Published Wednesday | March 19, 2008
1977 NCAA Champs: The slap in Omaha that kick-started Marquette
BY DIRK CHATELAIN
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Al McGuire might've been going out a loser, but he wasn't leaving without a fight.
Mark Lavin, now living in Omaha, was a walk-on at Marquette during their 1977 championship season. "I was lucky enough to walk on with Al McGuire and walk out with Al McGuire," he said.So at halftime on the night the NCAA tournament first hit Omaha, McGuire stormed into the Civic Auditorium locker room.
He grabbed his stubborn sharpshooter Bernard Toone, shoved him against a wall, stuck a finger in his face and threatened his life.
Then McGuire, the son of an Irish immigrant who grew out of his father's New York bar and into one of the game's finest coaches at Marquette, the technical foul machine who once knelt before officials at DePaul and begged them to take his car, his house, his job, but not this game, the 48-year-old man who announced in the middle of that 1977 campaign that he was calling it quits after the season, slapped Toone hard.
Across the face.
What happened next? Depends on who tells the story. Omahan Mark Lavin, a freshman walk-on for Marquette that year, recalls a few bodies crashing into a table, teammates stepping in to break it up.
What happened next? Everyone agrees. Marquette took the court for the second half of its first-round tussle with Cincinnati and turned a three-point deficit into a 15-point win. Sixteen days later, the Warriors were national champions.
"That was the beginning," Lavin said. "You don't know what sparks a team, what keeps the fire going during the entire tournament. But I have to believe there's something inside that carries you through each game. It started here in Omaha."
Marquette's sweep through the bracket in '77 marked several beginnings.
It was Omaha's first crack at the NCAAs. It was the first Cinderella run in the post-UCLA era, helping cultivate the idea of "March Madness." And it was the first of three national champions who started their runs in Nebraska.
Considering that the state has hosted the opening round(s) just four times, that's a pretty nifty batting average.
Kansas, a six seed in 1988 who went on to a championship, started in Lincoln. In 1980, Darrell Griffith and second-seeded Louisville did likewise.
We may not know until the Final Four in San Antonio April 5 to 7 if Omaha again represents the launching point. But championship contenders are coming to town.
Kansas may have the highest performance ceiling of any team in the country. Wisconsin hasn't lost a game since Feb. 9. USC sounds like a long shot, but the Trojans come in with the same No. 6 seed and 21-11 record as the '88 KU team. And like 20 years ago, the Midwest regional is in Detroit.
For 31 years, Omaha's history with the tournament started and ended with McGuire and his band of streetballers: Butch Lee, Bo Ellis, Jerome Whitehead, Jim Boylen, Bernard Toone.
When McGuire announced on Dec. 17, 1976, his plans to quit, the Warriors were considered one of the nation's best teams. But they dropped three straight games in February, and suddenly, they weren't so popular on campus.
You'll find out who your friends are, McGuire told players.
They went into the tournament ranked 16th in the country, 20-7. It was respectable, but nothing like the records of UNLV or Michigan or Kentucky.
Then came Omaha.
After Toone improvised on a set play and threw up a wild shot that went over the backboard, McGuire pulled him from the game. Walking to the bench, McGuire told Toone that he'd cut off his hand if he took another shot like that.
Toone responded with a few words of his own, unprintable words. Then halftime and the locker room chaos. Lavin remembers McGuire basically checking out on the team. This is easy for me, he said.
I'm walking out the door once we lose. My career is done. If you want to keep playing, it's up to you.
"It was a risky move," Lavin said.
It was a classic McGuire motivational ploy.
"Sometimes I wonder, 'How did it happen?'" McGuire told the Milwaukee Journal, 10 years after the championship run. "I had seven or eight teams better than that.
"One reason, I think, was the fight . . . I hit him, and the whole room ignited to break us apart, and for some reason, right there, was a championship wristwatch. We came out in the second half . . . We had the Big Mo, and the next thing I knew, I was crying (in Atlanta, site of the Final Four) where Sherman burned the city down."
Good fortune followed the Warriors from Omaha. They rallied to beat Kansas State in the round of 16. Wake Forest went down in the regional final.
In the Final Four, they were tied with North Carolina-Charlotte with three seconds left when Lee heaved a full-court pass toward the Marquette basket. It was deflected and landed in Whitehead's hands. He scored at the buzzer: 51-49.
They beat North Carolina in the championship.
Marquette's run was a pivotal point in the tournament's history, Lavin says. It generated appeal in ways that John Wooden and Bill Walton never could. Here was a colorful coach one defeat from retirement leading a team that didn't expect to win.
The tournament hadn't had a story line so compelling since 1966, when all-black Texas Western beat all-white Kentucky.
McGuire left the bench for the press table, covering NCAA tournaments for more than two decades for NBC and CBS. He became a Hall of Famer in 1992. He died in 2001 at age 72.
Lavin, the chief administrative officer at West Corporation, moved to Omaha 19 years ago. He was a Creighton season ticket-holder when the Jays still played at the Civic Auditorium. He thought often of the '77 game against Cincinnati.
He took the last shot at DePaul that season. Played in a few games here and there. But the NCAA tournament? He watched the whole thing from the bench.
His sophomore year, Lavin tore his Achilles tendon. He never played another minute of college basketball.
"I was lucky enough to walk on with Al McGuire and walk out with Al McGuire."
