Hog Heaven

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Today is a special day in the history of my alma mater.

Today is the 20th anniversary of Arkansas' victory over Duke in the national championship game.

Two days earlier, the Razorbacks had beaten Arizona in the national semifinals. As I wrote the other day, I was on a trip to Denver with some journalism students, and I missed that game — but I had set my video recorder to tape it, and I did watch it after I got home on Sunday, April 3.

Twenty years ago tonight, I was in my apartment in Norman, Okla., watching the title game. I'd been waiting all my life for the Razorbacks to win a national championship. I always hoped it would be in football, but I wasn't going to quibble on this day.

Most of my friends were living in Arkansas, and, to this day, I can still only imagine how excited they must have been — more excited, probably, than they were when Gov. Bill Clinton was elected president less than two years before.

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In hindsight, I suppose it is easy to conclude that Corliss Williamson's presence on the team ensured its success, but I don't really think that is true. My friends who lived in Arkansas at the time — and got to see more Arkansas games than I did — might disagree with me, but I felt that it truly was a team effort.

Corliss was a special talent, of course. He was the Most Outstanding Player in the 1994 tournament — and might have been named the MOP again in 1995 if the Razorbacks had beaten UCLA in the national championship game that year.

But even in a sport like basketball. in which a team can put only five players on the court at a time, one person does not, cannot carry the whole load. Corliss had a great game 20 years ago tonight. He led all scorers with 23 points, but Corey Beck and Scotty Thurman contributed 15 points apiece.

That matched Antonio Lang's team–leading point production for Duke, which did a better job of spreading things around, I suppose. All five of Duke's starters were in double figures.

Williamson probably enjoyed more professional success than any of his collegiate teammates. After all, he did win an NBA title with the Detroit Pistons. But on this night in 1994, the Razorbacks prevailed not because of the depth of their bench but because of the depth of their hunger.

The Razorbacks of 1993–94 were the fruit of Richardson's system, the one he began installing in the lean years of the mid–1980s, when the team struggled on the court and Richardson's attention was divided between his job and his terminally ill daughter. The centerpiece was Williamson — he was clearly the go–to guy, hitting more than 62% of his shots from the field — but everyone played a role.

They called it "Forty Minutes of Hell." It was what happened when a team was relentless, always pressing, always probing for some weakness to exploit. And when it came to big shots, it seemed nearly everyone, not just Williamson, could be the hero.

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Like Thurman, for example.

The Razorbacks led Duke by a single point at halftime, then fell behind quickly in the second half and had to claw their way back.

In the final minute, with the game on the line, Thurman fired the shot that, while it may not have been heard around the world, certainly was heard from one side of Arkansas to the other.

And Arkansas won, 76–72.

I recorded a brand–new greeting for my answering machine that night. I had a recording of the Arkansas fight song, and I played it in the background while I recorded some routine message. If someone wanted to leave a message for me, it was necessary to listen to the Arkansas fight song all the way through.

I remember that, as the announcers counted down the final seconds of the game, one observed that "Arkansas is in hog heaven."

That seemed a little trite, a little obvious to me at the time, but now I realize that it was appropriate.

It was like when I was in college, and the football Razorbacks hosted the top–ranked Texas Longhorns one October Saturday afternoon. No one gave the Hogs a chance, but they whipped the Longhorns that afternoon, and "hog heaven" described the euphoric atmosphere in Fayetteville that night.

Texas was always the greatest rival on Arkansas' schedule, and knocking the Longhorns from the #1 perch was like a dream come true for Razorback fans.

Few experiences in my life have matched the way I felt that day — or how I felt 20 years ago tonight when Arkansas won the national championship in basketball.

In Arkansas, they'll be re–living the experience tonight via Twitter. Fans can experience it virtually as it happened — albeit, essentially, by text.

But a digital re–creation can't possibly match the real thing.

A Bittersweet Anniversary

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It's been exactly a year since my friend Steve died of cancer.

As I observed on that occasion, it was 19 years exactly since Steve's — and my — beloved Arkansas Razorbacks won their Sweet Sixteen encounter with Tulsa in the 1994 NCAA Tournament here in Dallas.

That day on the calendar has come around again. It is a year since Steve died, and it is now 20 years since the Razorbacks won that game and advanced to the Elite Eight for only the third time in 15 years. They beat Michigan two days later to earn a spot in that year's Final Four, where they would defeat Arizona in the national semifinals and then Duke in the national championship.

That is something that will live in Razorback fans' minds and hearts forever, and my guess is that Steve would prefer that his friends remember that — and not think of this day last year.

Today I am thinking of both. I miss Steve, and I am sorry he is gone. If he could somehow come back today, I would want him to know that he was not forgotten. The Razorbacks are part of that memory. I watched many Razorback games with Steve, including a Cotton Bowl that he and I and a mutual friend, Mike, attended together.

The Tulsa game was one part of a memory that I cherish and always will. That game is often the forgotten piece of the puzzle for Razorback fans, though. Victories over Georgetown, Michigan, Arizona and Duke get more attention, probably because those basketball programs have enjoyed more success over the years.

But Arkansas and Tulsa are natural rivals. The campuses are only about 100 miles apart. When I was growing up, the football teams met every year. Arkansas usually got the best of Tulsa — but not always.

To top it off, Arkansas coach Nolan Richardson coached at Tulsa before he went to Arkansas. The game was loaded with regional significance. Frankly, I was hoping for a classic game. Most Arkansas fans probably hoped for the same thing. We all hoped Arkansas would win, of course, but we hoped Tulsa would make it memorable.

Twenty years ago tonight, the game wasn't competitive. Arkansas simply outclassed Tulsa. The Razorbacks led by 15 at intermission and won by nearly 20.

This year, the Razorbacks made it back to the postseason — NIT this time, not the NCAA Tournament — for the first time since 2008. Last night, they played in the second round against California.

Unfortunately, the Razorbacks lost that game. They fell behind early and, even though they made a few runs at the Bears, they still lost. Ironically, if they had won, their next game would have been here in Dallas — against old Southwest Conference foe SMU.

Steve and I didn't watch that Tulsa game together 20 years ago, and I'm sorry about that. I was living in Oklahoma at the time, and he was back in Little Rock. I'm sorry he didn't live to see the 20th anniversary of that national championship. It probably would have pleased him to reminisce about those days. If I live another two weeks — and I certainly expect to live another two weeks — I will get to do that.

And I will raise a glass to Steve when I toast the Razorbacks of '94.

As Good As It Gets

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Ask any college basketball fan to list the greatest games of all time, and there are certain games that any such list is bound to include:

• The 1966 NCAA Tournament title game, in which all–black Texas Western upset favored powerhouse Kentucky.


• The 1979 title game, in which Larry Bird of Indiana State and Magic Johnson of Michigan State gave NBA fans a preview of coming attractions.


• The 1983 title game, in which Jim Valvano's North Carolina State team upset the heavily favored Houston Cougars of Phi Slamma Jamma fame.


• The 1985 title game, in which lightly regarded Villanova shocked Georgetown.

Clearly, many of the memorable games have been the ones in which championships were on the line, although there have been some truly great games played when a title was not at stake ...

... Such as the night in January 1968 when second–ranked Houston defeated top–ranked and defending national champion UCLA in the first college game ever televised nationally in prime time. Prior to that game, UCLA had won 47 consecutive games.

It was called the Game of the Century, and it is widely remembered as the precursor to the March Madness that millions celebrate every year.

And every college basketball fan will tell you that he has certain memories that are special to him — but not necessarily to others.

One of my most cherished memories from my college days was the afternoon when my alma mater, the University of Arkansas, turned back defending champion Louisville with a half–court buzzer shot.

There were so many incredible finishes on that day, wrote Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated recently, that March 14, 1981, was the day that transformed the NCAA Tournament to March Madness.

Or, at least, it was the day when that transformation began.

That may be so.

But, if there was a game that really cemented the tournament's popular image of March Madness, I think it had to be the East Regional final that was played between Duke and Kentucky on this day 20 years ago.

Kentucky, of course, is one of college basketball's elite programs, along with UCLA, North Carolina, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan State, Louisville ...

... and Duke, which may or may not have qualified as an elite program in 1992. Mike Krzyzewski had led the Blue Devils to the national title the year before, but that was Duke's first.

Duke was, however, making its fifth straight appearance in the Elite Eight when it faced Kentucky 20 years ago today so Coach K clearly had established a pattern of success — but he had not yet won the four national titles that currently have him tied with the legendary Adolph Rupp for second place in that category.

Coach K won't get to add to that tally this year, but on this day 20 years ago, he was about to return to the Final Four for the fifth straight year.

Both Duke and Kentucky cruised to their rendezvous in Philadelphia. Only once — in Kentucky's second–round clash with Iowa State — was victory achieved by fewer than 10 points.

In other words, nothing that had happened in the earlier rounds could have prepared the partisans from either side for what they were about to witness.

Duke and Kentucky had to play an overtime period to decide their duel — and, even then, it came down to a last–second shot by Christian Laettner.

There were five lead changes in the final 30 seconds. The teams combined to make nearly two–thirds of their shots in the second half and the overtime period. And Laettner's shot still makes every important college basketball highlight reel, just as Kirk Gibson's World Series homer and Dwight Clark's end zone catch always make the highlight reels in their sports.

Duke went on to successfully defend its national title against Michigan after a nail–biter of a semifinal against Indiana.

Kentucky would scale the championship heights again, but, as Alex Wolff writes in Sports Illustrated, the wound is still raw.

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"Even today, 20 years after what's widely considered the greatest college game ever played, Kentucky loyalists regard the Blue Devils' 104–103 overtime victory ... as having touched off a collective psychotic break."

Alex Wolff

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I almost missed it.

It was a Saturday. The game, as I recall, was scheduled to begin in mid–afternoon, and it so happened that a family friend was getting married that day, too.

The wedding was to take place here in Dallas. I lived in Denton, which is roughly 40 miles north of here. Through the ceremony and the reception, I kept an eye on the clock — and I finally managed to leave just before tipoff.

I listened to the first half on the radio and was home in time to see most of the second half.

Most, if not all, of the Kentucky fans who watched probably wish they hadn't seen it. But, if you are a fan of a team, you are going to feel compelled to watch its games, especially the ones in the postseason.

Fans of most teams know there is always the possibility that the game they watch will end in defeat, but fans of certain teams have been conditioned by past success to expect to win, even if the oddsmakers disagree.

For such fans, any defeat — but especially one like the one that was handed to Kentucky 20 years ago today — is awfully difficult to choke down.

And, in spite of subsequent successes, Wildcat fans still struggle with it, wincing at the bitter aftertaste.

Wolff observes that the author of a new book about the game has been told by Kentucky fans that they won't buy the book because Laettner's image is on the cover.

And even the passage of two decades has not been enough time to permit them to see that picture on their coffee tables without remembering in vivid detail the pain his fallaway jumper brought them.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

It probably seems odd to say this, but the defending college basketball champion is in a decline.

I am speaking, of course, about Duke, the team that beat upstart Butler in the national championship game last year.

In the last two or three decades, Duke's basketball program has sort of filled the vacuum that was left at UCLA after John Wooden retired in the 1970s. Sure, UCLA has won a few national titles since then — but nothing close to what the Bruins were doing when Wooden was running the show.

In those days, UCLA was in the national championship game almost every year. The NCAA Tournament field was much more exclusive then — typically only the conference champions and a few independents — so just being in it was an achievement for just about any other program.

But UCLA always expected to win it — and win it UCLA did. UCLA won 10 tournaments in 12 years — seven in a row between 1967 and 1973.

The closest thing we've seen to that since Wooden's retirement has been the Duke program.

Most people would tell you — and they're probably right — that Duke's coach, Mike Krzyzewski, deserves the credit. He's been the coach there for more than 30 years. He's taken Duke to 11 Final Fours (second only to Wooden), and he's won four national titles.

When he wins three games next season, he will be the most successful coach (in terms of victories) in NCAA Division I history. Barring something that is totally unexpected at this point, it is a sure bet that he will reach that milestone — probably sometime before 2011 is over.

He could have achieved it much sooner, though. If his Blue Devils had gone to the NCAA Tournament championship game, he would have won enough games to earn that distinction.

But they lost to Arizona last night, and now they must wait until next season to see him overtake the leader, Bob Knight.

During the late '80s and early '90s, Duke won half of the national titles it has claimed in the Coach K era — and made more than half of its Final Four appearances.

Those were the glory years for the Blue Devils.

Since the 1995–96 season, Duke has returned to the Final Four at a less imposing clip — roughly once every four years (and only twice in the last decade).

Far more frequently, Duke has made it to the regional semifinals (the "Sweet Sixteen"), where the Blue Devils have gone down half a dozen times since 2002. This year, it was to Arizona. In 2009, it was Villanova that eliminated Duke. In 2006, it was LSU. The year before that, Duke lost to Michigan State. In 2003, Kansas turned back Duke. The year before that, Duke lost to Indiana.

There was a time when Duke, like UCLA before, was an automatic pick for everyone's Final Four. But no more.

The times they are a–changing.

Butler Didn't Do It

After last night's NCAA Tournament finale — in which Duke defeated Butler, 61–59 — the pastor of my church posted a brief comment on Facebook: "The murder mystery fan in me was really looking forward to saying, 'Butler did it.' "

In the literary world, I suppose there are few phrases that have become as cliched as "the butler did it" — even though, as I understand it, the writer who is most often credited with originating that phrase, Mary Roberts Rinehart, never actually used it in one of her books.

And, as someone who spent many years on sports copy desks, I'm sure that more than one copy editor in this great land of ours fantasized about writing a headline that said "Butler Did It" — or something equally clever — for this morning's newspaper.

It reminds me of an occasion when, as a sports copy editor for the now–defunct Arkansas Gazette, I was assigned to write the headline for the football game story in which the Arkansas Razorbacks — who had been praised in the preseason as a potential national champion — hosted the Miami Hurricanes in a game played in Little Rock. The 'Canes routed the Razorbacks that day, effectively ending all talk of a national title, even though it was only September.

As I sat in front of my computer screen, I happened to think of an old line, "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," and I used that as the basis for my headline, which was "An ill wind blows through Little Rock." I was — and still am — proud of that headline, the inspiration for which, I believe, originated hundreds of years ago. But I often wondered just how many people got the allusion. I'm sure there would be even fewer today.

Butler didn't do it, of course, and so copy editors were deprived of the storybook ending that many craved. Of course, with the abundance of David vs. Goliath comparisons, the game was practically drowning in allusion as it was.

Nevertheless, it is an opportunity to point out the risk that accompanies using allusions in headlines.

Don't get me wrong. Using allusions in headlines is one of the few ways that copy editors can flex their intellectual muscles, but my years on newspaper copy desks taught me that these things can backfire if you aren't certain that all of your readers will pick up on your reference.

One of my favorite bloggers, John McIntyre, a former editor for the Baltimore Sun, has written at his You Don't Say blog (and elsewhere) about an incident that occurred in the Baltimore area in 1996 that inspired such a headline that others didn't get.

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"On July 4, 1996, when President Bill Clinton visited Maryland's Eastern Shore, a bald eagle named Freedom, which had been nursed back to health after an injury, was released into the sky to commemorate the occasion.

"Unfortunately, Freedom was attacked by a couple of ospreys and ended up back in the bird hospital. When The Baltimore Sun put the story on its front page, the task of writing a headline fell to Paul Clark, one of the ablest copy editors I have ever worked with. He came up with 'Freedom's just another bird/ with nothing left to lose.'

"That headline was applauded in the newsroom and praised in the in–house newsletter. But when I offer it up as an example of the craft to my copy editing students at Loyola College, I get a roomful of blank looks. Janis Joplin singing 'Me and Bobby McGhee' is presumably the kind of music that only older people listen to."

John McIntyre

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Allusion, as Mr. McIntyre points out, "should enrich the reader's experience by providing an additional layer of meaning. But if it gets in the way of grasping the principal meaning, it is intrusive and counterproductive."

That doesn't just apply to headlines, though. When my brother and I were small, my mother was fond of making points with references to the radio programs from her childhood — i.e., "the Shadow knows" or Amos 'n' Andy or Jack Armstrong the All–American Boy — or observing, when we played games like Monopoly, that someone's stash of Monopoly cash gave the appearance that that person had been "taking a walk in Jack Benny's vault."

By the time my brother and I came along, radio was mostly music and sports, and we didn't have a frame of reference that enabled us to understand what Mom was talking about. We didn't know about the Shadow. We hadn't heard the jokes about Jack Benny's penny–pinching ways.

For most allusions to work, they must be fresh, and that requires a certain amount of judgment on the part of the writer or the speaker. Such judgment must be rendered on a case–by–case basis.

There was a time, for example, when "Where's the beef?" was a popular commercial catch–phrase that was frequently used as an allusion. In 2010, however, the reference is probably unfamiliar to nearly anyone under the age of 30.

In 1963, when Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, he began by saying "Five score years ago ..." and most listeners immediately understood the allusion to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address a century earlier.

When I was in junior high, my civics teacher required everyone in the class to memorize and recite the Gettysburg Address — consequently, my classmates and I would have understood King's allusion. But I don't know if teachers require their students to memorize that speech these days. Beyond a cursory study of the Gettysburg Address in their history books, most, if not all, modern young people might not get it.

Likewise, since the Watergate scandal, just about every scandal that has come along has been given the suffix "–gate." I guess most people still get that reference. Watergate remains the most notorious scandal in recent memory, having brought down a president. But I can remember, in the days when the Watergate scandal was just becoming known to the American public, that it was referred to as "another Teapot Dome," which was an allusion to a political scandal from half a century earlier. I wonder if anyone — other than history majors — would get that today.

Allusion, as Mr. McIntyre wrote, can enhance the reader's experience — but it won't work if the reader doesn't know what you're talking about.

Well, congratulations to Duke. I guess no allusion could enhance the experience of seeing last night's game — even if the ending wasn't as dramatic as the one in "Hoosiers."

Butler didn't do it, but the Bulldogs weren't losers. They did everything but win the game.

A Final Like No Other ... Well, Almost

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When Butler and Duke take the court for college basketball's championship game tomorrow night, it will be unique in the annals of the NCAA.

But it won't be entirely unique. Milan High School, a small school in Indiana, took on a powerful big school from a big city and defeated it in the state championship game back in the 1950s — inspiring the film "Hoosiers" three decades later and inviting comparisons to Butler University this year.

Butler, after all, is from Indiana. It plays its games in the same fieldhouse where Milan won its title — and where "Hoosiers" was filmed.

That, however, is where the apparent similarities end.

Butler is not tiny — at least not in the same way that Milan was. In fact, while it is smaller than Duke, Butler's enrollment is not dwarfed by Duke's the way it was by Michigan State's, its semifinal foe yesterday.

To be sure, though, Butler — making only its first–ever Final Four appearance — is far smaller in terms of its basketball achievements. Duke has won three national titles and has been in more than a dozen Final Fours.

When looked at from that perspective, this is obviously a David vs. Goliath kind of match. And Goliath got things going by being installed as a 6½–point favorite.

My guess is that it will attract TV ratings that far exceed those for previous championship games. After all, it's got all the drama of the movie — with the added benefit of being the real thing, not an imitation. Right?

Well, not exactly, says Joe Posnanski for SI.com. "The one thing that is important to get straight, right off the top: Butler is not that great a story," Posnanski writes. "That's not a knock — it's the opposite of a knock. Butler is a very good basketball team. They're not some perplexing phenomenon."

Indeed. The Bulldogs did not come out of nowhere. They were ranked when the season began. But they don't play in a major conference, so they don't get anything close to the TV time that tomorrow night's opponent does.

They inhabit different galaxies, these two teams. They've established themselves as masters of their domains. And tomorrow night, one of them will rule the college basketball universe.

With Tiger Woods making his much–anticipated return to competitive golf in this week's Masters Tournament, it could be a blockbuster week for CBS.