TODAY (April 7, Manila time) is D-Day (Decision Day) in the 2015 U.S. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I men’s basketball tournament as the upset-conscious University of Wisconsin Badgers (36-3) take on the University of Duke Blue Devils (34-4) in the championship game at the 71,000-seat Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Wisconsin is in the finals for the first time since 1941 when the school beat Washington State to capture its lone national title so far.
Duke has won the NCAA diadem on four occasions – 1991, 1992, 2001 and 2010 – all under 68-year-old Blue Devils head mentor and Team USA bench boss Mike Krzyzewski, the winningest men’s coach in NCAA Division I history.
Coincidentally, Indianapolis, a city that is famous for its 500-mile auto race (Indianapolis 500), has been extra special to the Blue Devils, who won it all for the first time in 1991 in Indianapolis. When Duke snared its most recent championship in 2010, it was again accomplished in the same city.
Wisconsin is bannered by 7-foot senior Frank Kaminsky, the lone unanimous selection on the 2014-15 Associated Press All-America First Team who also is AP’s College Player of the Year awardee with averages of nearly 19 points and eight rebounds per game for the Big Ten Conference regular season and tournament champion. “Frank the Tank,” as the fuzzy-haired Caucasian Kaminsky is fondly monikered, is the first Badger to earn the College POY honor, which was established in 1961.
Duke is anchored by 6-foot-11 freshman Jahlil Okafor, a first-team AP All-America pick who is a potential No. 1 overall selection in the National Basketball Association (NBA) draft in late June. An American of Nigerian descent and a distant cousin of former NBA player and University of Connecticut standout Emeka Okafor, Jahlil has normed around 18 points and nine boards an outing this season.
During the Final Four (national semifinals), Wisconsin upset the erstwhile unbeaten University of Kentucky Wildcats, 71-64, and Duke shellacked the Michigan State University Spartans, 81-61.
Kaminsky collected 20 points and plucked down 11 rebounds during his 22nd birthday as the Badgers avenged last year’s 74-73 Final Four loss to Kentucky. It was the Wildcats’ first setback of the season and their 38-0 start is now merely a footnote in U.S. college basketball annals.
Instead of hoping to become the first team since the University of Indiana Hoosiers in 1976 to finish as an unbeaten champion, Kentucky joined Larry Bird’s Indiana State (1979), University of Nevada at Las Vegas (1991) and Wichita State (2014) as unbeaten teams that lost in the NCAA tournament and the first since the 1991 Running Rebels unit to take an unblemished mark into the Final Four but slip in the semifinals.
The 2015 NCAA titular contest between Duke and Wisconsin will be the second time that the two teams will be facing each other this campaign. Last December, the Blue Devils whipped the Badgers, 80-70, in Madison.
Significantly, Wisconsin has been installed by the oddsmakers as a one-point favorite to defeat Duke in the NCAA finals.
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Austin George Carr never reached legendary status in the professional National Basketball Association but his offensive exploits during his collegiate tenure at the University of Notre Dame were simply amazing and worth recalling.
Carr, a bull-strong 6-foot-4, 200-pound guard, owns five of the 11 highest individual scoring performances in the history of the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament, including the all-time top mark of 61 points.
On March 7, 1970, the Washington, D.C. native, then a sophomore, exploded for 61 points in the Notre Dame Fighting Irish’s 112-82 victory over Ohio University in a first-round game in Dayton, Ohio. Note that the three-point shot was yet to be invented at the time.
Carr had 20 points in the first nine minutes and 35 at halftime. Overall, he shot 25-for-44 from the field and 11-for-14 from the free-throw line.
“It’s a good feeling to have the record,” said Carr recently of his 61-point feat that has withstood various rule changes, tournament expansion, advancements in technology, and more sophisticated defenses for more than four decades.
“But at the same time, I always told records are made to be broken so I don’t get caught up in that. But I’m amazed that it has lasted that long.”
Carr also tallied 52 markers vs. Kentucky in 1970 – fourth-highest behind Princeton’s Bill Bradley’s 58 vs. Wichita State in 1965 (the most points in a Final Four game although it was accomplished in the third-place game against Wichita State, a consolation game that has since been discarded), Cincinnati’s Oscar Robertson’s 56 vs. Arkansas in 1958.
As a junior in 1971, he again scored 52 against Texas Christian University.
Navy’s David (The Admiral) Robinson was the only other player to reach the 50-point plateau in an NCAA tournament game, collecting exactly 50 against Michigan in 1987.
There have been seven 45-to-49-point performances and Carr again owns two of them – 47 vs. Houston in 1971 and 45 vs. Iowa in 1970. The others were registered by Houston’s Elvin (The Big E) Hayes, 49 vs. Loyola (Illinois) in 1968, Temple’s Hal Lear, 48 vs. Southern Methodist in 1956, DePaul’s Dave Corzine, 46 vs. Louisville in 1978, Washington’s Bob Houbregs, 45 vs. Seattle in 1953, and Loyola Marymount’s Bo Kimble, 45 vs. New Mexico State in 1990.
Carr averaged a stunning 52.7 points in the 1970 NCAA tournament. His career tournament scoring clip of 41.3 ppg (in seven games) remains the highest ever until now. Bradley is next at 33.7 ppg.
Carr hit at a 38.1-point clip in 1969-70 and 38.0 ppg in 1970-71 (when he earned College Player of the Year honors). In those two seasons, he made at least 1,000 points each time to join “Pistol” Pete Maravich of Louisiana State University in the select group. For his three-year career, Carr normed 34.6 ppg, totaling 2,560 points in 74 games that ranked him fifth all-time in U.S. college basketball history at the time of his departure.
Carr gave up his final year of collegiate eligibility to turn professional in 1971. He was selected by the Cleveland Cavaliers with the first pick in the entire NBA draft that year. He played his first nine seasons in Cleveland, averaging at least 20 points in the first three, and finished his 10-year NBA tenure after the 1980-81 wars while splitting time with the Dallas Mavericks and Washington Bullets (now Wizards) in limited minutes.
Overall, Carr netted 10,473 points in 682 regular appearances for a 15.4-point norm.
Long before a certain player by the name of LeBron James joined Cleveland, Carr was known by Cleveland cage fans as “Mr. Cavalier.” His No. 34 is among the seven uniform numbers retired by the NBA franchise.
Today, Carr serves as the Cavaliers’ Director of Community Relations and also works as a color analyst on the team’s television broadcasts.