1st Big Upset - W. Kentucky Claims Final 4 Spot - History of other Final 4s

Our 7-seed Western Kentucky scored the first big upset of our 16-team tournament, dominating the boards in a 78-62 win over 2-seed Oregon State. 

We noted Oregon State's one weakness seemed to be low rebounding numbers, but it was not that big a risk in their 81-68 win against James Madison 2024, which is also a weaker rebounding team. However, WKU was a fantastic rebounding team despite the whole team being 6'5 or 6'6 except for the 6'3 superstar Clem Haskins. They dominated the glass with a 40-24 rebounding edge.

Senior center Steve Cunningham's aggressive play took advantage of the soon-to-be great freshman AC Green. With the Hilltoppers leading 60-55 and 5:49 (10 possessions to play) Cunningham drew the 5th foul on Green and hit the basket for an "and-one," sinking the free throw to make it 63-55.

We did not play Green with "soft defense to avoid the foul" because he had two solid backups on Greg Wiltier and Rob Holbrook with stamina left, but Cunningham finished with a double-double (16 points and 10 rebounds) to go with Clem Haskins 21, 8 for the win.

Western Kentucky, which had barely survived Buffalo 2019 in their first game 84-82, will now face Tulsa and Bill Self in one Final 5 game. They will try to spoil a potential match-up of two of the greatest coaches of the 21st century and rematch of the John Calipari (Memphis) vs. Self (Kansas) 2008 championship with two other teams in the game. This one could be Tulsa vs. UMass 1996. However, new Mexico State 1970 will try to eliminate UMass in the other Final 4 game.

In our March 2020 Final 4 from the original 96 all-time great teams in the game, Bill Walton's UCLA beat Mikal Bridges' Villanova 2018 and Michael Jordan's UNC beat Draymond Green's Michigan State. UCLA then won the title, and is now ranked No. 1 of our all-time teams.

In our June 2022 Final Four, Paul Pierce's 1997 Kansas beat 2001 Duke, then another surprise team and the last Big Ten team to win the actual title, Michigan State 2000 beat DePaul 1980 and Terry Cummings. That tournament featured many great teams who were left out of the first batch because we only allowed one team from each school per century. Kansas then won the title and is now ranked No. 2 of our all-time teams.

In our all-time women's Final Four in March 2023, Pat Summit's Tennessee 1998 defeated UConn 2010 in one Final Four game before beating Louisiana Tech 1982, which included Dennis Rodman's sister Debra, in the title game. La Tech had beaten Notre Dame 2018 in the other Final 4 game.

We do have a Sweet 16 of newer teams more recently added we will get back to after this Final 4, and we still need to finish calculating the cards for our 16 new Women's all-time great teams who will also play a Sweet 16 tourament.

 

Pos	Western Kentucky	Pts	3pt	2pt	FT	Att	Reb	Stl	Blk	Fl	Season Actual	Hts
1-PG	Dwight Smith	17	1	5	4	4	3	2	0	3	16.1 Pts, 9.9 Reb	6'5
2-SG	Clem Haskins	21	4	3	3	4	8	3	0	4	20.4 Pts, 10.0 Reb-NBA	6'3
3-SF	Wayne Chapman	9	1	3	0	1	6	0	3	2	13.3 Pts, 4.3 Reb-NBA	6'6
4-PF	Greg Smith	7	1	2	0	0	6	0	3	2	9.5 Pts, 10.3 Reb-NBA	6'5
5-C	Steve Cunningham	16	0	6	4	7	10	0	1	1	15.1 Pts, 7.4 Reb	6'5
1-PG	Mike Fawcett	2	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	1	2.1 Pts, 0.6 Reb	5'10
2-SG	Butch Kaufman	2	0	1	0	0	3	0	0	3	4.0 Pts, 1.0 Reb	5'10
3-SF	Norm Weaver	2	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	1	2.9 Pts, 1.7 Reb	6'5
4-PF	Pearl Hicks	2	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	1	2.3 Pts, 3.0 Reb	6'7
5-C	Jack Butler	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	1	1.8 Pts, 1.8 Reb	6'5
	16 Turnovers	78	7	23	11	16	40	5	7	19
Pos	Oregon St. 1982	Pts	3pt	2pt	FT	Att	Reb	Stl	Blk	Fl	Season Actual	Hts
1-PG	William Brew	7	1	0	4	6	2	2	1	3	6'1,9.2 ppg	6'2
2-SG	Lester Conner	19	2	3	7	10	5	2	1	4	6'4,14.9 ppg, NBA	6'2
3-SF	Danny Evans	14	1	5	1	3	3	1	0	3	6'5,11.3 ppg	6'6
4-PF	Charlie Sitton	10	2	2	0	0	3	0	0	1	6'8,12.9 ppg, NBA	6'7
5-C	A.C. Green	8	0	3	2	2	6	0	1	5	6'9,8.6 ppg, NBA	6'11
1-PG	Alan Tait	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	1	6'2,0.5 ppg	6'3
2-SG	Jamie Stangel	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	1	6'7,1.4 ppg	6'7
3-SF	Jeff Wilson	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	1	6'7,1.2 ppg	6'7
4-PF	Rob Holbrook	2	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	1	6'86.7 ppg	6'9
5-C	Greg Wiltjer	2	0	1	0	0	1	2	0	1	6'11,5.4 ppg	6'9
	13 turnovers	62	6	15	14	21	24	7	3	21

Back to the Future: HOF Mulkey PG beats Coach Mulkey - La Tech 77, Baylor 72

Score one for youth! In a Value Add Basketball Game featured a 19 year old guard defeating herself as a 56 year old coach.

Coach Kim Mulkey led her 2019 Baylor to a dominant all-time Elite 8 all-time performance until their were three minutes to play. However, a 37 year old younger Hall of Fame Point Guard came up with a steal and bucket to finally give 1982 Louisiana Tech a 64-62 lead with 2:44 (5 possessions) to play.

Angela Turner then made it two straight steals and fast break buckets to give Louisiana Tech a 66-62 lead and they continued to drive to the hoop and draw fouls to hold onto a 77-72 win. La Tech advances to the all-time Final Four to face the winner of Notre Dame vs UConn 2016.

The fun thing about how this played out is there will be one team from each of the past four decades in the all-time Final 4. La Tech from the 80s, Tennessee from the 90s, UConn from the first decade of the 21st century and the winner of the last Elite 8 game from the last decade.

Baylor's Lauren Cox (game high 23 points) dominated much of the game as Baylor did not let La Tech get the ball inside to Pam Kelly.

However after trailing 60-56 with just over four minutes to play, Turner, Janice Lawrence and Angela Turner continued.to drive and draw fouls. DiDi Richards and Chloe Jackson fouled out and Kalani Brown hung in with four fouls as Baylor committed 22 fouls to only 14 for the first national champions. While we do not keep track of missed shots or free throws, we count 17 made free throws for the Louisiana Tech starters alone - the highest we ever recall in a men's or women's game (remember we only play the final 44 possessions of games, assuming a 20-20 tie with all 10 players on each team having two points during the first 22 possessions).

Some believe the first official NCAA champs may have been the best ever, though the Baylor 2019 team had six future WNBA players.

Time to play the game from first roll was 33 minutes.

Rodman's Sister Starts La Tech's 84-62 blowout of Longhorns

When Jennifer White steals the ball on the first play of the game, and passes ahead to Dennis Rodman's sister for the layup just seconds into the game, it's not your day Texas Longhorns.

When you realize this is the young Debra Rodman who Dennis Rodman said (click for story pictured below) defeated him on the basketball court when they were kids, and on the 1982 national champs from Louisiana Tech she was the BACK-UP center to the great Pam Kelly - it's really not your day. 

Kudos again to the incredible upgrade a Basketball Reference to recently release many women's seasons with more to come - which will make our women's cards more and more accurate after piecing stats together in some cases for the Value Add Basketball Game.

Rodman and the second string blitzed the Longhorns 12-2 in their seven possessions on the court, then Pam Kelly (23 points, 9 rebounds, 3 blocked shots), powered to a 75-49 lead before some late baskets by the Longhorns backcourt tightened the final slightly to 84-62, in the Value Add Basketball Game.

The one brightspot for the Longhorns was the starting back court of Brook McCarthy (14 points) and Ariel Atkins (17 points, 5 steals), but on the possessions on which Texas did not force a turnover, Louisiana Tech averaged an amazing 2.1 points per trip down the court.

Three of the four heavy favorites that are quite possibly the four best teams in the history of women's college basketball, will advance to the Elite 8 - and the 1-seed UConn 2016 is a heavy favorite to beat #20 seed Long Beach State and join them.

Louisiana Tech held Texas to just 19 rebounds the entire game.