 2!"

While I don't want to bother Dolph while his is traveling with the team, I can tell you that like this year, Drake's 69 team wasn't picked to win. Louisville and Tulsa were the hot teams. Also Drake lost early season games (January) to both of them and North Texas State to be 2 and 3 in conference. In fact, they only won the conference on a tie breaker with U of L.

One last item, while I was at MSU, several grad students found time to go to a Purdue game. Rick Mount came out took a shot and called a ref over. Next thing I knew someone was using a latter and a leveler to check out the rim. It was an eighth of an inch off and the game was delayed to fix it. He was that good and John Bennington was beside himself

[Mr. Neutral]

Rick Mount had the best shooting form and release that I've ever seen. It was just textbook. Man, he would have ripped things up with a 3-pt. line.