The Greatest Upset Never Seen: Virginia, Chaminade, and the Game That Changed College Basketball
232
The Greatest Upset Never Seen: Virginia, Chaminade, and the Game That Changed College Basketball
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Overview
No one had really heard of Chaminade University—a tiny NAIA Catholic school in Honolulu with fewer than eight hundred undergraduates—until its basketball game against the University of Virginia on December 23, 1982. The Chaminade Silverswords defeated the Cavaliers, then the Division I, No. 1–ranked team in the nation, in what the Washington Post later called “the biggest upset in the history of college basketball.” Virginia was the most heralded team in the country, led by seven‑foot‑four‑inch, three‑time College Basketball Player of the Year Ralph Sampson. They had just been paid $50,000—more than double Chaminade’s annual basketball budget—to play an early season tournament in Tokyo and were making a “stopover” game in Hawaii on their way back to the mainland. The Silverswords, led by forward Tony Randolph, came back in the second half and won the game 77–72. Chaminade’s incredible victory became known as the “Miracle on Ward Avenue” or simply “The Upset” in Hawaii and was featured in the national news. Never before in the history of college basketball had a school moved so dramatically and irretrievably into the nation’s consciousness. The Silverswords’ victory was more than just an upset; it was something considered impossible. And the team’s wins over major college programs continued in the ensuing years. Today Chaminade is still referred to as “The Giant Killers”—the school that beat Ralph Sampson and Virginia. The Greatest Upset Never Seen relives the 1982–83 season, when Chaminade put small‑college basketball and Hawaii on the national sports map.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781496208484 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nebraska |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2019 |
| Pages: | 232 |
| Sales rank: | 241,845 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Stranger in a Strange Land
In the fall of 1982, the Chaminade University sophomore basketball player was still adjusting to his new surroundings. Like anyone who had spent his upbringing on the mainland, Hawaii offered him more than its awe-inspiring scenery and unwavering temperatures. Hawaii was a place that had something for everyone it seemed, and yet it was not necessarily for everyone. By a twist of fate, he had found his way to Honolulu, and he was determined to take advantage of his new opportunity. Two years earlier he had left his home town with high hopes, only to spend a frustrating season at Panhandle State in Oklahoma, where he came to feel that he might never get a fair opportunity to shine from his coach. Faced with this prospect, he left school, reassured by the thought that he would find the right fit elsewhere.
Tony Randolph, formerly of Staunton, Virginia, now of Honolulu, was starting over once again. Throughout his ordeal, he remained confident in his basketball abilities. He had three years of eligibility remaining, after all, but his opportunities were limited. His grades had not been good enough to open the doors usually afforded to one of his abilities, and to be sure, Chaminade had not been his first choice. He was at a place where that was hardly unique. Indeed, Chaminade would not have been the first choice of many of his teammates either, for they all longed to be included on the rosters of college basketball's high-profile programs in Division I. If anything, Tony Randolph was the prototypical Chaminade player. Basketball in the NAIA was different from the NCAA, no less competitive than Division I, but largely without fanfare.
When his brother, Stanford Randolph, who was stationed in the air force at Schofield Barracks in Wahiawa, had called on Chaminade head coach Merv Lopes to inquire if he would be interested in giving his younger brother a look, Lopes was more than willing. Chaminade, a liberal arts school of eight hundred undergraduates, was an obscure title in any directory of American universities and had no recruiting budget for its athletic programs.
Moreover, Lopes was a man who believed in giving people a second chance. As a coach and counselor of youth, Lopes had spent most of his professional career giving kids that second opportunity. Chaminade athletic director Mike Vasconcellos, who hired Lopes, put it more succinctly: "Merv was always standing up for the kids, and it was always costing him his job."
At his tryout the previous winter, Tony Randolph had showed great promise. Athletically, he had ability not found in every nineteen-year-old, and while he was not yet a star, he already projected the aura of one.
"He was kind of flashy," Lopes said of Randolph. "He came and worked out with us and was dunking the ball all over the place."
Randolph liked — and needed, Lopes felt — a certain amount of attention. In time, coach and player would clash over the latter's ambition and desire to be the team's star. "If you do some shit, Tony, they'll [the media] talk to you," Lopes would tell Randolph on one such occasion.
Against formidable odds, the Chaminade program had established itself by that autumn as one clearly on the rise. In just seven years, and with no facilities to call their own, Lopes's Chaminade teams had never experienced a losing season. Eventually, the school's small but loyal coterie of followers looked up to find Division I schools on the Chaminade schedule. The big schools were always willing to travel to Hawaii and play Chaminade because they were assured a pleasant vacation from the frigid mainland winters, not to mention an easy victory that would allow them to play everyone on their roster. This concept was not without risks. Increasingly, Division I schools had been lucky to escape Honolulu with a win. Not everyone did escape. South Carolina, which was coached by Bill Foster, had lost a game to Chaminade the year before. That win had gone a long way in solidifying the program as one to be reckoned with. But as an NAIA school, situated a mere five-minute drive from the University of Hawaii campus, Chaminade was an afterthought in comparison to its Division I neighbor. That Chaminade's roster included more players from Hawaii high schools than the University of Hawaii was lost on most in Honolulu. Without a professional franchise in town, UH games were thought of as "the only game in town." That sentiment seemed unlikely to change.
Tony Randolph had also considered playing for Hawaii, but their coach, Larry Little, was less committal than Lopes.3 And so, for Randolph, Chaminade became the obvious choice. Although an NAIA school, the Chaminade schedule had plenty of appeal for a young prospect. The next best thing to playing for a Division I team, it seemed, was competing against one.
With four starters returning for the 1982–83 season, the program seemed destined for continued success. The Silverswords had completed their most successful season to date the previous March, winning twenty-eight games against just three losses, one of which had been to the University of Virginia, which was not only a Division I program but was also competing in the Atlantic Coast Conference, arguably the best league in the country.
Chaminade's upcoming season would feature games with Hawaii, LSU, and the University of Virginia and its seven-foot-four center, Ralph Sampson, then college basketball's consensus two-time Player of the Year. The Cavaliers were expected to begin the season as the No. 1–ranked team in the country by both the Associated Press and United Press International.
Tony Randolph and Ralph Sampson had lived twenty-eight miles from each other and had been old friends. In the early fall, however, Randolph knew nothing of Virginia's scheduled visit to Honolulu.
He was still trying to find his way around his new surroundings and had not yet seen Chaminade's schedule. And if his riveting performance at his tryout several months earlier had gained him a measure of respect from his teammates, he was not yet one of them. His teammates were mainly roomed together near the upper part of Chaminade's smallish campus, in the most sought-after of the school's residence halls, Hale Pohaku. Built in 1975, Hale Pohaku had been constructed more in the manner of an apartment building than a dormitory. Its inhabitants had the luxury of a living room and a kitchen as well as a partial view of the Honolulu skyline and the Pacific Ocean. In contrast, Randolph was living that first semester near the base of campus in the oldest of the school's residence halls, Hale Hoaloha, with a roommate who was not a member of the Chaminade basketball team. This arrangement would prove to serve him well in time. Randolph's roommate was diligent in his studies and encouraged him to be proactive in his schooling.
Throughout these months of transition, Randolph's teammates kept an eye on him and would often drop by Hale Hoaloha, but they did not really know him yet. Although he was on scholarship as were they, he remained the newcomer during those first weeks at Chaminade. Sitting in his dorm room, he was nevertheless convinced that better days were ahead. That thought consumed him more than any other.
The spring of 1982 found Ralph Sampson trying to decide, as he had the previous two springs, whether it was time to take his extraordinary basketball abilities to the National Basketball Association. That he would play in the NBA was always just a matter of when since the day he'd enrolled at UVA. "We all knew someday that he was going to be the No. 1 draft pick in the NBA," said UVA assistant coach Jim Larrañaga.
After deciding against leaving for the NBA, Sampson turned his attention to having a senior year at UVA to remember. He also took time to fill out his application to live in one of the university's famous rooms on what is known as The Lawn.
The Lawn is a terraced court of neatly manicured grass that runs through what is known as Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village on the Virginia campus. The Lawn and the surrounding buildings were designed by Jefferson, who founded the university in 1819, and exhibit Palladian and neoclassical architecture.
The Lawn — along with the university's original buildings, as well as Jefferson's residence, Monticello, which is situated five miles from campus — has been designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark for the site's architectural and cultural significance. Such is the serenity and functionality of its buildings that the American Institute of Architects declared UVA to be the nation's greatest architectural accomplishment.
The most famous of structures on The Lawn is the Rotunda, situated from the north end of the site, opposite Old Cabell Hall. The Lawn's other side is bordered by ten pavilions, where faculty members reside in two upper floors. At ground level, The Lawn includes fifty-four rooms, where carefully chosen undergraduates are housed for their fourth year of study.
Students wishing to live on The Lawn for the fall semester must go through an application process the previous spring. Applications invariably include a résumé, a personal statement, and responses to a series of questions for review by a committee, with the top vote-getters offered residency.
To be among the chosen is "a great honor," said Robert "Bobby" Stokes, who played basketball for the Cavaliers from 1975 to 1979 and lived at East Lawn 6 for his fourth year. "It is almost like the lottery. You don't know until you've made it. Some of my professors said I had the qualifications so I applied. It was about a two-month process. They take everything into account — academics, activities you are involved in, and how you represent the university. It made you humble. It wasn't just a dorm. You felt it was an honor and you were blessed to be a part of it. The Lawn is very, very special."
Included in East Lawn 6 upon Stokes's arrival were "a sink, a fireplace, one cabinet, a rocking chair, a closet, a bed, and a desk." Rooms on The Lawn are thirteen feet, six inches by twelve feet, ten inches in size. One drawback for inhabitants of The Lawn is that they don't have a bathroom of their own and must use facilities in another building.
Just as The Lawn was the center of campus life at UVA, it was also "a real highlight for any recruit" who was considering playing for the Cavaliers, in assistant coach Dave Odom's view. Odom was the newest addition to Virginia head coach Terry Holland's staff for the 1982–83 season, having been tapped to replace Craig Littlepage, who had left to become head coach at his alma mater, Penn, that off-season.
Odom had come from East Carolina, where he had been the Pirates' head coach for three seasons. After leading ECU to a 16-11 campaign in the 1979–80 season, the program's best win total since 1964–65, the Pirates slipped to 12-14 and 10-17, respectively, over the next two seasons. Odom was still the head coach at East Carolina when Holland came calling in late spring.
On the weekend of May 29–30, Odom and his wife, Lynn, toured UVA's basketball facilities as well as the campus. A trip to The Lawn was the pinnacle of the Odoms' visit.
"I'd heard a lot about The Lawn before I got there," said Odom, "so we decided to take a walk. She looked at me and I looked at her, and we were both somewhat speechless."
"The Lawn is such a magical place," said Jeff Jones, who played for UVA from 1978 to 1982 and was in his first year as an assistant on Holland's staff in 1982. "For one, there was the physical beauty and the history. And there were all kinds of activities there. That was the central location on campus."
In his letter of application to live on The Lawn, Sampson had written: "Although I know that much of my future will be centered around basketball and athletics, I've come to realize there is much more to life."
Asked the one thing he'd like people to know about him, he said, "I'm just fortunate to have the height that I have, and that someone invented the game of basketball. But I want to be respected, just like everyone else, as a human being."
With his appreciation of history, Sampson was well-suited to life on The Lawn.
"I had most of my classes down in [Old] Cabell [Hall]," said Sampson, who occupied Bobby Stokes's old room, East Lawn 6. "When you walked there, you could feel the closeness of the campus. Sometimes people you knew would get together and lean against the statues. You'd be talking and enjoying The Lawn, and respecting it, too."
Among the long-standing traditions for residents of The Lawn is to "streak"— or run inadequately clad — through its historic grounds, according to former UVA soccer standout Ryan Burke, who lived at 43 West Lawn for the 2006–7 school year.
"I have a hard time believing that you can live on The Lawn and not actually streak The Lawn," said Burke. "Even the most conservative of personalities have to do it. I find it necessary to really get out and streak at least one time."
One can only imagine the stir the seven-foot-four Ralph Sampson would have created had he "streaked" The Lawn. The droves of curiosity-seekers who surrounded The Lawn's most famous resident undoubtedly left him feeling naked already, without having to discard his clothing. Privacy was always hard to come by for Sampson while in college.
"The Lawn is a great place for students, but not for athletes because during the season you need your rest," said Odom. "People would walk by Ralph's room at all hours, knock on the door, and then run away like crazy. He needed his rest and it got to the point where an adjustment had to be made."
That adjustment meant Sampson taking up residence again in the basement of Terry Holland's home on Morris Street. Sampson had lived with the Hollands part of the previous season. Sampson's classmates weren't alone in wanting to see where college basketball's Player of the Year lived. Alumni visiting campus in the fall for a football weekend would often make the trek from Scott Stadium to The Lawn to seek out his room.
Many of Sampson's classmates became protective of his privacy and theirs, and a weekend visitor who asked for his room number was often sent in the opposite direction.
Sampson's own direction was clear. Before heading to the NBA, he would lead the Cavaliers to their first ACC title since UVA's magical run of 1976 and then to its first national championship. Sampson had helped lead the Cavaliers to an NIT title in his freshman year. In his sophomore season, Virginia would go 29-4 and accomplish a feat not realized by any Cavalier team before them. They made the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament at the Spectrum in Philadelphia before falling to LSU in the semifinals.
Another NCAA Tournament appearance had followed in Sampson's junior year of 1981–82, when the Cavaliers had gone 30-4 for the program's best mark ever. A loss to Alabama–Birmingham had ended the Cavaliers' run. When practice officially opened for Sampson's senior season at Virginia on October 15, 1982, the Cavaliers were already the favorite to win the national championship. Nothing less would be expected.
CHAPTER 2One Shining Moment
The 1980s in college basketball were a time like no other. The 1979 national championship game between Larry Bird's Indiana State and Earvin Johnson's Michigan State team on the night of March 26 in Salt Lake City, Utah, had signaled the beginning of a new era for both the NCAA Tournament and the popularity of the college game itself.
The NBC television broadcast of Michigan State's win had achieved the highest Nielsen rating of any game in the history of American basketball.
Recognizing the tournament's surging popularity, the NCAA began to expand the field accordingly. Forty teams had made up the field in 1979. That changed in 1980 with an increase to forty-eight. Only two years later, the field expanded again to fifty-two and soon was increased further in 1985 to sixty-four, where it would stand for the next fifteen years. Since 2011, the NCAA Division I Tournament field has included sixty-eight teams.
In modern times, prior to the beginning of every NCAA Tournament, college basketball's legions of fans are treated to six weeks of pretournament hype, culminating in what is now called Selection Sunday, held the second Sunday in March, when invitees learn of their destination. It wasn't always that way. The first NCAA Tournament, which included eight teams by invite, was held in Evanston, Illinois, in 1939 at Northwestern University, the last school from a major conference to be invited to the field themselves, ironically, finally qualifying in 2017.
A crowd of 15,025 attended the first NCAA championship game, but it went off with only relative fanfare. There was a reason for this. A year earlier, in 1938, the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) had been established and was in those days the more heralded of the two postseason formats, a status it would hold into the early 1970s. By the turn of the decade, parity had officially arrived in college basketball.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Greatest Upset Never Seen"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Jack Danilewicz.
Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Preface Acknowledgments 1. Stranger in a Strange Land 2. One Shining Moment 3. Big Ralph 4. High Hopes 5. Completing the Puzzle 6. Hawaii’s Team 7. Miracle on Ward Avenue 8. The Most Celebrated Team in the Land 9. Merv the Magician 10. The Road to Kansas City 11. Madness in March 12. The Afterglow Epilogue Notes Index