This Is It!
Cards for Statis-Pro Basketball for the 1978-79 NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament
Actually the theme for 1980-81, but I loved it!
I still think of basketball 🏀 when I hear that song.
The 1979 NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball Tournament saw Magic Johnson, and Michigan State defeat Larry Bird, and Indiana State 75-64 to win their first National Championship. The tournament back then was only forty teams, or ten per region, and this was the first tournament where the teams were seeded.
(This makes the scope of the project much easier to achieve. As it happens, the Sweet Sixteen of this tournament is a perfect overlay of the top 20 teams from the Final AP Poll taken the second week of March, 1979. As such I narrowed the scope from 40 teams to every team in the Sweet Sixteen, and further added three teams that did not make it past the Round of 32: Powerhouses North Carolina and Duke in the East, who both lost on Black Sunday, March 11, 1979 in Raleigh, NC, and Iowa, the Big Ten Co-Champions who lost to Toledo in their first game. North Carolina and Duke were ranked 9th and 11th respectively but the talent on each roster makes both threats to win it all if they can make it out of the rugged and deep pool that is the East that year.
The last team I added is Purdue, the third Big-Ten Co-Champions who made it to the NIT Finals. They have a strong team led by Joe Barry Carroll. Purdue barely lost to Indiana in the NIT Finals, and they made the Final Four the next year, a feat that would take until 2024 to replicate. They make an interesting ‘what-if?’ when subbed in for, say, Iowa.)
The Final AP Top 20:
Figure 1: The AP Top Twenty and the Men’s Tournament from 1979.
The reason I did not go farther into teams from the first round is the research on roster, usage and biographical information becomes exponentially more laborious as you move down the AP list. The Mark Aguirre led DePaul Iron Five team of 1979 is the last Final Four team from that school in 80 years; they are beloved. The same is true of Michigan State, and Indiana State. There exists a mountain of written material on each of these squads, and you can watch them on film. In contrast Oklahoma won the Big 8 but not much is written about their 21-10 team. It’s as if they lost to Indiana State in the Midwest Regional Sweet 16 and then ceased to exist. Still, the teams that are included would allow (for example) a person replaying Michigan State to try every game they competed in during the tournament except their first round opponent, Lamar.
Enough on what’s not included; let’s explore what is here. It is fair to say the season remade the landscape of the 1980s NBA. It gave us Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, who in this set is just awesome as National Player of the Year, but players like Sidney Moncrief (Arkansas), Bill Cartwright (USF), David Greenwood and Kiki Vandeweghe (UCLA), Darrell Griffith (Louisville), Bill Laimbeer, Kelly Tripuka, Orlando Woolridge, Bill Hanzlik (Notre Dame) and even the busts and part timers, guys like Dale Shackleford, Greg Kelser, Ronnie Lester and the aforementioned Joe Barry Carroll had their moments. The Final game between Magic and Bird was somewhat anticlimactic but it is still the most watched game in NCAA Basketball history. From this came March Madness and modern tournament frenzy.
Kelly Tripucka of Notre Dame
Further on, these men were on the whole very successful; and amazing number of the non-NBA players are lawyers, CEOs, high level administrators, and coaches. Many are still active and prominent in their field. An unfortunate number of them have also passed away, something that tugs more dearly as the years pass, and I remember that I watched them as a young man.
“Black Sunday”, and the Beasts of the East
Figure 2: Teams from the East Regional
This set contains six Top 20 ranked teams: the East regional Final Four representative, Penn, St. John’s from the Elite 8, Syracuse and Rutgers from the Sweet 16, and UNC and Duke from the ACC, who both surprisingly lost in their first Tournament game. There are six teams included because the 1978-79 East Regional is that deep and that strong.
The 1979 Tourney gave us two big changes in the sports landscape: ESPN first began broadcasting later in the year as a cable 24 hour sports only network, and - as one of their first partnerships - the Big East was formed from the seven historically powerful Eastern basketball schools. These included St John’s and Syracuse, two teams in this set. The East Regional was a wild place this year as top to bottom it held six teams from the Top Twenty, and both North Carolina and Duke were both considered title contenders. The Tarheels boasted Al Wood, Mike O’Koren, Dudley Bradley and Rich Yonakor as starters and Jimmy Black off the bench and they could play disciplined offense and excellent defense. Duke featured Mike Gminski, Gene Banks and Jim Sparnakel, all timers for them, and they battled UNC all year for supremacy, meeting up four times and winning twice.
Nothing to see here, just another backyard brawl
This fight took a lot out of both teams and that debt was paid in the Round of 32 on Black Sunday, March 11, 1979 in Raleigh, NC as Tony Price and Penn out dueled Carolina at the foul line 72-71 and a couple hours later Lou Carnesecca’s Redmen nipped Duke 80-78 behind Reggie Carter and Wayne McCoy. Syracuse has a brilliant offensive team, one of the best in the set, led by the “Bouie and Louie” show, aided by guard Hal Cohen and Danny Schayes but they were the next to meet Penn in the round of 16 with the same result as North Carolina, this time losing 84-76.
St. John’s, behind Guard Reggie Carter, defeated a solid Rutgers team featuring forward James Bailey 67-65 to face Penn for the Final Four. Regional MOP Tony Price scored 21 points and Matt White pulled down 9 rebounds to pace a narrow 64-62 Quaker win. Penn’s win would be the last Final Four appearance for an Ivy League team.
Tony Price of Penn
All of the teams of the East (other than Syracuse) were rugged defensively as befit the Eastern basketball of the time. An interesting “what if” would be North Carolina as the East representative in the Final Four, as they nipped Michigan State 70-69 in December, or Duke, the only team in the set with two All-Americans on their roster in Gminksi and Sparnakel.
The Mideast... There were Two Michigan States…
Figure 3: Teams from the Mideast Regional
The Mideast teams in this set include six top 20 ranked teams: Michigan State, Notre Dame, LSU, Toledo and co-Big Ten champ Iowa. 15th ranked Purdue is included as a bonus team.
Most people remember the Michigan State from the tourney, a trapping, dangerous team with a stifling 2-3 zone that seemed to operate on long downcourt and cross court passes for fastbreak buckets and alley oops From Magic Johnson to forward Greg Kelser. They would draw teams into man to man defense and just kill them. But I watched this team all year, and in its early days they dropped from 9-1 to 11-5 very quickly, falling to 4-4 in the Big Ten after getting blown out by 18 points at cellar-dweller Northwestern. Johnson was still coming into his own as a jump shooter, and the Spartans lacked ball handling under pressure, so the team was completely out of synch offensively.
After this game they removed Ron Charles from the his starting lineup position as a big forward and instead went to a three guard lineup using Johnson as a “point forward” and Mike Brkovich and Terry Donnelly as guards. This reduced the pressure on Donnelly when Johnson was double-teamed, and improved the team’s ball handling and outside shooting immensely. If you watch MSU you can see these two men rotating to the perimeter in transition to shoot devastating jumpers whenever teams collapsed in on Kelser and Vincent, or Charles. For his part Johnson was his own outlet pass, and he would trigger the fast break from his frontcourt position whenever he cleared a defensive rebound. After this change, they finished 14-1, and they were truly a joy to watch. (Note - I’m saying this as a Michigan Fan!)
Surprised Kelser isn’t dunking on Michigan here
The first real test was LSU. On paper LSU was a real challenge- they had a triplet of towers in Dwight Scales, Lionel Green and Greg Cook with another seven-footer in reserve in Rick Mattick. There was a lot of talk that the MSU guards were slow and would not even start at LSU. But the Tiger’s main threat, Scales, had spoken to an agent in the weeks before the Tournament and Dale Brown suspended him. Without Scales, their offensive and defensive anchor, LSU’s offense collapsed in the first half of their Sweet 16 match versus MSU. The Tigers trailed 36-19 at the break. MSU’s Jay Vincent had a bad foot but Charles subbed in for him and had the game of his life, tallying 18 point and 14 rebounds. The Tigers bounced back to score 52 in the second half, but to no avail. An interesting “what-if?” would give Scales back to previously the seventh-ranked Tigers.
…And we would like to call Digger Phelps to the stand…
Michigan State was not the top seed in the Mideast; Notre Dame was. The Irish had no less than four NBA level players on their team, Bill Laimbeer, Kelly Tripuka, Orlando Woolridge, Bill Hanzlik, along with great role players such as Tracy Jackson, Rich Branning and Stan Wilcox. Like the Spartans, the Irish had reached the Final Four the year before and expectations were high, but injuries and ineffectiveness had cost them losses to Kentucky, USF, Michigan and DePaul. But still, only Phelp’s 1973-74 team had won more games than this team. Tripuka was the most consistent scorer, tallying 24 against a rugged Toledo defense.
But by the time of the Regional Final Sparty was peaking and Notre Dame wasn’t. The Spartan defense forced Tripuka into a 4/11 day while Regional MOP Kelser had 34 points and 13 rebounds, spending more time in the air than on the ground. Notre Dame lost, 80-68, and would never make another Final Four under Phelps.
(I’d like to point out that Toledo had a fine season behind center Jim Swaney, fan-favorite forward Harvey Knuckles, and guard Stan Joplin, a fine back court player who beat Ronnie Lester and Iowa in the round of 32 on a last second shot. Playing hard, and as a team, they dropped their matchup to Notre Dame by only 8 points, 79-71. That game is Toledo’s only appearance in the Sweet 16 to date.)
…And the Tournament Selection Committee, too.
I’ve included Purdue, as well. The Tournament increased from 40 teams in 1979 to 48 in 1980, and had this been the case the year before Purdue, as co-Champions of the Big Ten, would have received an NCAA bid. As it was, they missed out on an unfortunate tie-breaker. Purdue was left out by the committee because they were 1-3 against Iowa and MSU. Iowa swept the Boilermakers, but got swept by MSU; MSU and Purdue split. There’s still some bitterness about the decision to exclude what was a loaded Boilermaker team from the 1979 Tournament in West Lafayette.
The Midwest - Two for The Show
Figure 3: Teams from the Midwest Regional
The four top Midwest Regional seeds are included in this set, Indiana State, Arkansas, Louisville, and Oklahoma. Louisville had Scooter McCray and Darrell Griffith but they were a year away from their Championship season, but they were bested by the Razorbacks, a Final Four team from the previous year, who were led by first team All-America guard Sidney Moncrief. Oklahoma had Big 8 Player of the Year John McCullough and super-sub Gary Carrabine, but they were not strong enough to stop Indiana State, the Nation’s top- ranked team.
The Lakers were torn between Magic or Moncrief
Coming out of the Southwest Conference, Arkansas was streaky in much the same manner as the Spartans, winning their first nine before an inexplicable patch where they lost four of five, including two losses to ranked teams. Then they caught fire once again, winning their last ten before the Tournament to rise to #5 in the Final AP. Besides Moncrief, the Razorbacks had future NBA players Scott Hastings and Tony Brown, alongside PG U.S. Reed and C Steve Schall. They rolled past Louisville 73-62 in the Sweet 16, but their Elite 8 opponents, the Top-ranked Sycamores had one big ace up their sleeve to offset the Razorback’s Tournament experience: Larry Bird. The Indiana State forward played like a man among boys as 1978-79 Player of the Year and First Team All-American, averaging 28.6 points per game, 14.9 rebounds, and 5.5 assists. He was joined by guard Carl Nicks (19.3 ppg) and forward Bob Heaton. ISU was a tough team to figure, because they had rolled their schedule (albeit without a lot of contenders) to a 29-0 record without really being pressed, but they clearly had some ensemble front line talent. They did beat Oklahoma in the Sweet 16 by 21, 93-72 as Bird pulled down 15 rebounds, and he and Nicks combined for 49 points. But 25-4 Arkansas was their first real test.
Larry Bird, Player Of The Year in 1978-79
They almost failed it. Early on Moncrief and Arkansas controlled the ball and the tempo as they rotated between a 3-2 zone and “the Birdcage”, a diamond and one zone defense with either Moncrief or forward Alan Zahn taking Bird high and low. They were effective, as Bird could not find the range early. On offense Hastings and Zahn took the ball at the top of the Indiana State zone and forced Bird to play defense and opened up a seven point lead midway through the first half. But with a chance to take a nine point lead the Razorbacks committed two tough charges, a 24 second violation and travelled within their next four possessions while Bird found the range from the baseline and hit the offensive boards to trail by only 2 at the break 39-37.
It was definitely a different time!
In the second the two teams slowed their possessions down to focus on getting the ball to their stars, Bird and Moncrief. Indiana State pulled even a couple times, but when they did Arkansas would make a bucket or two to get the lead back to four points. When the Razorbacks put Moncrief on Bird man-to-man, Indiana State came pack with the press and took the Razorbacks out of their offense, as the 6-11 Schall could not keep up in transition. The Sycamores led by as many as six midway through the second half, before the Razorbacks made one last push behind Moncrief and Hastings. With three minutes to go, it was tied at 67, but Arkansas was controlling the pace. U.S. Reed gave Arkansas a 71-69 lead and Bird made two from the line to tie it. With a minute and nine seconds to go Arkansas had the ball and Edie Sutton called time out, and right after the inbounds pass Reed lost his footing after tripping over Carl Nicks and was called for travelling. Playing now for the last shot, Indiana State could not get the ball to Bird but instead it made its way to small forward Bob Heaton, who had made a fifty footer to beat New Mexico State earlier in the year. Here he made an off balance left-handed fifteen footer to put the Sycamores into the Final Four. It was a great win for the Sycamores, but Arkansas easily could have won it; the contest was as-billed.
The West - DePaul’s Iron Five
Figure 4: Teams from the West Regional
The four top West Regional seeds are included in this set, DePaul, UCLA, Marquette, and the University of San Francisco Dons. Marquette was two years out from their National Championship year, the last year under Al McGuire. But they were still dangerous; they possessed F-C Bernard Toone and PG Sam Worthen, and the West’s one truly solid defense.
The Dons were, of course, known as the team of Bill Russell, and they would play anyone, anywhere. While UCLA emerged under John Wooden to eclipse them as a West Coast powerhouse, USF was still considered a major program in a mid-major conference, winning the West Coast Athletic title nine times between 1972 and 1982. In 1977, led by All-American Center Bill Cartwright, they started 26-0 and held the top spot in the AP rankings before dropping their last two games. The dark side was that the program had been placed under probation for booster interference and recruiting violations twice in the Seventies, costing the Dons their coach each time, and finally these influences killed the program itself under a self-imposed “death penalty” in 1982.
That’s how tall Bill Cartwright was
This version of USF (22-6) had to face second-ranked UCLA , and while Cartwright scored 34 the Bruin’s Roy Hamilton offset him by dropping 36 points. Trailing by two at the half UCLA scored 58 in the final frame to win going away, 99-81. This established the Bruin’s Tournament trend- come out slow, and then have Hamilton, Kiki Vandeweghe, Brad Holland, and David Greenwood just run the other team out of the gym in the second half. The Dons preferred an up-tempo style themselves, but this approach was very dangerous against UCLA, a team that had entered the game at 24-4 and having won 13 of their last 14. The win sent UCLA to the Elite 8 against DePaul.
Ray Meyer had never been to a final Four, and he had to watch other Jesuit schools make it there ahead of him, Marquette in 1976 and Notre Dame in 1977. He had built his team around veteran guard Gary Garland and forward Curtis Watkins. (Meyer actually preferred the Blue Devils’ five starters play every minute, hence the nickname The Iron Five.) The addition of explosive freshman forward Mark Aguirre keyed a 23-5 season and the second seed in the West.
Mark Aguirre and Clyde Bradshaw
In their first Tournament game The Big Three delivered, as Watkins and Aguirre combined for 52 points and 16 rebounds, and Garland scored 18 points with 7 assists in an 89-78 win over USC. Marquette’s Toone was the big scorer in the Sweet 16 game, with 26 points, but, logging big minute totals DePaul’s Big Three answered with 53 points of their own, and won the free throw battle 16-8 in a tough 62-56 win over the rugged Warriors. In the Regional Final, UCLA overplayed the slow start angle, as Watkins, Garland and Aguirre combined for 64 points and DePaul led 51-34 at the half. Greenwood’s 37 points keyed a furious UCLA rally that fell short, 95-91. During the final two games Garland, Aguirre and Clyde Bradshaw played all 80 minutes and Watkins played 78. Garland was the West Region’s MOP.
But- This is an interesting UCLA team, while they might be only seven deep, they are a heck of a seven, led by Greenwood, who was a First Team All-American. They can cause trouble with Indiana State if they can make it out of the West. They were led by Gary Cunningham, whose two-year record was 50-8. Cunningham preferred administration to coaching however, and he left UCLA after this year to become an associate professor and athletic director at Western Oregon State. He held the same roles at Wyoming, Fresno State and UC Santa Barbara from 1979 to 2008, finally retiring then- with a career winning percentage on just those two seasons of 86%, higher than Rupp (82%), Wooden (80%), Tarkanian (79%) or Al McGuire (79%).
In the semi-finals, DePaul received a balanced scoring effort with another 54 from the Big Three but Bird had probably his best game, finishing 16/19 from the floor for 35 points, adding 16 rebounds and 9 assists. Indiana State won another close one, 76-74. No such luck for Penn, as the Spartans held them to 24 for 82 shooting, while Magic Johnson shot 9 of 10 from the floor, 11 of 12 from the line, and added in 10 rebounds and 10 assists for a 29 point triple double in a 101-67 win.
The Final was somewhat anti-climactic- with Carl Nicks playing well, the Sycamores played MSU as tough as anyone else had for the last week, but unfortunately Bird was just a bit off, shooting only 7 for 21 from the field and turning it over 6 times. Bird had shot his way through a similar first half mini slump versus Arkansas, where he wasn’t getting good looks, but at this point in the tournament the Spartan defense was not a safe place to experiment with shot placement or selection. MSU won 74-65 to end Indiana State’s Cinderella run. Perhaps the last “what-if ?” is whether the Larry Bird who played so well versus DePaul might show up against the Spartans….?
Rules:
I would defer in the main to these excellent interpretations of the Zone Defenses teams play. The gamer may choose the defenses and strategies they allow.
A few Caveats, though.
A) College Basketball 🏀 does not have a shot clock until 1985. This means possibly unlimited advances although the chances for steals and turnovers do go up.
B) I might limit forced rest to the next flip of the 45 card deck. A lot of guys played heavy minutes.
C) Defenses in a (for example) 2-3 zone are not attempting to steal the ball as aggressively as a man to man defense. I have not fully tested this but I would think an adjustment to steal ratings down is appropriate.
(It is for this reason teams tended in the Tournament to move out of zone defense when trailing. The team with the ball 🏀 could just run down the clock.)
I would welcome any input from those who have replayed this era.
D) Because the zone is legal illegal defense results can be ignored.
E) No three pointer. Boy that would have changed things!
F) Still testing this, but a Pro quarter of 12 minutes is four times through the 45 card deck (meaning all four “sides”) for 180 turns. That is 12 min times 60 sec divided by 180 sides or four seconds a turn. What Jim Barnes recommended for college was essentially six times through the deck (reshuffle and do two more) for 270 sides, 20 min times 60 sec / 270 sides or 4.44 seconds a turn. A college game will score about 140 - 150 points versus just over 200 in the games featuring the pros of that time.
If you get too many plays, it is possible that the deck could be shortened to 40 cards, for 240 turns, or five seconds per turn. That might help a bit, I would need to test this more and I could use help!
G) For Zone Rating consult the team’s fast break defense. An A is rated -3, a B -2, a C -1, and a D +1
Fred Bobberts
-Initial Date of Publication 6/8/2025
