Greatest UCLA sport moment was loss ending 88-game streak

Wednesday, January 20, 1999

Greatest UCLA sport moment was loss ending 88-game streak

COLUMN: Notre Dame defeat reminded us that Wooden was only
human

In the storied history of UCLA basketball, the greatest thing to
ever happen was a loss.

The 11 national championships? Please, in the late 1960s those
were as sure as John Wooden having his legendary rolled program at
his side.

Lew Alcindor? Players move on and take the program with
them.

No, the 71-70 loss to Notre Dame 25 years ago remains the
greatest single event in UCLA history.

A loss more important than the 88-straight wins that preceded
it?

Wooden was a legend even before the streak began. He had already
won six national titles and had been inducted into the National
Basketball Hall of Fame as a player. Before the streak ended, he
was the first enshrined as both player and coach in
Springfield.

But if 88-straight made him a basketball god, the loss in South
Bend proved Wooden was just a man, if an extraordinary one at
that.

Consider the events:

UCLA had a 10-point lead with 3 minutes 10 seconds remaining.
The Bruins seemed on track to notch their 89th consecutive victory.
Then the Irish began their climb back, knocking down jump shot
after jump shot as UCLA continued to miss.

The Bruins missed five shots in the final 11 seconds of the
game. Bill Walton, three-time Naismith player of the year, missed a
putback in the final seconds which would have won it. This from the
center who shot 21-22 from the field in the 1974 NCAA final.

All the while, Wooden refused to call a time-out as his players
wilted under the exuberance of the Irish faithful. Walton described
himself as exhausted and wanted to ask his coach for a reprieve,
but knew the Wizard would only see that as giving up. The Wizard
never called time-outs.

If Wooden had played the strategy game and called a time-out to
conserve his players’ energy, would the Bruins have converted one
of those five shots? The answer is pure speculation, but it is
possible. After all, Walton never saw a tip he didn’t like.

Wooden’s refusal to call that time-out reminds us one thing: as
legendary as the Wizard was, he was still human. Fans love their
sports heroes, revere them. But they revere them partly because
they know those heroes are the same as them: They come from the
same home towns, eat the same food, and make the same mistakes that
all humans are prone to make.

Pride, for one of them.

No feat accomplished in sports was more superhuman than UCLA’s
88-game streak. Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak? He only
needed to convert one out of every four at-bats. Jack Nicklaus’
record of 40-straight Masters cuts made may end this March. For
that he just needed to finish in the top half.

But to win every game, day in and day out, with all the
potential problems of injury and officiating, and maybe just a poor
shooting night? No less against the best competition in America?
That was superhuman indeed.

But when Wooden refused to call that time-out and disrupt Notre
Dame’s momentum, when the Bruins fell for the first time in three
years, the streak suddenly became realistic. Death usually does
that to you.

If UCLA would have won that game and every other game that
season, won another national title and stretched its winning streak
into the mid-100s, Wooden could still have retired at the end of
the 1974-1975 season as a legend. But we would remember him as the
coach who managed that streak, and not the man who had to face the
national media after that January loss in South Bend.

The next day in Los Angeles, Wooden accepted full responsibility
for the loss, calling himself "complacent" in the final minutes.
That is the John Wooden I choose to remember 25 years later. Was he
the greatest basketball coach ever? Absolutely.

But he wasn’t a machine or an icon. These days he symbolizes
"UCLA basketball" to most everyone. But not to me. To me, he was
just the greatest basketball coach ever.

And most of all, he was just a man.

Scott Street, [email protected], would gladly trade any of those
88 wins for one over Stanford.

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