BATON ROUGE — March 14, 1981, Frank Erwin Center, Austin, Texas, NCAA Midwest Regionals first and second round.
An afternoon session featuring LSU (starting its trek to the Final Four) vs. Lamar, followed by defending national champion Louisville vs. Arkansas.
As a 24-year-old Shreveport Times sportswriter, it was my first live taste of March Madness.
It was love at first buzzer beater.
The top-seeded Tigers hammered Lamar by 22 points. They figured to play defending national champ Louisville the next week in the Sweet 16 after the Cards disposed of Arkansas until. . .
Louisville’s Derek Smith hits a jumper with 5 seconds left for a one-point lead. Arkansas coach Eddie Sutton immediately calls a timeout and tells his team to inbound the ball to senior guard U.S. Reed.
Hogs have one last chance for a miracle win. Guard Darrell Walker inbounds the ball to Reed at Louisville’s foul line in a gap in the Cards’ soft full-court zone press.
He zigs and zags and finally pulls up at a spot where I’m on press row at a perfect angle behind him as he launches a 49-foot shot.
The majestic arc and the dead-center aim caused me to say out loud to no one in particular, “That’s going in, that’s going in, that’s GOING. . .INNNNNN!’
A swish so perfect for a 74-73 win as the buzzer sounds that Arkansas center Scott Hastings, standing under the basket, collapses in disbelief.
Reed immediately turns to the courtside media, begins slapping hands with us and says, “Can you believe that (expletive deleted) went in? Can you believe it?”
The next year in 1982, I was at courtside in the Superdome for the NCAA championship game. A North Carolina freshman named Michael Jordan calmly drained a 16-foot jumper with 17 seconds left to give the Tar Heels a 63-62 win over Georgetown for the national title.
Three years later in Rupp Arena in the 1985 finals, I sat just behind the Villanova bench when the Wildcats hit 22 of 29 field goals including 9 of 10 in the second half for a stunning 66-64 win over heavily favored Patrick Ewing-led Georgetown.
In 1986 when No. 11 seed LSU made a magical run to the Final Four in Dallas, I tore my right Achilles playing pickup basketball at downtown Dallas health club six hours before the Tigers met Louisville in a semifinal.
Got back to my hotel room, put on three pairs of tube socks, filled up a trash can from under the desk with ice and water and stuck my foot in it until it was numb.
Covered LSU’s loss and stayed through Monday to write the championship game. Flew home on Tuesday. Surgery on Friday.
That’s HOW MUCH I love March Madness.
The 1990s produced a string of magical NCAA tourney and Final Four assignments for me.
There were Arkansas Final Four runs in 1994 (won the title over Duke on former Ruston High star Scotty Thurman’s rainbow 3-pointer) and 1995 (lost to UCLA and the O’Bannon brothers in the title game) on a day when actor Jack Nicholson rubbed elbows with me in the media refreshment area.
A pleasant stunner was Mississippi State catching fire and advancing to the 1996 Final Four, keyed by high-flying, deep-shooting Nashville native Don’tae Jones.
Jones produced one of my favorite Final Four quotes ever when I asked him after State lost to Syracuse in the semifinals if he was returning to MSU for another season or leaving early to enter the NBA Draft.
“I don’t like carryin’ all those books and stuff,” the truthful ’Tae said about attending classes, “so I’m probably goin’ to the NBA.”
As the years have passed, the beauty of the NCAA tournament isn’t the Final Four The brand-name teams usually advance to the last weekend of play.
March Madness doesn’t get any crazier than the first weekend of games because of the out-of-nowhere Cinderellas providing bracket-busting upsets.
This brings me to two of the best stories in the 2024 NCAA tourney field – McNeese State and Grambling – the only Louisiana men’s teams still dancing.
Southland Conference regular season and tournament champ McNeese (30-3), the No. 12 seed in the Midwest Region, plays No. 5 Gonzaga on Thursday at 6:25 p.m. CT in Salt Lake City,
Southwestern Athletic Conference regular season and tournament champ Grambling (20-14), a No. 16 seed, faces No. 16 seed Montana State in a First Four game Wednesday at 5:40 p.m. in Dayton, Ohio.
Will Wade and Donte Jackson were hired just months apart as head coaches by Louisiana-based programs. Wade became LSU’s coach in March 2017 and Jackson took over Grambling three months later in June.
Wade took his first LSU team to the NIT in 2018 and by year two the Tigers won the 2019 SEC regular season championship and advanced to the Sweet 16.
But by then, Wade’s off-the-court trouble of alleged NCAA recruiting violations started. Popular among the LSU fan base, he hung on for four more seasons and finished with 105 wins and three NCAA tourney appearances. He was fired in March 2022 when the school finally received the NCAA’s list of charged violations a day after the Tigers lost in the SEC tourney championship game.
Jackson’s first season at Grambling in 2018 produced the Tigers’ first SWAC regular season championship since 1989. However, due to low APR scores, Grambling was ineligible for the conference tourney and postseason play.
After barely breaking over .500 in the next three seasons and a 12-20 nosedive in 2022, GSU and Jackson seemed primed for the school’s first NCAA tourney bid a year ago. The Tigers were the 2023 SWAC regular season co-champs and won 22 games including wins over Colorado and Grambling.
But in the SWAC tourney finals with the winner receiving an automatic bid (and the loser usually getting nothing), Grambling lost 61-58 to No. 8 seed Texas Southern (a team GSU had already beaten twice by double digits).
Ironically, it was a TSU team coached by former LSU star Johnny Jones, who was fired in 2017 after five seasons as LSU’s head coach and replaced by. . .Will Wade.
On Sunday, the 41-year-old Wade in his first year as McNeese’s head coach and the 45-year-old Jackson in his seventh year guiding Grambling, culminated seasons of redemption when their teams officially received NCAA tourney invites.
“They needed me and I needed them and that’s why it’s worked,” Wade said of his hiring and successful McNeese maiden voyage. “I guess I got better perspective when I got knocked off the ladder (when he was fired by LSU).”
Jackson’s journey has been about staying the course, being consistent and never losing faith.
“This is three regular season titles and one tournament title in seven years. . .I think we’re a basketball school,” Jackson said after Grambling beat Texas Southern last Saturday in the SWAC tourney finals.
Go get ’em Cowboys and Tigers.
And don’t think you don’t belong. No matter the size of your school, you earned it.
Revel in the moment.
And then shock the world, just as No. 14 seed Northwestern State did in its 2006 stunner, roaring back from a 17-point deficit with 8½ minutes left for a 64-63 first-round win (on Jermaine Wallace’s buzzer-beating 3) over third-seeded Big Ten tourney champ Iowa, AP’s No. 15-ranked team.
All it takes is a full 40 minutes of supreme effort and one last kill shot to chop down Paul Bunyan.
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com