Back in 1974, the years before, the years after, UCLA was a basketball dynasty. I’m not sure what they did win, twelve in a row, something like that. They had players like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and well, you could just go on and on. They had Bill Walton and they had the most dominant team I’ve ever seen in basketball. John Wooden was their Coach and they were just unbelievable. They would win with Kareem or they would win without him. They could win with Walton and they could win without him. It was like they could get the greatest players, and you knew that they were the greatest team, but then they could turn around and have five guys you really never heard of and they’d do the same thing. They just won basketball games. They were simply the best.
I think one of the more unbelievable games I’ve ever witnessed occurred in January of that year, ’74. UCLA had won eighty-eight consecutive games and they were heavily favored to win over Notre Dame on this day. I was holed up on the road with the Howard Payne basketball team and early that afternoon I had the TV on and I was thumbing through the channels and all of a sudden there was the start of that game. It was at Notre Dame. Notre Dame wasn’t a great team but they were a good team, fact is, maybe a really good team. Certainly they were not like UCLA and the Bruins dominated from the opening tip. They dominated from the opening tip until about the four minute mark left in the game. UCLA was up eleven points, 70-59 at that point.
I almost changed channels. It had been a pretty good margin for UCLA the entire ballgame. But then, one of the most amazing things happened that I’ve ever seen. UCLA suddenly couldn’t make a shot. Nothing went in and Notre Dame ended up on a twelve point run.
They were down 70-59 with about four minutes to go and they outscored UCLA 12-0 at the end of the ballgame. Notre Dame pulled one of the biggest upsets of all time 71-70 over UCLA. Now, what happened after that – nothing. UCLA just kept on winning and Notre Dame had a pretty good ball club.
Probably, I don’t know, I hate to talk about upsets because you have them in football and you have them in basketball, and you even have some wild ones in baseball on occasion. But as far as just one game – one game – that was it! Notre Dame – UCLA in January of 1974. I’ve lived every year since 1974 and I’ve never seen one like that.
Until next time, so long everybody.
***
‘Out of the Box’ with Dallas Huston is published each Monday morning at BrownwoodNews.com. Dallas was the radio voice of the Brownwood Lions and Howard Payne Yellow Jackets for more than 55 years. He currently is Pastor of Center City Baptist Church and hosts a Men’s Bible Study in Brownwood on Monday evenings. Your comments are welcome at lindalh2@verizon.net.