It has been 50 years since college basketball’s elite gathered in San Diego for the Final Four.
It was a spectacular event, featuring UCLA, Louisville, Syracuse and Kentucky.
And while San Diego’s only Final Four was an on-court success, the drama behind the scenes was worthy of a soap opera.
I was the 26-year-old sports information director at San Diego State at the time. SDSU was the host school.
This is my first-hand of the 1975 Final Four:
The prelude
Ken Karr rubbed elbows with the big boys as a member of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee.
So when San Diego State’s athletic director secured the 1975 Final Four for San Diego, those on the inside weren’t totally surprised.
Karr and I spent time going over teams and as the tournament drew near, I got to know Tom Jernstedt of the NCA. Jernstedt, nicknamed “Father of the Final Four,” was a key behind-the-screnes figure for three decades.
To prepare for the basketball championship, San Diego State hosted the NCAA men’s volleyball championships in 1973 and the men’s golf championships ’74.
San Diego State’s men’s basketball team made the NCAA Tournament in ’75, but the Aztecs would not advance to the Sports Arena (now Pechanga Arena) for the Final Four. The Aztecs lost 90-80 to UNLV in the West Regional, played in Tempe, Ariz.
By the time the Final Four arrived, we were confident we could handle anything that came up.
Nothing, however, could prepare us for what was to come.
March 27, 1975: The parking problem
It was 7:30 a.m., and I was listening to the radio while driving to the Sports Arena for a meeting prior to the Final Four.
“And don’t forget folks,” the voice said, “team workouts for the NCAA Final Four start at 11 this morning and are free to the public. Parking is $3.”
This was the first time practices prior to the finals would be open to the public. So it was a big deal.
But the NCAA’s agreement with management at the Sports Arena was that parking and ission would be free. Sports Arena management would make its money on concessions and program sales.
The radio announcement set off a bizarre chain of events.
Prior to our meeting, Jernstedt asked if I had authorized the announcement on the parking fee. Informed that I hadn’t, Jernstedt said: “Come on in. This could be educational.”
We met with Karr and Peter Graham and Phil Quinn of the Sports Arena. Jernstedt was on fire. Informed that Graham and Quinn had authorized the parking fee, Jernstedt insisted it be dropped.
Graham, never one to back away from a fight, said he would not.
So Jernstedt asked for the phone and dialed a long-distance number.
We only caught one side of the conversation, but it went like this.
“Hello. May I speak with Dick, please?
“Yeah Dick. Tom Jernstedt at the NCAA here. Are those dates we talked about still open? They are. Yes. OK. I’ll get back to you in five minutes.”
Jernstedt had reserved the Los Angeles Sports Arena as an alternate site, just in case.
Jernstedt looked Graham squarely in the eye.
“You now have four minutes to drop that parking fee,” he said. “If not, this tournament will be played in the L.A. Sports Arena.”
Figuring Jernstedt was bluffing, Graham and Quinn roared with laughter.
“You can back down and rescind the charge or call my bluff,” Jernstedt said. “You can wait until the end of the month, get your phone bill and see if I really made that call.
“It’s up to you.”
Graham backed down. The charge was dropped.
Outside the room after the meeting, I asked Jernstedt if he was really prepared to move the tournament.
“Damn straight I was,” he said.
Years later, the general manager of the L.A. Sports Arena confirmed Jernstedt had indeed made the call.
Crisis averted, I went to check on the locker rooms.
Form a pay phone in the bowels of the Sports Arena, I called my secretary, Mary Lou Gilbert. All four locker rooms were a disaster.
Orange peels. Ankle tape. Beer cans. Dirty, stinky, bloody towels. Snapped jocks. Twisted metal hangers.
Broken hockey sticks littered the floors. And there were holes in the walls.
When I asked the Sports Arena staff to help clean up the messes, they laughed.
No work order. No help.
Appeals to Graham and Quinn drew laughs.
So I asked Gilbert to call Fred Hammond, San Diego State’s facilities coordinator, and Gene Lamke, SDSU’s intramurals director, and have them get to the arena ASAP.
They picked up Bob Moore, the Aztecs’ head trainer, and photographer Bob Poulsen and hustled on down.
Lamke, Poulsen and I began cleaning up. Moore and Hammond went back to campus.
Moore picked up supplies to set up a training room while Hammond rounded up a handful of football players, paid then $20 each and had them load portable lockers, towels, hangers, spackle and drinks into a school van we called the Blue Goose.
We filled a half dozen 50-gallon trash cans with trash, fixed the holes and set up the lockers, towels and drinks.
The last dustpan full of junk went into the trash at 10:55 a.m.. UCLA was set to arrive at 11.
I put myself together and turned the corner as coach John Wooden and the Bruins walked down the tunnel and into the Sports Arena.
I led Wooden and the Bruins to their locker room. Wooden stopped, looked around and said: “Hey, this isn’t half bad. I heard this place was a cesspool.”
If he only knew.
But wait, there’s more
With the parking fee and teams taken care of, it was time to turn my attention to the media.
To file their stories, reporters either dictated their copy back to their offices and used Western Union or a new device called a Xerox Telecopier, the forerunner of the fax machine.
I had arranged with my local Xerox dealer for 50 telecopiers.
With a then-record 450 credentials issued to reporters, there were 75 tables with chairs available to reporters with two phones at each table under the stands in the Sports Arena.
We also had a bank of 50 pay phones with four phones at each bank.
Reporters were instructed to hand their copy to one of a handful of runners, a group that includes former U-T sportswriter (and current freelancer) Bill Center and Jim Muldoon, who would go on to become assistant commissioner of the Pac-10 Conference.
We’d file the copy for them. Reporters were instructed to check with their offices to make sure what they had written had arrived safely.
In five days, only one reporter didn’t get his copy to his paper.
Later, the College Basketball Writers Association awarded San Diego State a certificate of merit.
March 28, 1975: One day away
With a traumatic Thursday in the rearview mirror, it was time to turn our attention to the press box.
The Sports Arena wasn’t built to accommodate 450 writers, so the box had to be built from scratch.
The game-clock operator, the official book and the statisticians were seated on the floor. The press box took up several rows of prime seats off the floor at midcourt.
Only the press box that was built wasn’t up to the specifications in the contract. So Jernstedt insisted the Sports Arena staff tear down what it had done and start over.
So while the teams went through quiet practices that were closed to the public that day, workers were sawing, nailing and sanding boards.
Work went on late into the night.
March 29, 1975: NCAA semifinals
Finally, it was game day.
The problems, however, were far from over.
The last nail on the pressbox wasn’t in place until 10 minutes before the media was to be let in the building.
With one problem solved, others popped up.
The NBA lines on the floor were supposed to be removed. They weren’t.
Rims were supposed to be painted. They weren’t.
The NCAA’s black-and-yellow “bumblebee” logo was supposed to cover the jump-ball area. That logo was still in the Sports Arena office.
Karr was on his hands and knees with a squeegee, smoothing out bubbles as the doors opened to the public.
The biggest problem, however, was seating. The Sports Arena only seated about 13,000. The NCAA was guaranteed there would be 15,000 seats.
And there were. Those extra seats, however, were all behind the south basket. It would have been a problem had those seats been on risers, but they were all on the same level. So only the people in the first few rows had a view of the court.
Jack Murray, a local businessman, was working in New York at the time and had put together several charter flights for Syracuse fans.
Those people were all seated on the floor behind the south basket.
Syracuse played the first game. The fans saw they had bad seats and took any empty seat that had a sight line.
But by halftime, fans of UCLA and Louisville — participants in the next game — had begun to show up. They wanted their seats.
Several hundred Syracuse fans retreated to the upper levels of the Sports Arena and sat in the aisles.
When confronted by ushers, several fights broke out.
Jernstedt sent word to back off and let those Syracuse fans sit in the aisle.
Wooden drops a bomb
Rumors were running rampant. Wooden was too old. He was too tired. He had lost his recruiting touch.
Wooden, winner of nine NCAA championships at UCLA, never acknowledged the speculation.
So no one expected him to announce his retirement at the Final Four in San Diego. He had told no one of his plan to call it quits — not UCLA athletic director J.D. Morgan, not his assistant coaches, the players or even his beloved wife Nell.
But after a thrilling overtime win over Louisville in the semifinals, Wooden told the UCLA sports information staff to make sure the media was in the postgame interview room.
He only wanted to do this once. So the record 450 media were rounded up.
Wooden dropped a bomb. Win or lose, Monday’s title game against Kentucky would be his final as coach of the Bruins.
“I’ve always said that my first year in coaching at UCLA (1948-49) was my most satisfying,” Wooden said. “My last year has been equally satisfying, regardless of what happens Monday night.
“I’ve asked J.D. Morgan to release me from my coaching duties. I’ve done that for a number of reasons I’d rather not go into. I just told the players.”
Asked the reaction of the players to his announcement, Wooden said: “Quietness.”
March 30, 1975: The day in between
It was a quiet day.
Sure, there was the traditional press conference in which Wooden addressed questions about his retirement.
Then he said, “Isn’t it about time that we talk about the important thing — the basketball tournament?”
Kentucky coach Joe B. Hall addressed the media and joked he should get the UCLA job because he was foolish enough to follow legendary coach Adolph Rupp as coach of the Wildcats.
March 31, 1975: A champion is crowned
National championship day began not with a final but with a third-place game. (Yes, that used to be a thing.)
Louisville beat Syracuse 96-88 in overtime, setting up the main event.
Kentucky took an early six-point lead and UCLA’s Marques Johnson was getting his beaten by a bigger Wildcats squad.
So Wooden inserted 7-footer Ralph Drollinger, a San Diegan who played at Grossmont High School, into the game. Drollinger played the game of his life, finishing with 10 points and 13 rebounds.
There were 15 lead changes and five ties in the first half, but UCLA built a 10-point lead with just under 12 minutes to play.
Kentucky cut it to 76-75 with under seven minutes to play. The drama built when UCLA’s Dave Meyers was called for a charge and was hit with a technical when he slammed his hand on the floor.
Kentucky’s Kevin Grevey missed the technical foul free throw, however, and UCLA pulled away for a 92-85 win, the 10th NCAA Tournament title for Wooden and the Bruins.
After the game, the UCLA band played “Thanks for the Memories.”
In the interview room after the game, the writers gave Wooden a standing ovation when he entered. It’s something I had never seen before, nor since.
Wooden said he was sad to leave his players and coaches. Then he walked off.
Aftermath
My staff filed more than 40,000 sheets of copy after the game with only one problem.
Finally, we closed up shop and headed to The Butcher Shop steakhouse in Mission Valley, which had stayed open late for our party.
Jernstedt and the NCAA sprung for dinner.
They said it
Gene Lamke was the clock operator for San Diego State games in the Sports Arena and had that duty for the Final Four. John Gunther kept the official scorebook.
“It was so loud in the arena, we had to shoot a track starter’s pistol at the end of the half and game because the officials couldn’t hear the horn,” Lamke said. “Gunther was sitting right next to me and we had to scream at each other because it was so loud.
“I tell people that if I had been a little quicker starting the clock in UCLA’s semifinal game, Richard Washington would never had gotten that jumper off and maybe Wooden wouldn’t have retired.
“It was a complete zoo for those games, but we wanted to make a good impression, and I think we did.”
Gunther was a college pitching coach in San Diego until his retirement. He had been in some tough spots as the official scorer at the Uniersity of the Pacific when the Tigers had a 40-game winning streak.
“But nothing could top the Final Four,” he said. “I was so nervous before the first semifinal. I told myself to relax, that it was just a game. If I wanted to do big-time stuff, I had to do this right.
“Honestly, keeping the official book for John Wooden’s last game is one of my most fond memories.”
Jernstedt speaks
Jernstedt was part of the Final Four for 29 years, and was one of the best-known men in the sport.
Reached at his home in Indianapolis before his death in 2020, he spoke about the San Diego event.
“Yes, we had a problem with the building,” Jernstedt said. “San Diego is one great city. The weather is so good.
“And if the city had a building that could accommodate the event, San Diego would have been in our rotation. “Once we went to the big arenas … San Diego was out.
“Now we book stadiums because teams just couldn’t get enough tickets. That was the driving force in going big.”We’d love to come back to San Diego. If the city gets a new stadium with a roof on it, we’d certainly take a look.”
1975 Final Four recaps
March 29, 1975
Semfiinals
Kentucky 95, Syracuse 79: Kentucky had five players score in double figures, led by 24 from Jack Givens. Kevin Grevey added 14, Jimmy Dan Connor 12, Mike Flynn 10, and Mike Phillips had 10 off the bench.
Syracuse got 23 points from Jim Lee and 18 from Christopher Sease.
UCLA 75, Louisville 74 (OT): Leading by a point with 20 seconds to go in overtime and Louisville in a four-corner stall, Terry Howard was fouled and had a chance to close out UCLA. But Howard, who had made all 28 of his free throws during the season, missed the front end of a 1-and-1 The Bruins got the rebound, but Andre McCarter couldn’t score on a driving layup. Dave Meyers got the rebound and ed to Richard Washington, who won the game on a last-second baseline jumper.
Washington led UCLA with 26 points, making 11 of 29 shots from the floor. Meyers added 16 points, Pete Trgovich 12 and Johnson 10.
March 31, 1975
Third-place game
Louisville 96, Syracuse 88 (OT): Syracuse overcame a 42-26 halftime deficit and tied the game on a Rudy Hackett basket with 37 seconds to play. Both teams missed chances down the stretch and the Cardinals outscored Syracuse 18-10 in overtime.
This was the last year the third-place game was played.
Championship game
UCLA 92, Kentucky 85: UCLA trailed by six early in the game when 7-footer Ralph Drollinger, who played at Grossmont High School, replaced Marques Johnson. Drollinger played perhaps the best game of his career against a big, tough and strong Kentucky squad, scoring 10 points and grabbing 13 rebounds.
There were 15 lead changes and five ties in the first half with UCLA leading 43-40 at the break.
Richard Washington led UCLA with 28 points and he grabbed 12 rebounds. Meyers scored 24 points with 11 rebounds.
Kevin Grevey led all scorers with 34 points while Bob Guyette had 16 and Mike Flynn 10.
