Enjoy from my personal collection of NCAA Tournament games. I remember getting home from playing some basketball with my cousin and some friends and being shocked that Gonzaga had upset Stanford, which had made the Final Four the prior year and returned all five starters from that team. Gonzaga's miracle run would continue all the way to the Elite Eight, though this Bulldogs team was no fluke with Matt Santangelo, Richie Frahm and Casey Calvary. As for Arkansas and Iowa, I was a bit surprised the Hawkeyes won this game. I always enjoyed watching Nolan Richardson's teams. Iowa had a guard named Dean Oliver whom I really liked. He was a crafty lefty who wasn't even six feet tall. From what I remember, this game was up-and-down, with the Hawkeyes outshooting Arkansas from deep. From an aesthetics standpoint, I loved the contrast of Iowa's black uniforms and Arkansas' red uniforms, especially off the glare of the shiny hardwood at the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado. Iowa would advance to the Sweet Sixteen, where it would actually give eventual national champion UCONN a very competitive game. UCONN would then defeat Gonzaga during what was another tough game, sending Jim Calhoun and the Huskies to their first Final Four. Including 1999, UCONN has been to eight Final Fours, winning six national championships in the process. When anyone talks about the best program in all of college basketball the past 25 years, it is UCONN hands down. Not Duke. Not North Carolina. Not anyone else. Note: At the end of this video is some footage from a regular season game between Louisville and Michigan State at the Breslin Center in East Lansing, Michigan. I am guessing I stopped recording after these NCAA Tournament games, with a little room left on the six-hour VHS tape. As I was in high school, I did not have the financial means to be buying as many VHS tapes as I would like, and thus would record over games, which I wish I hadn't done all these years later. However, times were different, and I had to do what I had to. :-) 

Enjoy from my personal collection of NCAA Tournament games. Well, this is the day when Gonzaga became more than the alma mater of John Stockton. The Bulldogs would upset a depleted Minnesota team that had been exposed the night before, I believe, for a major academic scandal during which tutors were allegedly taking exams for players. Short-handed Minnesota would lose to a Gonzaga team coached by Dan Monson and featuring amazing players like Matt Santangelo, Richie Frahm, Casey Calvary and Quentin Hall. Interestingly enough, Minnesota Head Coach Clem Haskins would lose his job because of this scandal, despite taking the Golden Gophers to the Final Four two years earlier during the 1997 NCAA Tournament. Haskins would be replaced by Gonzaga's Monson, who would leave the Bulldogs after leading the plucky upstart from Spokane, Washington to the Elite Eight, where it lost to eventual national champion UCONN. Of course, with Monson leaving for Minnesota, Assistant Head Coach Mark Few would be elevated to the lead man of the Bulldogs. We know how that has worked out.  I absolutely loved these early editions of Gonzaga, which is now basically a college basketball blue blood. Eventually, I became out on Gonzaga during the Adam Morrison years as I found him to be incredibly annoying and unlikable on the court. Note: there is some footage of the end of the Siena - Arkansas game from one of my favorite venues of the NCAA Tournament, the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado. How I loved the look and shine of that court. :-)