(All images CBS)
Tuesday was the 15th anniversary of Iowa State’s 1997 appearance in the Sweet 16, its first since 1986. Those who remember it will recall it as a Bittersweet 16. The Cyclones blew a 16-point lead to UCLA in the second half and lost in overtime. Rewatching all three games now makes you think not only about the games themselves, but the presentation on TV.
It’s the late ’90s. We have both Cyclone Illustrated and the Internet, plus in-game statistics sponsored by a cell phone company. Gus Johnson will be calling the first two games, but he’s not quite GUS! JOHNSON! yet. Two years into the athletics program rebranding, Evil Cy lurks on the sidelines. In Virginia, Bill Fennelly’s second women’s team is losing its first ever NCAA Tournament game.
The letters are supposed to be in motion, cf. the wordmark logo. The illusion/appearance here is mixed at best. Player is Jacy Holloway.
Iowa State will wear its gold uniforms all three games, as the high seed in the first but the low seed in the second two. In all three games, few if any players on the floor sport visible tattoos.
The first two rounds are in the Palace at Auburn Hills, Michigan, hosted by the Mid-American Conference and its angular logo. It will be three more years until the Cyclones lose the de facto national championship game here. While the Palace is using a generic court, it’s a unique generic court, and not the uniform cookie-cutter court imposed a decade later. The regional semifinals and final are played in the Alamodome using the court from Texas-San Antonio.
A notable characteristic about the telecasts: Neither the scoreboard nor the clock are yet shown at all times — even when the UCLA game goes into overtime. When the scoreboard does appear, it takes up nearly the bottom quarter of the screen. Much of the game, all you see is the action on the floor. Compare that with today, when you can get bombarded with more data and ads than you know what to do with, and suddenly the minimalism is downright nostalgic. (On the other hand, the score, clock, and timeouts remaining are good things to know.)
Both Cincinnati and UCLA get called for traveling with less than a minute remaining in the second half, giving Iowa State the ball both times. Both times, a foul could have been called on Iowa State. Is it my imagination or do the officials just not call traveling like they used to?
The big difference between 1997 and 2012 gametimes is in the timeouts. ISU-UConn went to commercial eight times in the first half on March 15, 2012, while ISU-ISU went to commercial eight times the entire game on March 13, 1997. ISU-Cincinnati on March 15, 1997, had six in-game breaks total. The modern-day “bumpers” take up less time than you’d expect because the announcers are talking over them.
“While you’re rocking on the road to the Final Four,” Johnson says in a plug, “jump on the information superhighway with CBS Sports online. You’ll find breaking news, scores, highlights, and other great stuff at cbs-dot-sportsline-dot-com.” Remember, this is March 1997; the metaphor is still fresh. Only a quarter of Americans are online.
The starting lineup for the Illinois State game
The scores: (6) Iowa State 69, (11) Illinois State 57; (6) Iowa State 67, (3) Cincinnati 66; (2) UCLA 74, (3) Iowa State 73 (OT).
There are six key parts/moments in the UCLA game that add up to a case of heartburn for Cyclone fans today:
- Iowa State was up 46-30 at about the 16-minute mark when Klay Edwards took a charge — and the officials counted the basket by J.R. Henderson. “The ball wasn’t out of his hand, but they said the basket was good, then fine,” said color commentator Al McGuire, unconvinced. This was the basket that UCLA used to start chipping away at its deficit.
- ISU went nearly six minutes in the second half without a field goal.
- Kelvin Cato missed a layup with 1:10 remaining that would’ve given ISU a 1-point lead. It took a 3-pointer by Dedric Willoughby with 22 seconds left to tie it up for the last time in regulation.
- At the end of regulation, Iowa State had the ball with 1.4 seconds and the length of the court to go. It was thisclose to being one of the great buzzer-beaters in NCAA history. Edwards threw a deep heave to the opposite 3-point line, where Willoughby and a UCLA player got tangled up. The ball bounced directly to Jacy Holloway, who threw up an off-balance prayer that thunked between the rim and the backboard.
- With 1:49 to go in overtime, Kenny Pratt took an accidental elbow to the face that sent him to the floor — while UCLA took the ball and dunked on a 4-on-2 fast break before play was stopped. “The refs have to let the play go because UCLA has the numbers on the fast break,” McGuire said. (Curiously, this wasn’t the case in an incident in the Kentucky-Green Bay women’s game Monday night, when play was whistled dead immediately in much the same situation. Whether this is a change in the rules, difference in men vs. women, or just another case of Iowa State getting screwed by the officiating is unknown.)
- Finally, Cameron Dollar took the ball the length of the court in eight seconds and scored on a high-banked layup. It drew immediate comparisons to UCLA’s Tyrus Edney doing the same thing against Missouri two years earlier, in UCLA’s most recent championship. Edwards was unable to inbound the ball, and that’s all she wrote.
Iowa State avenged its loss to UCLA with a win in 2000, but its current Sweet 16 drought is 12 years.
Evil Cy doesn’t like the Bruins either.