Portland's Final 4: A world ago (original) (raw)

When the only Final Four held in Oregon came to Portland in 1965, the Trail Blazers were nearly six years from debuting, and other sports had higher billing.

"Portland, where horses and hockey have a sports stranglehold, was preparing Wednesday for a weekend surrender to basketball," Leo Davis wrote in The Oregonian on March 18, 1965.Indeed, the Buckaroos and the races at Portland Meadows stepped aside for a few days as the NCAA Tournament took over Memorial Coliseum on March 19 and 20.

The tournament was nowhere near the global phenomenon it is today, but the roots had taken hold for the tremendous growth that can be seen in championship game attendance. The 1965 final drew 13,204 to the Coliseum; a record 70,000-plus are expected for Monday's championship game at Detroit's Ford Field.

As the Final Four descended upon Portland, the sports world stood on the verge of major cultural change.

Two months after Gail Goodrich scored 42 points to lead UCLA to a 91-80 victory, 3,960 boxing fans paid 4to4 to 4to5 apiece to get into Memorial Coliseum and watch a heavyweight title fight via closed-circuit telecast. They were stunned as champion Cassius Clay -- soon to become Muhammad Ali -- knocked out Sonny Liston in the first round of their rematch.

The year after UCLA's victory in Portland, change hit college basketball as Texas Western (now UTEP) became the first team with an all-African American starting five to win the NCAA Tournament.

But for a few days in 1965, the headlines in Portland were dominated by the Final Four. These days, teams arrive in the host city early in the week and hold seemingly endless news conferences, but it was different 44 years ago.

The semifinals were played on Friday, followed by the third-place and championship games on Saturday. Princeton was the only team to arrive Wednesday; the other three teams came into town Thursday, practiced at the Coliseum, then rested.

"We always liked to have the players stay off their feet as much as possible before games," Jerry Norman, a UCLA assistant coach under John Wooden, said by e-mail.

Princeton's star, forward Bill Bradley, was considered the best player in the country. Bradley, who was going to play at Duke before deciding to pay his own way to Princeton (Ivy League schools didn't give athletic scholarships), revealed that he was working on a senior thesis about Harry Truman's 1948 presidential campaign. Otherwise, the future U.S. senator was deemed off-limits to reporters.

The games had been sold out for weeks, but unlike the current ticket setup, the majority of tickets had been available to the public. Of the 13,000 seats in the Coliseum, 10,500 to 11,000 were in this category, although tournament director Bernie Shively said demand was overwhelming.

"We could sell 50,000 tickets for the championships every year," Shively, who also was Kentucky's athletic director, told The Oregonian.

A secondary function of the Final Four these days is as a convention for coaches and athletic directors, and that also was the case in 1965. The National Association of Basketball Coaches held its annual meeting at the Portland Hilton and voted 61-14 to rescind a new rule, No.10-7, that required coaches to sit on the bench when the game clock was running or face a technical foul. These days a sitting head coach during a game is a rare site.

That Thursday night, an NCAA reception drew 1,000 as coaches, athletic directors and sportswriters mingled at the Hilton. There were 83 sportswriters from around the country. This year, the NCAA issued 1,100 media credentials for Detroit.

The Final Four is now beamed to millions of households throughout the world, with fans watching in high-definition detail. In 1965, when just 10 percent of households with a TV set had color, the games weren't so readily available. Sports Network Inc. had a contract to do the telecasts, and 30 stations picked up the feed for the Michigan-Princeton semifinal; eight picked up the UCLA-Wichita semifinal. There was no Portland broadcast of the semifinals.

The championship game went to 120 stations, including Portland's KGW-TV. Two Portland radio stations -- KWJJ and KEX -- also broadcast the game.

In the first semifinal, Michigan took advantage of Princeton's foul trouble for a 93-76 victory. Bradley, who scored 29 points, picked up his fourth foul 66 seconds into the second half, then fouled out with 5:04 left and Michigan leading 73-67.

UCLA, meanwhile, was too much for Wichita (now Wichita State), whose star player, Dave Stallworth, had lost his eligibility at the end of the fall term. Goodrich scored 28 points as the Bruins, seeking to become the fifth back-to-back NCAA champions, coasted to a 108-89 victory.

"I remember that we played very well against them," said Doug McIntosh, who chipped in 11 points as UCLA's starting center and now is a minister in Atlanta.

The wins set up a showdown between No.1 Michigan and No.2 UCLA. But first, there was the third-place game.

The consolation game continued until 1981, and the 1965 version was worth the price of admission as Bradley scored a then-record 58 points in a 118-82 victory over Wichita. Bradley shot 22 of 29 from the field and made 14 of 15 free throws as he broke the NCAA Tournament record of 56 points set by Cincinnati's Oscar Robertson in 1958.

In the championship game, UCLA, behind Goodrich's 42 points, beat Michigan 91-80.

"They were heavily favored and got off to a great start, but in the middle of the first half our press got to them and we put on one of our runs and got out to a big lead that we never relinquished," McIntosh recalled.

UCLA placed three players -- Goodrich, Edgar Lacey and Kenny Washington, on the all-tournament team. They were joined by Bradley and Michigan's Cazzie Russell. But even today, there is one complaint from the Bruins.

"The only thing that was not right was the giving of the most valuable player award to Bill Bradley," said Norman, who believes Goodrich should have won it.

Still, there was plenty for the Bruins to celebrate and at least one notable party to do it at. It was held in the suite of UCLA board member Harry Robbins Haldeman -- who would later gain infamy, as H.R. Haldeman, for his role in the Watergate scandal.

The party "was so packed you could hardly get in the door," McIntosh said. "It was quite a change from the year before in Kansas City when there was no party -- at least that I ever knew about."

UCLA's repeat championship was considered a tremendous feat. Before leaving town Sunday, Wooden sounded a warning about a possible third title.

"It's awfully tough to make three in a row," he said. "I hope UCLA fans will be realistic and realize how tough."

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His words proved prophetic as the 1966 Bruins did not win a third national title in a row, and in fact were runners-up in the Athletic Association of Western Universities (the future Pacific-10 Conference) to Paul Valenti's Oregon State team, opening the door for Texas Western's historic victory.

The Bruins, of course, won the next seven NCAA titles and eight of the next nine, adding to the lore of a tournament that was already becoming a big deal in Portland in 1965.

-- Mike Tokito: 503-294-7603; miketokito@news.oregonian.com

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