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The Game that Saved March Madness
Sports Illustrated ^ | March 2014 | Sean Gregory and Alexander Wolf

Posted on 03/20/2021 8:55:52 AM PDT by ReleaseTheHounds

I see the rim. I see the rim. A quarter century later, Bob Scrabis can still see the rim. Seven seconds remained in that first round 1989 NCAA tournament game between Princeton and Georgetown when Scrabis, the Tigers’ captain and lone senior, raised up to shoot the basketball. Before the game Scrabis’ own coach, the chronic pessimist Pete Carril, had set the betting line. “I think we’re a billion-to-one to win the whole tournament,” he said. “To beat Georgetown, we’re only 450 million to one.”

Yet Carril’s 16th-seeded Princeton Tigers trailed the Hoyas, the most dominant and polarizing brand in college hoops, by a single point, 50-49, when Scrabis dribbled off a screen from his center, Kit Mueller, near the top of the key. Mueller’s defender, freshman Alonzo Mourning, still lurked in the foul lane. “Mourning hadn’t been coming out for any ball screens,” says Carril, who figured the Georgetown center wasn’t about to change his habits.

“Look how far away he is,” Scrabis says, rewatching the moment on video today. “I’m a foot behind the three-point line.”

I got it, Scrabis thought. A rapt St. Patrick’s Day audience, the largest up until then for a college basketball game on a young network called ESPN, was going to remember Bob Scrabis forever. For the first time a No. 16 was going to beat a No. 1, and Scrabis would be the guy to do it. As he says, “It’s the shot you want when you’re playing by yourself in the driveway, dreaming of something like this.

“But 6’10” guys aren’t hiding in the hedges.”

(Excerpt) Read more at si.com ...


TOPICS: History; Sports
KEYWORDS: 1989; breadandcircuses; georgetown; princeton
Around this time of year, I can't help remembering a favorite March Madness Memory... from 1989. Princeton vs. Georgetown; #16 v. #1. As a Princeton alum, I decided I had to try and attend this opening round of the 1989 NCAA tournament in Providence, RI. When I called the Princeton ticket office, I was told my two tickets were the last of Princeton's 400 ticket allotment. I had about a 3 hour drive to get Providence -- that gave me plenty of time to get my 11 year old son fired up for this game. I told him how Princeton would slow the game down, use the clock, play great defense, try back door plays and generally frustrate the heck out of Georgetown.

The game was all of that and more... Princeton lost by 1 but they showed the world why #16 seeds deserve a slot in the Big Dance. We didn't realize it at the time, but that game would influence the future of the tournament and CBS's continuing broadcasting commitment. It also put ESPN on the map for bringing that exciting game into viewers homes when cable sports was just getting started.

I'm posting this thread to share my own best March Madness memory in hopes that others will add their own.

1 posted on 03/20/2021 8:55:52 AM PDT by ReleaseTheHounds
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To: ReleaseTheHounds

Wait a second......Nope. Still don’t care. Plenty of fans at the casino sports books though.


2 posted on 03/20/2021 8:57:30 AM PDT by rktman (Destroy America from within? Check! WTH? Enlisted USN 1967 to end up with this?)
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To: rktman

3 posted on 03/20/2021 9:01:50 AM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion, or satire. Or both.)
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To: ReleaseTheHounds
espn had already been broadcasting the Dance prior to 1989. This wasn't the beginning.

ESPN's next big break came when the channel acquired the rights to broadcast coverage of the early rounds of the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament. It first aired the NCAA tournament in March 1980, creating the modern day television event known as "March Madness."

For almost a decade they had been covering the tournament.

4 posted on 03/20/2021 9:06:38 AM PDT by ealgeone
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To: ealgeone
I watched that Princton game....Georgtown was hated by me back then....

the BEST of March madness is the early rounds with the smaller colleges and universities....they play with so much passion and play the original style of basketball....not the dunk and jive going on today..

5 posted on 03/20/2021 9:15:20 AM PDT by cherry (we are the Remnant)
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To: ReleaseTheHounds

I remember that game. I fell in love with that Princeton offense. I remember Vitale saying Pete Carrill would keep the game close for about a half. He said he would wear a too too (sp?) if Princeton. He was crying and face palming at halftime and throughout the 2nd half. I ended up going to Princeton for graduate and attended a few games.


6 posted on 03/20/2021 9:17:12 AM PDT by C19fan
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To: cherry

I remember that game as well. A mostly white team about to take down Georgetown. It would have been the upset of the entire world.


7 posted on 03/20/2021 9:18:48 AM PDT by ealgeone
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To: rktman

My favorite memory is when Joe Biden tripped three times going up the stairs at a game because the hot dog guy was breathing.


8 posted on 03/20/2021 9:19:05 AM PDT by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer”)
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To: BenLurkin

Yeah, I really miss those days when he’d come out with his picks. LOL! Nah, Just kidding.


9 posted on 03/20/2021 9:20:20 AM PDT by rktman (Destroy America from within? Check! WTH? Enlisted USN 1967 to end up with this?)
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To: ReleaseTheHounds

I remember that game well. I was in college at the time (on the West Coast), and it seemed to me that the game was a battle between everything that was wrong with big-time college sports (Georgetown) and everything that was right with college sports (Princeton). The Tigers seemed like genuine student athletes, kids who were Princeton students first and basketball players second— a throwback to a better era in college sports. On the other hand, John Thompson’s Georgetown program was simply a basketball machine, an NBA minor league team if there ever was one, populated with young men who likely had no business being enrolled as Georgetown students and had little in common with my friends who were real students there at the time.


10 posted on 03/20/2021 9:22:18 AM PDT by irishjuggler
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To: ReleaseTheHounds
I liked when Princeton beat UCLA in 1996, Pete Carrill's last season. Why? Because that set up a game against my Mississippi State Bulldogs, who beat them and went to the Final Four.
11 posted on 03/20/2021 9:23:44 AM PDT by MuttTheHoople (What if the Lord sent COVID-19 to immunize the world from something more deadly?)
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To: ReleaseTheHounds

After the swim
suit train wreck issue .
Surprised it still open.
Lefties sports crazies are the worst .


12 posted on 03/20/2021 9:34:14 AM PDT by ncalburt (Gop DC Globalist)
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To: blueunicorn6
My favorite memory is when Joe Biden tripped three times going up the stairs at a game because the hot dog guy was breathing.

Best line of the day.

You get a whoa, whoa!

13 posted on 03/20/2021 9:46:40 AM PDT by USS Alaska (NUKE ALL MOOSELIMB TERRORISTS, NOW.)
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To: cherry
G’town is getting massacred by Colorado, and I love it. My dad went to Vilanova law school, so I hate them. Biggest tourney upset ever was them beating Georgetown in 1985. My Dad and I( I was 8, were I. San Diego, and we went all around f the city honking our horn.
14 posted on 03/20/2021 11:09:15 AM PDT by cowboyusa (America Cowboy up!)
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To: ReleaseTheHounds

When my hometown VILLANOVA won in 1985. As an 8 over no 1 Georgetown. THAT was the moment that elevated the NCAA tournament

In my opinion

People only remember CHAMPIONS


15 posted on 03/20/2021 1:15:32 PM PDT by Truthoverpower (Fraud !!! Now we’re off the TRUMP TRAIN and on the Swamp express to communist hell !! TRUTH! )
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To: ReleaseTheHounds

Larry Bird vs Magic Johnson final


16 posted on 03/20/2021 8:18:54 PM PDT by campaignPete R-CT (Committee to Re-Elect the President ( CREEP ) )
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To: Truthoverpower

Cocaine half-time!


17 posted on 03/21/2021 12:45:59 AM PDT by Jumper
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