Last month we introduced our new project, which is centered around determining the top YouTube moment in Pac-12 basketball history. We continue the nomination portion with Stanford.
[ed note: These are just the top moments we could find on YouTube, which has a vast number and array of videos, but we won’t be able to cover the entire 99 years of the conference.]
We open with a shot that I think is the favorite for this entire tournament. Down 77-74 with 27 seconds remaining against #12 Arizona, Josh Childress buried a corner three off a Matt Lotich steal to pull the second-ranked and undefeated Cardinal even. What happened next will go down in Pac-12 lore, as guard Nick Robinson, known for his defense, stole the ball while Arizona tried to hold the ball for the final shot. Robinson took two dribbles and put up a 35-foot runner as time expired, which hit nothing but twine. The shot set off one of the greatest court rushes in the history of the game, as the blacked-out “6th Man” dog-piled the Stanford players in the corner of the floor. If you look closely, you can even see an on-top-of-the-world Tiger Woods celebrating his team’s 20th straight win in the video below.
Another clip, another buzzer-beater. Four weeks after the above thriller against Arizona, Stanford was trailing Washington State by one in Pullman with 17 seconds remaining. The Cardinal forced a five-second count on the Cougars, giving the still-unbeaten team the ball back with a chance for the win. With 10 seconds left, Stanford lost control of the ball but Nick Robinson came away with it after a mad scramble. He shoveled the ball over to Matt Lotich, who hoisted a deep three at the buzzer. It dropped, of course, to give the Cardinal their 26th consecutive win and stunning the home crowd. Read the rest of this entry »
Last month we introduced our new project, which is centered around determining the top YouTube moment in Pac-12 basketball history. We continue the nomination portion with California.
[ed note: These are just the top moments we could find on YouTube, which has a vast number and array of videos, but we won’t be able to cover the entire 99 years of the conference.]
We open with a shot from who is quickly becoming one of the most clutch California players in the history of its program. Tied at 46 with the shot clock turned off on the road against #23 Oregon, the Golden Bears decided that they would either win it in regulation or head to overtime. Guard Justin Cobbs chose the first option, stepping back and hitting nothing but twine to put Cal ahead by two with 0.7 seconds remaining. Oregon’s desperation heave at the buzzer fell well short, and the win kept alive what would end up as a seven-game winning streak for the Golden Bears. Read the rest of this entry »
Last month we introduced our new project, which is centered around determining the top YouTube moment in Pac-12 basketball history. We continue the nomination portion with OregonState.
[ed note: These are just the top moments we could find on YouTube, which has a vast number and array of videos, but we won’t be able to cover the entire 99 years of the conference.]
We open with perhaps the most explosive dunk in Beavers basketball history, courtesy of shooting guard Jared Cunningham. With three minutes left in the opening week of conference play, Oregon State was hanging onto a two-point lead against vaunted Arizona. Getting a running start from the three-point line, Cunningham read Joe Burton’s missed jumper perfectly, rising over a pair of Wildcats and one of his own teammates to slam the ball home one-handed. If you were watching the game live, you’ll remember how officials just stopped the game for a good 20 seconds because no one was quite sure what they just witnessed. There was no foul or timeout called, everyone just stopped playing. I thought that was pretty cool. If the Beavers wouldn’t have pulled the upset, then the play would have just been remembered as a nice moment in an otherwise tough loss. But the offense continued to thrive down the stretch, and by the end of the night the Beavers were tied atop the league standings and owned the #6 play of the day on SportsCenter.
Last month we introduced our new project, which is centered around determining the top YouTube moment in Pac-12 basketball history. We continue the nomination portion with Oregon.
[ed note: These are just the top moments we could find on YouTube, which has a vast number and array of videos, but we won’t be able to cover the entire 99 years of the conference.]
Up until this point, all of our videos have just been single plays. This Oregon nominee features our first real “moment,” which begins with point guard Aaron Brooks dropping a pull-up jumper to put the Ducks ahead of top-ranked UCLA by two with 13.4 seconds remaining. After a Bruins timeout, the Oregon defense stiffened, forcing a wild Josh Shipp three-point attempt at the buzzer that fell well short. Pandemonium ensued as the Pit Crew student section seemed to spill onto the court from all four corners.
This moment starts with the Ducks on defense in game three of the CBI Championship series, with the score tied and 33 seconds left. The ball was inbounded to Creighton guard Antoine Young, who got lost “deep in the woods,” backing up across the non-existent half-court line that was missing from the brand new Matthew Knight Arena in its initial season. Oregon got the ball back on the violation, and with two seconds left on the clock, E.J. Singler banked in a runner to give the Ducks the CBI title. Once again, the Pit Crew was thrown into a frenzy, celebrating wildly as first-year coach Dana Altman knocked off his former team in the tournament final.
This is as close as Oregon basketball will ever get to “The Pick.” With four seconds left and the score even at 68-68 in overtime, guard Damyean Dotson poked away a bad Utah pass and took it the length of the court, slamming the ball home to win the game and keeping the Ducks at a perfect 13-0 record.
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If you have any other nominees, put them in the comments and we will add it to the poll. Voting closes a week from now, and the top vote-getter advances to the tournament of champions.
Last month we introduced our new project, which is centered around determining the top YouTube moment in Pac-12 basketball history. We continue the nomination portion with Washington State.
[ed note: These are just the top moments we could find on YouTube, which has a vast number and array of videos, but we won’t be able to cover the entire 99 years of the conference.]
We open with this beauty of a game-saving block from forward D.J. Shelton. Down by one in the first game of the best-of-three CBI Championship series, Pittsburgh guard Tray Woodall caught the ball at midcourt with 3.5 seconds left on the clock. Woodall took two dribbles, drove into the lane, and attempted to throw in a reverse layup into the hoop as time expired. Only the ball never got there. Shelton bodied up the guard as he got into the paint, then swatted away the futile attempt with great force. A Panthers’ three-point attempt as time expired fell short, and the Cougars escaped with the 67-66 win.
Down one. Overtime. Two and a half seconds left. Senior Day. Against No. 14 Arizona State. That’s the scene for senior Taylor Rochestie, who then buried a three from southern Canada to spring the upset. This is what’s great about college hoops, and this is definitely the highlight of the Washington State options. Read the rest of this entry »
Next month, we here on the Pac-12 Microsite will start in with the first stages of a massive project; to find the best ever Pac-12 moment on YouTube.
The braintrust here has selected three plays/sequences/moments from each team in the conference. We will put those up to a vote in separate posts over the next few weeks, and the top vote-getter from each school will advance to the bracket of champions.
“But wait, where do I come in?” Glad you asked. In addition to voting for each team’s representative, we ask that you put your own favorite moments from YouTube in the comments section or tweet them @rushthecourt, which we will add to the polls. Or, if you know of a video on some secret corner of the internet, put that in as well. The more the merrier.
Folks, we’re only five weeks from the first games… just sayin…
Sixteen months after agreeing to return to Florida after about-facing on the Orlando Magic job, Billy Donovan finally signed his contract.
Fooling with the Thurs/Fri/Sat/Sun setup of the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament because of gas prices is pure folly – surely the NCAA isn’t that stupid, is it?
This is a pretty interesting NY Times article on how YouTube is changing the world of prospect identification and recruiting.
More foolishness involving the Gazelle Group – they’re apparently trying to move UMass to a different subregional in the CvC at the last minute.
The difficulty of playing in the Big East, where 9 teams could be top-25 worthy this year. Although Jameson at B/R makes a compelling argument that Georgetown is wildly overrated this year.
Ok, so it turns out that the George Mason F4 rings on Ebay were stolen and will be returned to the rightful owner, Dr. Scherrens. Nice investigative work by Chris Brooks over at B/R.
As you may have heard, for the first time ever the Final 4 will feature four #1 seeds. Although some people have been complaining about the lack of surprises, I was quite content watching Davidson make it to the Elite 8. As for the top 4 teams in the country making it to the Final 4 being the latest sign of the college basketball apocalypse, I really don’t see it as being much different than several other years where only #1 and #2 seeds made the Final 4. Would you really feel any different about this Final 4 if Texas had beaten Memphis? I doubt it unless you are a Longhorn or Tiger fan. Anyways, with a little more than 36 hours until the tip of the first semifinal I thought I would whet your appetite for the potentially great games we may see on Saturday and Monday night. On to the game. . .
With the exception of the 1992 Duke-Kentucky East Regional Final, a case can be made that Duke’s upset of UNLV in the 1991 National Semifinals was the most significant game of the past 20 years. This was the game that put Duke and Mike Krzyzewski over the top going from lovable losers to the team to beat most years. While the Blue Devils still needed to beat Kansas in the championship game (featuring Grant Hill’s alley-oop dunk from Bobby Hurley), most college fans will remember this as the de facto championship game much like the Miracle on Ice (the US had to beat Finland to win the gold). To put this game in context, you have to remember that UNLV had crushed Duke the year before in the championship game 101-71 (a record 30-pt margin).
UNLV came into this game undefeated and was widely expected to become the first team since Bobby Knight’s 1976 Indiana Hoosiers (featuring Quinn Buckner, Kent Benson, and Scott May) to go undefeated. Many experts were already speculating about where this UNLV team ranked all-time not unlike what happened with a certain football team from Massachusetts this year (minus the videotaping, but probably with more hookers). Jerry Tarkanian’s Runnin’ Rebels came into the game 34-0 beating their opponents by an average of more than 27.5 points while averaging a ridiculous 98.3 PPG. They were led by Larry Johnson (National POY), Anderson Hunt, Greg Anthony, and Stacy Augmon). Some of our younger readers may not realize how great these guys were in college so we’ll just say you should think about what Memphis did to Michigan State in the 1st half of their Sweet 16 game this year. Now imagine a team doing that every game. That’s what this UNLV team was like for the entire season. UNLV ran through the tournament with the exception of an 8-point victory against a Georgetown team that featured Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo.
On the other side of the ball, Duke came in with a respectable 30-5 record, but was only the #2 seed in its own region. After the championship game the year before nobody expected this game to be close. Duke had added Grant Hill to their roster, but he was only a freshman and nowhere near the player he was by the time he was a senior that carried a YMCA team to the 1994 championship game. In addition, the Blue Devils had lost 2 of their top players (Phil Henderson and Alaa Abdelnaby) from the year before to graduation. This was Duke’s 4th consecutive Final 4 appearance and 5th in 6 years, but they had failed to seal the deal and were becoming the Jim Kelly Buffalo Bills before there were the Jim Kelly Buffalo Bills. In the NCAA tournament, Duke advanced to the Final 4 through a relatively easy bracket thanks to some early-round upsets (beat a 15, 7, 11, and 4 seed to win the Midwest Region).
Thanks to the miracle of YouTube we can bring you footage from that game including a pregame and postgame clip.
[Editor’s Note: For some reason the embedding isn’t working properly except for the last video. All the videos are still up on YouTube. If you click anywhere in the box except on the “Play” button, it will load in an outside window. Sorry for the inconvenience, we’re trying to figure out how to fix this.]
-Pre-game buildup and interviews with Tarkanian and Duke assistant coach (and current Harvard coach) Tommy Amaker
-Player introductions and opening minutes
-From 2:30 left in 2nd half until Laettner goes to the line.
-Laettner at the line with scored tied at 77 to post-game celebration.
-Newscast and reaction.
By the next day, the media knew they had witnessed one of the greatest upsets in college basketball history. As the years passed and we only saw a few teams of the caliber of that UNLV team (’92 Duke and ’96 Kentucky), the upset grew in legend to the point where in 2000 The Sporting News ranked it as the 4th best biggest NCAA tournament upset ever and the ESPN Page 2 readers ranked it as the 4th greatest sports upset ever. I think the Page 2 poll is way off as I consider it a huge upset, but probably not in the same class as the others mentioned in that list. However, I think TSN probably comes pretty close as ridiculous as it sounds for a #2 seed beating a #1 seed to be such a big upset.
We all know what happened afterwards. Duke went on to win the first of their back-to-back titles and grew into one of the most powerful sports programs of the past 20 years while Jerry Tarkanian was fired by UNLV in 1992 and floated around the basketball universe including stops at the San Antonio Spurs and Fresno State. UNLV never reached the same heights again and only has had a measure of success with Lon Kruger getting them to the 2007 Sweet 16.
rtmsf addendum: This is a great recap of the climate surrounding this game. The 91 UNLV team was considered an absolute juggernaut. We for one will never forget the highly anticipated 1-2 regular season matchup between #1 UNLV and #2 Arkansas at the old Barnhill Arena in Fayetteville (a place where the Hawgs were nearly unbeatable at the time). UNLV absolutely blitzed the Hawgs to open the second half, never looking back in a display of athleticism and prowess virtually unmatched in all of our years watching college basketball.
One other point on this 91 Duke-UNLV game. Two months after the game, the Las Vegas Review-Journal published a photo of UNLV players Anderson Hunt, Moses Scurry and David Butler sitting in a hot tub drinking beer with convicted felon and noted “sports fixer” Richard Perry (see below).
Perry had been involved in a point shaving scandal at Boston College in the 70s, and there was no shortage of similar conspiracy theories being thrown around at the time based on UNLV’s confounding loss to Duke in the national semifinals. Where there’s smoke there’s fire goes the saying, and the DOJ even felt there was sufficient cause to open an investigation into the possibility that some UNLV players may have fixed the game. To date, we’ve never heard anything come out of these allegations, but there are some who remain convinced something fishy went on during that game.
A final point that nvr1983 touched on but sounds completely absurd today is that, at the time of that 91 game, Duke was “America’s Team.” The hatred and vitriol enabled by the last 15 years of Dookie V. and ESPN had not yet taken hold, and most of the basketball public was happy to see the plucky guys from Durham (who were indeed becoming the Bills of college basketball) finally break through and win a title against the bullies from UNLV. My, how things have changed.
