1975-76

“And the winners are...Indiana, 86–68.”

Actor and basketball fan Elliott Gould ripped open the envelope and made that announcement at the Academy Awards just as he was supposed to name the winner of the Oscar for Best Film Editing, Monday night, March 29.  Then the world knew what Bobby Knight and his unbeaten Hoosiers had wrought.

Indiana, 31–1 in 1975, came back a year later to go 32–0, routing Michigan in the first NCAA final between members of the same conference. Kent Benson was the tourney MVP, but the Hoosiers also had Player of the Year Scott May, Quinn Buckner and Bobby Wilkerson—all of whom would eventually be first round picks in the NBA draft.

Memphis State coach Gene Bartow replaced John Wooden at UCLA and led the Bruins to their 13th Final Four in the last 15 years. They lost to Indiana in the semifinals, but beat Rutgers in the consolation game.

Bobby Knight's college coach, Fred Taylor of Ohio State, retired at the end of the regular season after 18 years. Taylor, who was 35 when the Buckeyes won their only NCAA title in 1960, led OSU to seven Big Ten titles and three straight NCAA finals (1960–62).

By the way, the Best Film Editing Oscar went to Vera Fields for “Jaws”.

 Poll taken before NCAA tournament

Note: Indiana won the NCAAs and unranked Kentucky (22–4, Joe B. Hall, 26–4) won the NIT.

Consensus All-America (In alphabetical order)

First Team

·         Kent Benson, Indiana

·         Adrian Dantley, Notre Dame

·         John Lucas, Maryland

·         Scott May, Indiana

·         Richard Washington, UCLA

Second Team

·         Phil Ford, North Carolina

·         Bernard King, Tennessee

·         Mitch Kupchak, North Carolina

·         Phil Sellers, Rutgers

AP POLL

1. Indiana
2. Marquette
3. Nevada-Las Vegas
4. Rutgers
5. UCLA
6. Alabama
7. Notre Dame
8. North Carolina
9. Michigan
10. Western Michigan

UPI COACHES POLL

1. Indiana
2. Marquette
3. Rutgers
4. Nevada-Las Vegas
5. UCLA
6. North Carolina
7. Alabama
8. Notre Dame
9. Michigan
10. Washington

First Round
DePaul 69, Virginia 60
Virginia Military 81, Tennessee 75
Rutgers 54, Princeton 53
Connecticut 80, Hofstra 78 (ot)
Michigan 74, Wichita State 73
Notre Dame 79, Cincinnati 78
Missouri 69, Washington 67
Texas Tech 69, Syracuse 56
Alabama 79, North Carolina 64
Indiana 90, St. John's 70
Marquette 79, Western Kentucky 60
Western Michigan 77, Virginia Tech 67 (ot)
Pepperdine 87, Memphis State 77
UCLA 74, San Diego State 64
Arizona 83, Georgetown 76
UNLV 103, Boise State 78
Regional Semifinals
Virginia Military 71, DePaul 66 (ot)
Rutgers 93, Connecticut 79
Missouri 86, Texas Tech 75
Michigan 80, Notre Dame 76
Indiana 74, Alabama 69
Marquette 62, Western Michigan 57
UCLA 70, Pepperdine 61
Arizona 114, UNLV 109 (ot)
Regional Finals
East: Rutgers 91, Virginia Military 75
Midwest: Michigan 95, Missouri 88
Mideast: Indiana 65, Marquette 56
West: UCLA 82, Arizona 66
National Semifinals
Michigan 86, Rutgers 70
Indiana 65, UCLA 51
National Third Place
UCLA 106, Rutgers 92
Championship Game
Indiana 86, Michigan 68

Indiana leaders: Scott May, Sr., F; Kent Benson, Jr., C; Tom Abernathy, Sr., F; Quinn Buckner, Sr., G; Bobby Wilkerson, Sr., G-F

All-NCAA Tournament Team

Top 10

All-America Team

Leaders
Team
Offense: UNLV, 110.5
Defense: Princeton, 52.9

Individual Scoring

Rebounding

  Notes

• Kentucky defeated UNC-Charlotte to win the NIT and finish with a 20-10 record.

• Indiana tied North Carolina (1957) for the most victories in an unbeaten season.

• UCLA’s 98-game home win streak was ended by Oregon, 65-45.  

Jun 18 NBA & ABA agree to merge.

Dunk put back into college game

HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES

1976
Elgin Baylor, Player
*Charles T. Cooper, Player
*Lauren Gale, Player
*William C. Johnson, Player
*Frank J. McGuire, Coach

A perfect ending

There was only one college basketball team against which to measure Indiana, and that was the one in Bob Knight's mind. The team he envisioned was hard-working, unselfish and perfect in every way. The team he brought to the 1976 Final Four occasionally missed a free throw.

 

Bobby Knight

The mistake in assessing the Hoosiers was to compare them to their peers, the other top teams in the nation. Knight, Indiana's coach, did not make that mistake.

Michigan, Alabama, Marquette, UCLA they were all the same. They were just opponents, and imperfect ones at that. The standards set by Knight were beyond the capabilities of those teams.

After Indiana defeated powerful St. John's, Alabama and Marquette in the Mideast Regional to raise its record to 30-0, Knight said the identity of the next opponent did not concern him.

"Will we be able to play as well as we can? That's what concerns me in every game," he said. "I don't know that you ever do, but you keep trying."

No team tried harder than the Hoosiers. They were driven not only by their coach's demanding expectations, but also by the memory of a painful defeat in the final game of the Mideast Regional the previous year.

After winning the first 31 games of their 1975 season, the Hoosiers were stopped by a huge and powerful Kentucky team, 92-90. Indiana began the 1976 season with the goal of winning the NCAA championship in Philadelphia, which had been selected as the Final Four site in recognition of the U.S. Bicentennial.

Knight had created a team not of individuals, but of components. It was a team whose ego had been sacrificed for the sake of a mission. The coach demanded perfection from his players. Perfection, of course, was impossible, but they gave him the next best thing: Consistency. The Hoosiers' consistency was almost eerie in its execution.

Indiana's efficiency chilled UCLA in one of the semifinals at the Spectrum. The Bruins were the defending national champions, but they were returning without the Wizard, coach John Wooden. Still, Gene Bartow had marshaled UCLA's considerable talent and guided it to a return engagement against Indiana, which had humbled the Bruins, 84-64, at the start of the season.

The Bruins were confident of winning the rematch because they had improved so much in the course of the season. Alas, Indiana had done likewise. The Hoosiers brushed aside the Bruins, 65-51, with barely a flicker of emotion.

"They're very mechanical," Marques Johnson, UCLA's flamboyant forward, said after the game. "I'm not saying that in a derogatory sense. It's a compliment, but they're almost mechanical."

Indeed, during those moments when it functioned at its highest level, Indiana appeared to be a machine -- a collection of 10 interchangeable legs and arms setting picks, trapping ballhandlers, whirling closer and closer to the basket for the best percentage shot available.

Whenever forward Scott May and 6-foot-ll center Kent Benson -- the Hoosiers' consensus All-Americans -- misfired, another teammate was ready to take over.

Such were the circumstances against UCLA. When Benson drew his second foul barely 90 seconds into the game while attempting to guard 6-10 consensus All-American Richard Washington, unheralded forward Tom Abernethy was handed the assignment.

Not only did Abernethy force the Bruins' primary offensive threat out to the perimeter, but he also scored 14 points and grabbed six rebounds. Other unlikely heroes included 6-7 guard/forward Bobby Wilkerson, who had an astonishing 19 rebounds and seven assists, and reserve guard Jim Crews, who ran Indiana's delay game flawlessly over the final seven minutes of play.

To Abernethy, one of four senior starters, it was nothing out of the ordinary. The Hoosiers took little for granted.

"If you ever think you're infallible," he said, "that's when you're going to stumble. I don't think there's anything special about this team that makes us win. We just play hard."

Indiana's opponent in the championship game knew all about the Hoosiers' work ethic. Michigan, a second-place finisher in the Big Ten Conference, overran previously undefeated Rutgers, 86-70, in the other semifinal. For the first time in history, the NCAA title would be contested by two teams representing the same conference.

The familiarity of the opposition unleashed the practical joker in Knight. It occurred to him that a congratulatory message might be forthcoming from that noted Michigan alumnus, Gerald Ford, after the Wolverines' victory over Rutgers.

Knight preyed upon that belief. He placed a call to Michigan coach Johnny Orr, whom he considered a friend, and introduced himself as the President.

"John said, 'Really?' " Knight recalled the next day. "But then I overplayed my hand."

By halftime of the championship game, President Ford might have been tempted to pick up a phone. Michigan, with swift Rickey Green running a breathtaking fast break, rushed to a 35-29 lead. Indiana's bid to become the seventh team in history to complete the season and the NCAA Tournament undefeated was in jeopardy.

Furthermore, the Hoosiers would be without Wilkerson, their standout defensive player, for the second half. Early in the game, the senior had stepped in the path of Wayman Britt as the Michigan forward drove for the basket with the game tied, 4-4. Britt scored and in his follow-through struck Wilkerson with an elbow in the vicinity of the left temple.

Wilkerson collapsed. He lay on the court for almost 10 minutes as doctors attempted to revive him. When those efforts failed, he was placed on a stretcher and wheeled into the Indiana locker room. He was accompanied by two physicians.

Just before the end of the first half, Wilkerson was led from the locker room down a corridor 100 feet to a door marked "UCLA," the empty locker room that had been reserved for Indiana's 31st victim. His legs were wobbly but his eyes were open, and he held a towel to the left side of his head.

With Wilkerson effectively hidden down the hall, the other Indiana players carried on because that's what they had been taught to do. May and guard Quinn Buckner, the senior captain, spoke in the locker room. Then Knight walked in, his tie loosened, his plaid jacket draped over his shoulder.

"Coach Knight," Buckner said, "always gets the last word."

The coach demanded 20 minutes of the best basketball Indiana could deliver, and that's what he got. It didn't matter that Wilkerson, a two-year starter, was being wheeled to an ambulance that would deliver him to Temple University Hospital on the other side of town.

"Once you're in the flow of the game," Abernethy said, "you can't worry about other things. I didn't think it was that bad, so maybe it didn't hit me as hard. . . . I was just thinking about the game, about what we had to do."

What the Hoosiers had to do was to nullify Green's sprints. They accomplished that by scoring nearly every time they had the ball. During a 14-minute stretch that began less than three minutes into the half, the Hoosiers scored on virtually every possession.

In the process, Indiana went from four points down (37-33) to 14 points up (73-59).

"There's just something that happens," May said. "Maybe I'll get a bucket, and that'll get us going. Or maybe Benny (Kent Benson) will get a tough rebound that'll get us going. Or maybe Quinn will make a great pass."

It was all of the above against Michigan. May, Benson and Buckner combined for 36 of Indiana's first 38 points in the second half. May, shooting over the Wolverines' zone, finished the game with 26 points, one more than Benson managed from inside. Buckner totaled 16 points.

Meanwhile, sophomore Jim Wisman did a remarkable job directing the offense in Wilkerson's absence, leading the Hoosiers with six assists. Any hopes of a Michigan comeback were dimmed when 6-7 freshman Phil Hubbard fouled out with 7:27 to play and then Britt fouled out 2 1/2 minutes later.

The result was an 86-68 triumph, an undefeated season, a championship. Knight replaced Buckner with 44 seconds left and the two men hugged. With 12 seconds to play, May and Benson were removed and all 17,540 fans -- even the Michigan supporters -- stood and applauded. May hopped into Buckner's arms and they shouted above the din, "Four years, man!"

Wilkerson, who had worked three years for that goal after being ineligible as a freshman, heard the news in a hospital bed several miles away. The messenger was a medical technician, Corlie Stills.

"He didn't ask for the score," Stills said. "I just thought he'd like to know. He was in a daze. He could understand, I think, but there was not much of a reaction."

The 21-year-old basketball player, still in his Indiana uniform, lay in the emergency room undergoing an examination by a neurosurgeon.

"He was knocked unconscious," said Joseph Torg, physician for the Philadelphia 76ers. "He sustained a moderate concussion. He does not appear to be in any danger. He is being admitted for observation."

His eyes closed, the player was wheeled upstairs. Knight came to visit after midnight. The Indiana party flew home without him the next day.

Wilkerson remained in the hospital for an additional 24 hours before being released. Of all the Indiana players, he was the one who never forgot the night and never remembered the game.