LOOKING BACK MARCH MADNESS REWIND
The day Arthur Lee and the Stanford Cardinal rallied past Rhode Island and stormed into the Final Four
With the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments canceled, we’re taking a trip down memory lane to revisit some of the greatest March Madness moments from our college basketball teams: This story originally appeared March 23, 1998
ST. LOUIS >> The Stanford players hoisted Arthur Lee onto their shoulders Sunday, and he sat up there like a defiant king. His angry expression did not fit the joyful occasion, but after this victory, 79-77 over Rhode Island, Lee was entitled to do whatever he pleased. It’s what he had done all day.
Stanford is going to the Final Four, for the first time since 1942, because Lee mandated it. Stanford won Sunday because Lee defied defeat.
And then offered America a scowl of menacing proportion.
“I don’t know,” the little point guard said when asked what that was all about. “I think I was in the zone at that point. The fact that we came back . . . I was just so elated. It was crazy.”
The Cardinal were down six points with 59 seconds to play. The Cardinal were up five points with four seconds to play. The final score was 79-77, and
nobody on either side knew what had hit them.
“Wow,” Stanford coach Mike Montgomery said some 30 minutes after the madness. “I can’t really tell you what happened at the end. I can’t tell you, except we made several plays in a row.”
Lee made the plays, every last one of them. Stanford scored 14 points in 59 seconds, and Lee had a hand in 13 of them. He made a 3; he dished to Mark Madsen for a layup. He scored another three-point play the old-fashioned way. He made a backcourt steal and fed Madsen for another threepoint play, and then the 6-foot-1 junior delivered the clinching free throws.
The first two words out of the Rhode Island coach’s mouth were … Arthur Lee.
“Arthur Lee made three great plays, two unbelievable shots that were line drives,” Jim Harrick said. “They cut my heart out and my team’s heart out. They made a miracle run, and he made two miracle shots.”
The Rhodies were devastated. The 15-minute grace period, after which the losing team must come to the interview room, did little for Harrick’s players. Harrick sat dazed at the dais, flanked by star guards Tyson Wheeler (24 points) and Cuttino Mobley (20 points), one of them crying, the other intermittently throwing his head back in disbelief.
Like Lee, they couldn’t help spilling some sour grapes. They’d led by 11 points with 8½ minutes to play, led by six with less than a minute left, and they’d let it get away.
The Rhodies felt more that the game had been taken away from them, and not primarily by Lee. He had fouled Mobley on the backcourt steal, they insisted, and he hadn’t been fouled by them on the preceding play. They felt they’d been robbed, and whatever side you take, they had been. Rhode Island led 71-65 with 59 seconds to play.
“To be very honest,” said Madsen, “it looked like we were going to lose the game.”
“How could you not think that?” Montgomery said.
“I don’t know how we pulled it out,” guard Kris Weems said.
Lee pulled up at the top of the key and drained a 3 pointer to make it 7168. At 74-70, Lee drove the length of the floor, sneaking in a layup and sneaking away with a foul shot that he made to make it 74-73. Lee stole the ball after the inbounds pass, poking it away from Mobley and into the hands of Madsen for a dunk, a foul and a free throw that put Stanford ahead 76-74.
Amid the bedlam in the Stanford rooting section, Sarah Montgomery, the coach’s wife, began to weep. The faces of their two children — John, 14, and Anne, 12 — were like rainbows, sunshine behind a rain of teardrops.
And it was about this time that Lee first showed himself to be human.
Guarding a 77-74 lead, Lee fouled Wheeler on a 3-point attempt, giving Rhode Island a chance to tie. When Wheeler missed the first shot, Lee turned to the crowd and wrapped both hands around his throat, the universal sign for choking.
The affront incensed the Rhodies almost as much as the no-call on Lee’s steal. Lee again pleaded temporary insanity.
“I was just caught up emotionally,” he said. “I really can’t remember. The game was such an emotional roller coaster.”
As for fouling Mobley on the steal, Lee said: “If I did, it doesn’t really matter now. But I didn’t. He lost control of the ball. That’s absolutely the way it happened. If I did, I’d say it. What are they going to do, take our Final Four away?”
They wouldn’t dare take it from Lee. On the line for two free throws with the score 77-74 and four seconds on the clock, Lee calmly sank both shots. His final line showed 26 points, seven assists, four rebounds, zero turnovers in 36 minutes of handling the ball, and honors as the most outstanding player of the Midwest Regional.
“I’ve never seen him play like that,” Stanford center Tim Young said. “I’ve never seen anyone play like that for us.”
“I just decided we had to get it done,” Lee said. “It was just about trying to win the game. It could have been anyone. I was just fortunate to do it.”
It could not have been anyone else. On this day, on this team, it could only have been Lee, and his teammates knew it. So they hoisted him onto their shoulders, and from there the little point guard could see the entire season stretch out before him.
He saw the coaches who left him off the 10-member all-conference team. He saw the people who said he couldn’t replace All-American Brevin Knight. Lee saw not cheering faces, but the faces of everyone who had ever doubted him. And so he scowled.
It’s too bad the TV cameras didn’t find him a few minutes later at midcourt, wearing a basketball net over his neck and a smile as wide as the moon. EPILOGUE: Five days later in the national semifinal in San Antonio, Stanford lost 86-85in overtime to Kentucky.