( OT)Coach Crews and the 76 Indiana team

[BLIKNS]

Just for something, can you name the starting 5 on the undeafeted 76 IU team? (I think all 5 were 1st round draft choices)

What was Coach Crews` number?

Is this team considered the best in the modern era?

[willie]

Purely from a poor memory: Scot May---Kent Benson--theVan Arsdale twins John McGloghlin. I've probably have mixed many Indiana teams. Best ever? No has to be one of the UCLA teams.

[thetorch]

Buckner, Wilkerson, Abernathy, May, & Benson.

76 Indiana is among the candidates for best ever team, along with a slew of UCLA squads notably the 68, 72, 73 along with 82 Carolina, 56 San Fransisco, 92 Duke, 96 Kentucky, & 90 UNLV. North Carolina probably had the most firepower on their squad but I'll take Big Red's 73 team as best ever. Indiana's 76 teams had Benson who was a notorious a**hole. Walton or Jabbar would wipe the floor with him as they did during his NBA career. Benson was the main reason Bird left Indiana, Benson thought it was a good idea to unrelentingly haze the best player of his generation.

[Duff Man]

Modern Era is a relative term...you can draw the line in any number of places

1975: NCAA Field expands to 32 teams

1976-77: Dunking is once again legal in NCAA basketball

1979: Magic vs Bird

1980: NCAA field expands to 48 teams

1982:

1983:

(granted they lost on a miracle play, but their style left a permanent mark on the game)

1985: NCAA tournament field expands to 64

1986-87: NCAA adopts 3pt shot

1995: Kevin Garnett drafted #5 overall out of HS

Modern Era or not, 1976 IU have to be up there with the best of the best. Over 2 seasons they went 63-1, with the only loss coming in a 92-90 loss to National runner-up Kentucky in the 1975 Mideast regional final. They followed that loss with a 32-0 season and won their games by an average margin of 18 points.

The crazy thing is that over a 21 season span from 1956 to 1976 there were 7 undefeated NCAA tournament champions. Since 1976, only 2 teams have come close (1979 Indiana St lost in the Final, 1991 UNLV lost to Duke in the National Semifinal), excluding Calipari's national runner up Memphis team that had it's entire season retroactively vacated.

[NextYearBill]

Turns out coach Crews was a Hawk!!!....... "its not worth winning if you cant win big"

[DoctorB]

a few thoughts;

--it's spelled Abernethy, not Abernathy; he replaced Steve Green from the year before. Wayne Radford was also on that team; later of the Pacers.

--Indiana went wire to wire that year as #1.

--They had to play the #2 team in the country just to reach the Final 4 (Marquette; seedings were different back then...)

--I watched every game that year and for many more years; I would question that they were the best team and to be honest, they might not have even been the best team at Indiana... the 1981 team started rough, but by the tournament were simply awesome. I still say the 1981 final 4 performance by Indiana was the best I've ever seen. that team featured Ray Tolbert, Landon Truner, Isiah Thomas, Randy Wittman, Ted Ktchel, Jim Thomas, and others who played in the NBA.

--Another candidate is the 1992 Indiana team that lost in the Final 4 to Duke. that was a really great team, ranked #1 all year, but had a lousy half against Duke (and I still hate Duke for that one).

[thetorch]

That 92 Duke team probably beat 3 teams in the tourney that would have won the tournament in most other years. They probably had the toughest road to a title.