Unfortunate Omission

[Cincinnati Kid]

With the passing of former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, ESPN Classic has been airing the video tape of his last game - the 1975 NCAA Title game victory over Kentucky on NBC-TV. At the end of that telecast, announcer Curt Gowdy mentions to color analyst Billy Packer how exciting that game and the UCLA-Louisville game two days earlier had been. Gowdy then goes on to note how he played in the NCAA Tournament when he was at Wyoming in the early 1940's. He says nothing about Packer who played in the 1962 NCAA Tournament with Wake Forest and on a team who finished third in the tourney. Kind of an unfortunate omission.

 

[bpatrick]

Even if Packer had never become a basketball analyst,
we in North Carolina would still remember his days at
Wake Forest and his playing in the '62 NCAA tourney.
Demon Deacons coach Bones McKinney had some great
college teams but he failed to duplicate his success as
coach of the Carolina Cougars of the old ABA; he seemed
to want to recruit mostly from UNC, Duke, Wake, and N.C.
State. The Cougars weren't a terrible team but they didn't
get an invite to join the NBA when the ABA folded, either.
(I wish I'd lived in NC in those days, just to see the Cougars
play the Virginia Squires and Kentucky Colonels, but I digress.)

 

[cowboybud]

The Cougars weren't a terrible team but they didn't
get an invite to join the NBA when the ABA folded, either.

The Cougars moved to St. Louis a couple of years before the ABA disbanded. A young Bob Costas was their radio announcer.

 

[RicoGregg]

With the passing of former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, ESPN Classic has been airing the video tape of his last game - the 1975 NCAA Title game victory over Kentucky on NBC-TV. At the end of that telecast, announcer Curt Gowdy mentions to color analyst Billy Packer how exciting that game and the UCLA-Louisville game two days earlier had been. Gowdy then goes on to note how he played in the NCAA Tournament when he was at Wyoming in the early 1940's. He says nothing about Packer who played in the 1962 NCAA Tournament with Wake Forest and on a team who finished third in the tourney. Kind of an unfortunate omission.

And the team that Wake Forest beat to finish third that year was none other than UCLA, coached by Mr. Wooden himself.

It was the last post season loss the Bruins would suffer until 1974, when they were toppled in double overtime by North Carolina State. They ran off an incredible playoff winning streak of 38 straight, more incredible in its way than the 88-game winning streak.

These days, it seems that the words "icon" and "legend" are used a little too generously in the cultural venacular. In the case of John Wooden, both words could be correctly called understatements.

 

[Cincinnati Kid]

In that 1962 NCAA Finals, UCLA lost to Cincinnati by two points in the semi-finals then by two points to Wake Forest in the consolation game the following night.