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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. :-)
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