Midwest Regional Semifinal

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - Kansas and Drake, after narrow Thursday night victories, will meet Saturday at 4:10 p.m. EST, in the NCAA Midwest Regional basketball playoff finals.

Fourth ranked Kansas, notching its 20th consecutive triumph, edged 14th rated Houston 78-77, and Drake, 19^th ranked, surprised 12th ranked Notre Dame in overtime, 79-72.

Saturday's winner goes to Houston Thursday for the national semifinals.

A 29 point performance by Dave Robisch and Bud Stallworth's 25 point contribution gave Kansas its 26th decision in 27 games.

With Poo Welch, who bucketed 28 Houston points, pecking away with five straight baskets near the end, the Cougars came close, however, to ending the Jayhawks string of victories.

Robisch, second team All-American, dropped in Kansas' last seven points, all on free throws in the last two minutes. He also got 16 rebounds, blocked six shots and stole the ball four times.

Stallworth, who got only five points in the first half when Kansas trailed most of the way, made 9 points in the first seven minutes of the second half that opened up a 51-43 Kansas advantage.

Jayhawk Coach Ted Owens, despite the victory, was unhappy with the Kansas performance.

"We didn't penetrate their zone," he said. "We didn't play good on defense."

Guy Lewis, the Houston coach, said, "Kansas just had too many guns for us. It's an extremely physical team, and they just keep coming at you."

The Notre Dame-Drake game was tied 62-62 at the end of regulation play after Al Sakys sank a jumper with 4-seconds left to put Drake even.

Drake's Bobby Jones did a magnificent job on Austin Carr, the Irish All-American and Player of the Year. Carr got only 26 points, far below his 38-point average, and allowed the Notre Dame star only one field goal in the overtime.

Midwest Regional Final

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - It no longer appears that the Kansas Jayhawks are just a lucky basketball team.

The fourth-ranked Jayhawks have won too many games in the last few seconds for only luck to be involved.

Twice in the NCAA regional playoffs, Kansas broke ahead in the dying moments, first to beat Houston 78-77 Thursday and again to down Drake Saturday 73-71 for the title.

Kansas, its winning streak now at 21, nailed down its Big Eight Conference crown with similar performances in its final four games. Kansas' record is 27-1, the same as top-ranked UCLA, which Kansas faces in the semifinals at Houston Thursday night.

Kansas Coach Ted Owens said Sunday he doesn't know how his team will play UCLA.

"I've only seen UCLA on television," Owens said. "I believe UCLA is bigger and stronger than Drake."

Owens said Drake is "certainly equal to anyone we played this year. They have so much quickness."

Down 10 points against Drake in the second half, Kansas closed in on the shooting of Dave Robisch, who led all scorers with 27 points.

Robisch, voted the tourney's outstanding player, hit a jumper and free throw to tie the game 55-55 with 8:30 left. Twice Drake moved ahead before Roger Brown's layup and Robisch's three-point play put Kansas ahead to stay.

Owens said he told his team at the half not to be concerned with too many things.

"We told them to get the ball in to Robisch and if the shot was there to take it. If not, pass it off."

Drake Coach Maury John said the Bulldogs "got lousy breaks near the end.”

“It was a heart breaking loss against very muscular club. I am convinced the fact the two big Kansas men were able to root for position in there was a factor."

Houston outscored Notre Dame, 119-106, for consolation honors despite All-American Austin Carr's 47 points.

Carr and Robisch were named to the all-tournament team along with Poo Welch of Houston, Bud Stallworth of Kansas, Jeff Halliburton and Bobby Jones of Drake, Collis Jones of Notre Dame, Leon Huff of Drake, Dwight Davis of Houston and Tom Bush of Drake.

National Semifinal

HOUSTON (AP)- UCLA's nerveless defending national champions destroyed Kansas' jittery Jayhawks 68-60 in a duel of full-court presses Thursday night behind the playmaking of Sidney Wicks and the outside shooting of Henry Bibby to join Villanova in the NCAA finals Saturday.

Howard Porter's clutch-shooting and shot-blocking propelled Villanova past Western Kentucky 92-89 in the pulsating double overtime first game in the Astrodome before a record crowd of 31,428.

The All-American 6-foot-8 Wicks, normally a forward, was given the task of bringing the ball up court against Kansas' 6- foot-10 Dave Robisch as the Jayhawks tried to match the swarming UCLA press.

The strategy by Coach John Wooden, who is seeking his sixth consecutive NCAA title, worked perfectly.

Shouting, "you know what to do", Wicks worked one-on-one against Robisch until Kansas Coach Ted Owens took the giant Jayhawk center off Wicks late in the game (video).

Wicks poured-in 21 points to lead all scorers and the slick-and-quick Bibby had 18 as UCLA steadily built a 32-25 halftime lead into a bulge of as much as 15 points in the second half (video).

Robisch, who was held to 17 points by the UCLA defense, was so frustrated that at one point he yelled at Wicks to "play ball" as the Bruin senior yelled instructions to his mates (video).

It was the 27th consecutive NCAA playoff victory for Wooden and his Bruins.

The final score wasn't indicative of the thoroughness of the UCLA victory. The Bruins led 68-53 with 1:45 remaining before Wooden emptied the bench.

Kansas made numerous floor errors against UCLA which was less than smooth but always kept its poise.

Curtis Rowe chipped in 16 points to aid Wicks and Bibby in the scoring while Kansas guards Pierre Russell and Bud Stallworth had 12 each.

Porter, a 6-foot-8 senior, had to carry the load for the Wildcats after hot-shooting Hank Siemiontkowski fouled out with four seconds remaining in regulation play.

Porter, who finished with 22 points, sent the game into double overtime with a baseline jumper with 11 seconds remaining.

Regulation play ended in a 74-74 tie when Western Kentucky's Jerry Dunn missed a free throw with four seconds to play.

In the double overtime, Porter nailed a jump shot to send the Wildcats into a quick 89-87 lead they never relinquished. Porter then blocked two shots and it was his free throw with 14 seconds remaining that iced the victory.

Seventh ranked Western Kentucky, which came into the contest with a 23-5 record, lost seven-foot Jim McDaniels on fouls with 2:31 left in the double overtime. The All-American McDaniels scored 22 points.

Siemiontkowski, a 6-foot-7, 230-pound junior, kept the 18th rated Wildcats in the game in regulation play. He scored 31 points and was a terror on the boards.

Hard-pressed Western forced the Wildcats into numerous turnovers with a full-court press but the Hilltoppers had just as much trouble with Villanova's sticky zone.

Villanova led by as much as eight points in the second half but sloppy ball-handling cost the Wildcats the lead.

A short jump shot by Siemiontkowski with 55 seconds gave Villanova a 74-72 lead but Clarence Glover's layup with 23 seconds left sent the contest into the first over time.

Western's Perry Dunn had a chance to win it when he was fouled with four seconds left- Siemiontkowski’s fifth foul- but missed the attempt.

Western Kentucky shot poorly from the field, hitting only 37.1 per cent while the Wildcats connected on 49.3 per cent.

The Hilltoppers also were cold from the free throw line with 55 per cent of the shots falling while Villanova, now 27-6, hit 64.5 per cent.

Dunn's strong outside shooting kept Villanova's zone from destroying the Hilltoppers. Dunn finished with 25 points, while Jim Rose added 18 for the Hilltoppers.

National Consolation Game
 

HOUSTON (UPI)- Jerry Dunn, who missed the free throw with four seconds remaining which would have put Western Kentucky in the championship game, sank two with 12 seconds left Saturday to give the Hilltoppers a 77-75 victory over Kansas and third place in the NCAA national tournament.

Dunn, a 6-5 junior, was fouled by Kansas' Bud Stallworth in a scramble for a rebound under the Kansas basket with Western Kentucky ahead 75-73.

His first free throw bounced twice on the rim before falling through and the second was a clean swish to give the Hilltoppers a 77-73 margin.

Dave Robisch, who led Kansas with 23 points, made a basket with four seconds to go. Pierre Russell of the Jayhawks intercepted the ensuing inbounds pass and flung it from beyond midcourt, but it was about six feet short of the backboard.

The victory gave Western Kentucky a 24-6 record and its highest finish in its NCAA history, surpassing third place finishes in regional competition in 1960 and 1966.

Kansas, 27-3, achieved its highest finish since 1957 when a Wilt Chamberlain-led team lost its triple overtime to North Carolina in the NCAA championship game.

Jim McDaniel, Western Kentucky's 7-foot center, put the Hilltoppers ahead at 75-73 with a jumpshot from the corner with 46 seconds remaining. The basket brought his total to 35 points and his tournament total to 147.

McDnniel scored 12 quick points to open the game as Western Kentucky forged a 20-12 lead, the largest by either team, with 12:31 remaining in the first half.

Kansas, with Robisch, Stallworth and Aubrey Nash leading the way, came back to tie it at 35-all with 1:11 remaining. Jim Rose's free throw after time ran out gave Western Kentucky a 38-37 lead.

The game was close most of the last half with a 6-point lead by Kansas at 63-57 with 8:01 to go, the biggest margin by either team.

Kansas had a rebound edge, 60-52, but Western Kentucky had the better shooting percentage, 36.6 to 35.7 for Kansas, and Western Kentucky had less turnovers, 19, to 24 for Kansas.

National Championship Game

Sports Illustrated

April 05, 1971
Joe Jares

When the UCLA basketball team arrived in Houston for the NCAA championships, Coach John Wooden made one of his typically startling forecasts. "I think we have as good a chance as any team here," he said. There was that rascal going out on a limb again.

So, having been forewarned by Wooden- and the fact that UCLA hasn't lost a playoff game since smog was invented- absolutely nobody was astonished when the Bruins beat Kansas 68-60 in the semifinals Thursday night with their usual workmanlike precision, then subdued inspired Villanova 68-62 in the finals on Saturday. The fact that UCLA's lone candidate for superstardom, fashion plate Sidney Wicks, had to play with a sore big toe might have worried some people. Not UCLA. The school tabloid, The Daily Bruin, already had made the necessary allowances in the budget for an eight-page color supplement celebrating the championship.

For the benefit of those whose subscriptions to The Daily Bruin have expired, UCLA now has won five straight NCAA championships ("Gimme five," the UCLA buttons said) and seven of the last eight. The team's record for the past five seasons is 145-5 and it has won 28 straight NCAA tournament games. Opposing schools are going to make up buttons saying, "Givus help!"

If the story of this year's NCAA showdown was familiar, the setting at least was different. The court was a four-foot-high platform squatting out in the middle of the Astrodome's acreage, with an 80-foot-high NBC camera crane poised above it at one end like a creature feature predator ready to pounce. The spectators at ground level needed periscopes; the spectators in the stands needed telescopes. Photographers sitting cross-legged at either end of the floor were threatened with decapitation by people sitting behind and below them as the Astrodome set a new two-day, U.S.-arena record for "down in fronts." But worse was yet to come. The customers not only were unable to see the games, they couldn't see those nubile UCLA pompon girls doing a quick costume change and coming out in homemade hot pants. "Givus help!"

The NCAA knew all along that the Astrodome was far more suitable for feeding Christians to lions than for basketball, but the potential payoff was too much to resist. The two sessions drew 63,193 people, which is a lot of sweetening for a tournament pot. One official estimated that each of the four semifinalists would cart home about $60,000, much more than teams had before.

For the players, there was a problem, too: not the lights, as some expected, but the short distance between the sidelines and the edges of the raised floor- only about 10 feet. A man chasing a loose ball toward the side felt like a Navy pilot overshooting an aircraft carrier. When Western Kentucky Coach Johnny Oldham stepped up on the court for a practice session, he said:

"Here's my first prediction. Clarence Glover goes over the side."

"I'll go after the ball," said Western's Rex Bailey. "I may not want to, but when you're playing for the national championship you don't hold back. Of course, I'll land on somebody's head."

Several players did overshoot the runway in the four games (Glover not among them, despite his usual hustling performance), but miraculously nobody got hurt. Outside the Dome, however, a Western Kentucky student was killed trying to jump from a motel balcony into a swimming pool.

The first semifinal game was between East Regional champion Villanova, playing in its 10th postseason tournament in Jack Kraft's 10 years as coach, and the Mideast's Western Kentucky. To cynics it looked like a preview of next season's ABA playoffs; two newsmen with good eyesight reported seeing ABA contracts signed by Villanova's 6'8" Howard Porter and Western's 7-foot Jim McDaniels. Both players signed affidavits for the NCAA, swearing they were still untainted, but early on Monday the Pittsburgh Condors announced they had signed Porter.

McDaniels did not seem bothered by an insulting banner- "Big Mac is a hamburger"- and had an ABA-type night shooting and rebounding, but his extremely amateurish job of defense against Villanova's Hank Siemiontkowski- along with a missed free throw by Jerry Dunn with four seconds to go- probably cost Western the game. Western had 32 more shots and 11 more rebounds than Villanova but still lost in double overtime 92-89.

UCLA took out Kansas in a tough but not particularly hair-raising fashion. The Bruins led at 32-25, then K.U. made a run early in the second half. Kansas Coach Ted Owens felt that his team lost momentum and never regained it when 6'10" Dave Robisch put in a jump shot to tie the game at 39-all, only to have the goal nullified because he had taken steps. UCLA moved steadily out into the lead, went ahead by as much as 15 points and won by eight.

For the Bruins, it was the work of an expertly programmed machine grinding down an opponent, but below stairs- in other arenas one would say "on the sideline"- things were a bit more confusing than observers of UCLA's cold efficiency would ever guess. Master technician Wooden and one of his assistants, Denny Crum, spent part of the time bickering with each other. At one point Crum wanted to send in Guard Terry Schofield. Wooden said no and Crum beckoned for Schofield anyway. Wooden threatened to banish Crum to the end of the bench and Crum said he would not sit there. Henry Bibby, a regular guard, tried to cool them off.

After another strategy disagreement, Wooden said: "I'm the coach of this team, and don't tell me how to coach my team."

Wooden always has said he likes "high-spirited" players, and, while Crum no doubt went too far, the head coach likes the same quality in his aides. He has never had yes-men around him. One of the secrets to his success, in fact, is that after considerable prodding and debate an aide can sometimes get Wooden to accept new ideas. For instance, ex-Assistant Jerry Norman convinced him to use the diamond-and-one defense that helped stop Houston's Elvin Hayes in the 1968 semifinals.

On Saturday, Villanova was hoping to become the second team in history with six losses on its record to win the NCAA tournament (Kentucky's "Fiddling Five" did it in 1958). The Wildcats had only nine players, so they were practicing with "the publicity man from the school paper, an injured player and two managers," said Kraft. "We only can play five men at a time, so we're not worried about it."

Villanova had shocked everyone by murdering strong Penn by 43 points in the East Regional. After the Wildcats beat Western Kentucky Thursday, a group of Villanova students marched about 11 miles to the Penn campus to crow some more, and on Friday Kraft was named university division Coach of the Year by the National Association of Basketball Coaches. The season already was a huge success, but Villanova did not intend to stop playing basketball just yet.

"The whole East Coast will go up in flames if we win," said Siemiontkowski. "The school would be unbelievable. They'd burn it."

Villanova cheerleader Tim Halloran, nicknamed "Rootie Kazootie," had no fear of the Bruin pompon girls, either.

"I'm really psyched up," he said. "This is my last game."

Well, UCLA saved the East from firebugs, but Rootie Kazootie's last game was plenty exciting.

Villanova opened in a two-three zone, the sort that had given UCLA so much trouble in the West Regional game against Long Beach State. The Pennsylvanians held Wicks and Curtis Rowe in check fairly well, but 6'9" Center Steve Patterson (see cover) made nine of 13 shots, inside and out, and had 20 points at the half. (Patterson turned down two pro offers to forgo his senior year at UCLA. "I know I'm not a famous entity," he said, "but I might have been infamous if I had left and UCLA lost a national championship because of that.")

With five minutes to go in the first half and UCLA holding a 39-32 lead by virtue of its furious pressing defense and some hot long-range shooting, the Bruins went into a stall to force Villanova out of its zone. Villanova obliged, just slightly, but that was enough for UCLA to move ahead by 11 points.

In the second half, UCLA spread out again. Wooden was afraid the long shots, so necessary against the zone, would stop dropping and he was certain his team could score on Villanova's seldom seen man-to-man. He was wrong. Villanova played man-to-man as if it had just discovered a new toy and the game turned into a battle to the end. When UCLA called a time out with 4:53 remaining, the Wildcats were only four points behind. Their man-to-man had held the Bruins to just three field goals- all layups. And the fans who could see at all were being treated to a superb show, a duel between All-America Wicks and All-America Howard Porter.

Twice Porter's jump shots closed the margin to three points, but three points were as close as Villanova would come. When Patterson's layup, aided by a goal tending call, made it 66-60 with 38 seconds left, Wicks went into his mugging act. He was justified. He had his third national championship.

Patterson finished his Saturday chores with 29 points, a career high. Porter, who scored 25 points, was voted the tournament's outstanding player. And Wicks had the game ball in his clutches. "Lew said he came to win three," Wicks said. "And I did, too."

To the credit of Villanova, this was the first time in years UCLA had had to work up a sweat in an NCAA-final game. Indeed, during the Lew Alcindor era it often seemed there were no final games- just passionless exhibitions. But this season's Wicks team, which was not up to its immediate predecessors, had grown used to close calls. The Bruins even lost once, to Notre Dame by seven points. They beat Stanford by only five points. They beat USC, after trailing by nine points with only 9 minutes to go. They trailed Oregon by one point with less than a minute to go when Bibby stole the ball and drove in for the winning basket. Wicks hit a 20-foot jump shot in the final seconds to beat Oregon State. Two foul shots with seven seconds to go were the margin over Washington State. Rowe's jump shot with less than a minute left beat Washington. And UCLA squeezed past Long Beach State by two points.

"At times it looked bad," said Wooden. "But somehow we stuck in there. Except for the Notre Dame game, we always ended up where we wanted to be at the end."

Afterward, as Wooden stood where he wanted to be, with his seventh NCAA championship wristwatch in his hand and interviewers and well-wishers surrounding him, it was easy to recall the brief clipping he had produced at the coaches' convention the day before.

It was one of those 25-years-ago-to-day features from an Elkhart, Ind. newspaper and it told how, in 1946, Coach John Wooden of South Bend Central High, a recent service returnee, came to speak at a winter sports banquet. "They had hoped to line up some prominent college coach," the paper said.