The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
SOME OF THE NCAA TOURNAMENT’S OTHER JAW-DROPPING INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCES
Danny Manning, Kansas (1988)
Manning orchestrated one of the biggest championship game upsets with his 31 points, 18 rebounds and five steals in an 83-79 win over Oklahoma.
This was not a vintage Jayhawks team. It was a No. 6 seed and, with the exception of Manning, was devoid of name players. The Big Eight-champion Sooners averaged 103 points a game, had already beaten Kansas twice and were eight-point favorites. The Jayhawks weren’t intimidated.
“Every time we stepped on the court we felt like we were going to win,” Manning, now the Wake Forest coach, said. “It didn’t matter who we were playing. That was just our mindset.”
After playing at OU’s up-tempo pace into the second half, coach Larry Brown had his Jayhawks slow things down for the last 12 minutes. OU got out of sorts, and Manning made four free throws in the last 14 seconds to secure the win.
The team known as “Danny and the Miracles” remains one of the great underdog stories in tournament history.
Bill Russell,
San Francisco (1956)
Russell turned in one of the most dominant performances in college basketball history in the championship game against Iowa.
Officially, he had 26 points and a still-Final Four-record 27 rebounds in the 83-71 win. Media reports also credited him with between 12 and 20 blocks.
The 83-71 victory gave the
Dons their second straight national title and extended their winning streak to 55 games.
Oscar Robertson. Cincinnati (1958-60)
The “Big O” was the king of the triple-double, and you need to look no further than the NCAA Tournament record book for proof. The triple-double was an “unofficial” statistic until the 1980s, but many box scores before that included categories such as assists, blocks and steals.
Four of the top five tournament triple-doubles pre-1986 belong to Robertson, none more impressive than his 39 points, 17 rebounds and 10 assists against Louisville in the 1959 third-place game. The year before he scored 56 points against Arkansas. His 32.4-point average over 10 tournament games ranks third all-time.
Bill Walton, UCLA (1973)
The Bruins won a seventh straight national title behind Walton’s 44 points against Memphis State — still the most in a championship game.
Walton made 21 of 22 shots from the field, and that didn’t include four baskets that didn’t count because of the era’s no-dunking rule. The 87-66 victory was UCLA’s 75th win in a row.
Christian Laettner, Duke (1992)
No NCAA Tournament is complete without revisiting Christian Laettner catching that long inbounds pass, turning, dribbling once and swishing his shot from just behind the free-throw line to beat Kentucky in overtime and send Duke to the Final Four.
It was a fitting end to a 31-point performance in which the future Atlanta Hawk made all 10 of his shots from the field and all 10 of his free throws. He was relatively quiet in the national semifinal against Indiana before scoring a team-high 19 in a 71-51 win over Michigan in the title game.