March 29th, 1976.
Disco Lady, by Johnie Taylor from his album Eargasm (gotta love those 70's names) hit number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and would go on to be the first single to be certified platinum by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America--I didn't know what those letters stood for either so I wrote it out) and would go on to sell 2.5M copies. (Peanuts these days compared to YouTube views.)
Gerald Ford was President of the United States and an actor named Ronald Reagan was the Governor of California. Microsoft was not quite a year old having been founded on April 4th, 1975, and Apple didn't officially exist yet, although it would be founded two days later on April 1st, 1976. Cell phones were still a "Star Trek" thing and NASA unveiled it's first "Space Shuttle", aptly named Enterprise. Oh yeah, and the Indiana Hoosiers, under coach Bobby Knight, completed the last "perfect season" ending in a National Championship in college basketball, 32-0.
At the time, it didn't seem like that big of a deal. Since the national championship had been created in 1939, Indiana was the 7th team to complete the feat. San Francisco and Bill Russell were the first to do it in 1956 (pre-Billboard Hot 100), followed a year later by North Carolina. Then UCLA had done it four times in the 60's and 70's including back-to-back in 1972 (America's A Horse With No Name) and 1973 (Killing Me Softly-Roberta Flack). So really, seven times over a 20 year span? Nothing to see here.
But here we are 45 years later and it still has not been replicated. In the interim, Bill Gates became the richest man in the world (since knocked off that perch) and Apple is now the most valuable company on the planet. Ronald Reagan became one of the most popular presidents in history, and the space shuttle program has gone from triumph to disaster to triumph to disaster to mothballed. This was before the USSR (also no longer in existence) invaded Afghanistan, let alone the US.
I was trying to come up with a couple things that haven't changed over those 45 years and thought I had something with the Ford F-150 being the "best-selling truck in America" but even that run didn't start until 1978. The only other things I could come up with are Donald Trump's orange hair and the list of accomplishments Joe Biden can accurately (key word) claim credit for in his illustrious political career. Other than that, I've got nothing.
Anyway, back to basketball....since that time, only five teams have even made it through the regular season undefeated and only three made it to the Final Four. Larry Bird and Indiana State lost to Magic Johnson and Michigan State (shout out to bozz...I better get a BIG upvote...:-) ) in the 1979 championship game (Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive), while the 1991 UNLV team (Gloria Estefan--Coming Out of the Dark)and Kentucky's 2015 team (Uptown Funk -Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars) both lost in the semis. The other one, Wichita St in 2014 (Happy -Pharrell) didn't even make it there. And now there's Gonzaga.
After what can only be described as a dominant regular season, the Zags are just two wins away from history. How dominant? Here are a few examples.
Gonzaga has been ranked number one in the polls since day 1 and would become only the 2nd team (1992 Duke, Save the Best For Last--Vanessa Williams) to go wire-to-wire and win the national title since......Indiana.
The Zags have won 29 out of their 30 games this year by double digits including the last 27 in a row. That's the most by any team in the last 60 years.
They lead the nation in scoring margin at +23 points a game but, interestingly enough, the 2nd and 3rd place teams are Baylor and Houston, both also in the Final Four (although they play each other in the other game).
And, they also lead the nation in points per game at 91.6 while ranking 7th in KenPom's adjusted efficiency on defense, only allowing 88.6 pts per 100 possessions.
In other words, to use a football cliche, they are loaded on both sides of the ball.
According to ESPN, they have two players (Jalen Suggs and Corey Kispert) that are projected to be top 10 picks in this year's NBA draft. Suggs, a Minnesota kid I got to ref in person a couple times in high school, gives me a rooting interest in the tournament. There has been talk of him even being the number one overall pick but there are a few candidates with realistic chances of making that happen this year so who knows. Regardless, the talent is off the charts with four players averaging in double figures AND over five rebounds per game. In other words, they share the ball extremely well and crash the boards. Two big factors to winning a lot of games.
So, next weekend could be one for the ages. Gonzaga plays a surprising UCLA team who has the chance to keep the Zags from putting their name in the record books next to great UCLA teams of the past. Baylor and Houston match up in the other semifinal pitting, as already stated, two of the best offense/defense combo's in the country against each other.
The final could be epic and who knows, in another 45 years, people might be "remembering" when Peaches and Justin Bieber topped the Billboard charts in early April, 2021.
Who do you think will win? Will Gonzaga go down in history or go down in flames? Let me know in the comments below....
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