Ex-San Francisco coach still rues loss that knocked undefeated Dons off course
There was a thought going into the weekend that a Kentucky loss in the SEC tournament might not have been the worst thing for the Wildcats' NCAA championship hopes, even if it ended their undefeated season.
After all, history suggests that UK will not escape the NCAA tournament unscathed, bound to eventually meet the same fate as 2014 Wichita State, 1991 UNLV and 1979 Indiana State before them in their quest to complete men's college basketball's first perfect run since Indiana in 1976.
Plus, there was no changing Kentucky's status as the No. 1 overall seed, regardless of what happened in Nashville, so why not get a loss out of the way before it's too late, especially if it alleviates the pressure of being unbeaten and affords your team a couple extra days of rest? Certainly John Calipari would rather have an NCAA title with one loss than an SEC title and a 34-0 record going into the Big Dance with nothing more to show for it in the end.
But Bob Gaillard will tell you that there's a downside to seeing a perfect run end just before the NCAA tournament. He knows because he's been there, as the coach at the University of San Francisco in 1977, when his undefeated, top-ranked team dropped its final pre-tourney tune-up and things only got worse from there.
At the time, USF already had one perfect season to its name -- in 1956, the second of back-to-back titles with a fella named Bill Russell, who averaged a 20-20 -- and the 1976-77 squad was the best the school had seen since.
Led by future NBA first-rounders Bill Cartwright, Winford Boynes and James Hardy, San Francisco beat St. John's, Arizona State and Houston in the Rainbow Classic in Hawaii in late December -- the last of three early-season tournament crowns for the Dons -- and, at 15-0, replaced Michigan as the No. 1 team in the country. The Dons tore through the next 14 games, as well, running the table in the West Coast Conference by an average of 19.3 points.
"When you are No. 1, it's amazing how you get the other guy's best shot," Gaillard told FOX Sports in a phone interview last week. "It's amazing the performances. I'd go scout a game and the other team would just not look very good at all, and then against us, it's like, 'Oh my God, we're already down 10.' So it's a lot of pressure, and it mounted as we progressed. But then there's also a feeling of, 'Well, we'll overcome. We'll win.' And obviously we were."
As a result, USF took a 29-0 record into the season finale, on the road against a 19-6 Notre Dame team that had been ranked second in the nation before consecutive losses to Kentucky and Princeton (the beginning of a 1-5 slide that would eventually leave the Irish outside the top 25).
Based on records alone, there shouldn't have been reason for Gaillard's team to be concerned, but there was a certain mystique that came with playing in South Bend -- it was, after all, the site of UCLA's only two losses between March 7, 1970 and Jan. 19, 1974 -- and Gaillard wasn't thrilled by the prospect of closing the regular season halfway across the country.
"ESPN did not exist yet, and (television executive) Eddie Einhorn and (Providence coach) Dave Gavitt tried to coordinate some national TV games and they would try to make them appealing," Gaillard said. "Sometimes the timing of when the games were scheduled was sketchy. We didn't want to play Notre Dame at the end of the year, but TV and money kind of dictated a lot of things, so we did."
As it turned out, Gaillard's concerns were well-founded. Duck Williams scored 25 points for the Irish, and the Notre Dame fans were named the MVP of the game by NBC, as San Francisco ended up falling 93-82 at the Joyce Center, ending the Dons' bid for perfection.
"It was devastating, but it was like, 'OK, we got it over with,' and went back," Gaillard said, "You could rationalize a few things because of how those TV games came about."
Following the loss, Gaillard says he began to sense some dissension throughout the team.
"We were young, and there was nothing specific I can put my finger on, but any time a team loses, you kind of look around and wonder, 'Why didn't I do this? Why didn't he do that? Why didn't coach do this?' " Gaillard said. "So it throws a little bit of doubt on you. ... Everybody kind of said (the loss was a good thing), but all I knew is that we lost and when you lose, there are some doubts in players. Strange things go through your head in those situations."
Fortunately, San Francisco still had the NCAA tournament to look forward to, and even with the Notre Dame result, the Dons were thought to be one of the favorites to win it.
At the time, the field had only 32 teams, and USF was a lock to be in, by virtue of winning its regular-season conference title. (At the time, postseason conference tournaments were far less prevalent.) In addition, a team's region in the tournament actually meant something in that era, so in '77, USF drew UNLV -- a former West Coast Conference foe in its second year as an independent -- in a first-round matchup in Tucson.
"They used to be in our league just prior to them jumping, and I remember (Jerry) Tarkanian being in our gym, and he said, 'I'm out of this league. I'll never be in a league I can't dominate,' " Gaillard said.
"Anyway, Vegas was a nightmare," he continued. "Seeding-wise, if that happened nowadays, people would be jumping up and down going crazy because Vegas was a tremendous basketball team."
UNLV players accounted for six of the first 69 selections in the 1977 NBA Draft, and Reggie Theus was taken ninth overall in 1978, one of five more Rebels chosen that year. The '77 UNLV team set an NCAA record for most points in a season, thanks to a record 23 games with 100 points or more -- the 21st of which came against San Francisco in a 121-95 drubbing that ended the Dons' season.
Gaillard won't go as far as to blame the UNLV defeat on the loss to Notre Dame -- the Rebels did reach the Final Four that year, and Gaillard says they were "perfectly suited" to beat his USF squad and might have been favored regardless -- but it's tough not to wonder whether a 30-0 San Francisco might have found a way to win that game, whereas a 29-1 San Francisco could not.
"I think it could have turned out different if we'd won (the Notre Dame game)," Gaillard said. "But better yet, if the Notre Dame game had occurred in the middle of the year -- say we became 19-1 instead of 29-1 -- I think that would have been the best situation. When that happens, obviously, everything a coach says has a little more strength to it -- every comment has a little more validity."
When it comes to teams pursuing perfection like today's Kentucky, however, Gaillard says it's probably just as well that it didn't find out whether losing would help or hurt its chances at a championship. Though there are certainly benefits to unloading the burden of being undefeated, it's better in the end to just keep on winning.
"When you lose, two things happen: You now know you can lose, and you've just proven (to everyone else) that you're definitely beatable," Gaillard said. "That aura of invincibility is dramatically gone. I think you can liken it to any other sport. As soon as a great like (Roger) Federer got beat, other guys were like, 'Hell, maybe I can beat him, too.' "
Gaillard would go on to be named 1977 Coach of the Year, have a successful stint as a baseball executive with the San Francisco Giants and win 366 games over 22 seasons as the coach at Lewis & Clark College, but he still can't help but wonder what might have been had he never scheduled that game with Notre Dame.
"All the time," Gaillard said. "You can't help it. I might forget some of my grandsons' names, but I can remember plays from 1977. You remember those things distinctly, and you always go back. Fortunately, history forgets about an awful lot of things."
You can follow Sam Gardner on Twitter or email him at samgardnerfox@gmail.com.
