NCAA Basketball Tournament 1998
From the Spotlight Archive:
This feature appeared in March 1998
NCAA Final Four Results
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Correct answers are in bold text. 1. Who is the last player to win the Wooden award and the national championship in the same year? 2.Who is the only three-time winner of the NCAA Tournament’s Most Outstanding Player Award? 3.Which active coach has won the most NCAA National Championships? 4.Only six coaches have played and coached in a Final Four. Which one of this year’s FF coaches played in the 1958 Final Four as member of Kansas State? 5.This player holds the record for most points scored in a Final Four game with 58. Who is he? 6.Which Division I school has made the most appearances (20 and counting) in the tournament without a trip to the Final Four? 7.Who is the only Heisman Trophy winner to play in a Final Four? 8.Who is the only coach to lead four different schools into the tournament? 9.Who was the first sitting president to attend the Final Four? 10.How do you spell Duke’s Coach K.’s last name? |
Tournament Result:
Kentucky - 78
Utah - 69
Quiz Winner:
Shelby Riggs
T
he madness is over.Tubbyball ruled the day. While Utah put forth a Herculean effort, the depth of coach Tubby Smith's Kentucky Wildcats and the Utes' inability to score in the game's waning moments proved too much for Rick Majerus' and Co. Kentucky beat Utah, 78-69, at the Alamodome in San Antonio thanks to the Wildcats second-half transformation. The Wildcats' D tilted the court in their favor down the stretch, allowing them to come back from a 10-point halftime deficit, something that had never been accomplished in the National Championship game before. After getting outrebounded, 24-6, by the Utes in the first half, Kentucky crashed the glass heavy in the second stanza winning the rebounding war, 18-15.
Utah seemed to tire and could manage just one basket during the game's last 5 minutes, 53 seconds and missed 15 of their last 18 field goal attempts. After the game, Majerus second-guessed himself saying, "I should have played the bench a little bit more. Lombardi was right. Fatigue makes cowards of us all."
Final Four Most Outstanding Player Jeff Sheppard's clutch play late in the game cinched it for the 'Cats who take home their second national title in three years. Utah beat a heavily-favored North Carolina team, 65-59, in the National Semifinals to advance to their first National Final since 1944, while Kentucky edged out Stanford, 86-85 in overtime, to get to the Final Four championship for the third year in a row.
