March 27, 1988: Arizona beats North Carolina to qualify for its first Final Four
At Media Day for the 1987-88 Pac-10 basketball season, USC coach George Raveling walked to the podium at a Los Angeles airport hotel, adjusted the microphone and held aloft a copy of the Arizona Daily Star.
“This story says Arizona is the big favorite to win the championship,” said Raveling, a quotable and entertaining speaker. “It says Sean Elliott is the best player in the league and that Lute Olson is establishing a dynasty. It says they might be the first team in the Pac-10 ever to go 18-0. Well, why don’t we just give them the trophy today and save us all some time?”
And then Raveling laughed.
Arizona was coming off a disappointing 18-12 season and had gone 0-3 in the NCAA Tournament under Olson. True, the Pac-10 was at an ebb, struggling to become relevant after five years as one of America’s least successful basketball conferences. But the return of point guard Steve Kerr from a knee injury, combined with starters Elliott, Anthony Cook, Tom Tolbert and Craig McMillan, gave the Wildcats some national attention.
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Arizona opened the season ranked No. 17 in the AP preseason poll. By Christmas, the Wildcats were No. 1.
It didn’t take long for Arizona to establish itself as a Final Four contender. The Wildcats stunned No. 9 Michigan and No. 3 Syracuse to win the Great Alaska Shootout. They had an even better December, winning at No. 3 Iowa in Olson’s emotional return to his former school, and then shot down No. 9 Duke in the championship game of the Fiesta Bowl Classic.
“Arizona has had the best preseason of any team in history,” CBS analyst Billy Packer said after the Duke game. “I think they can win the national championship.”
The Wildcats would be ranked No. 1 for a total of six weeks.
Elliott became a consensus All-American, Kerr established three-point shooting records that few believed possible, Cook and Tolbert became future NBA players. Arizona’s only losses came in wild, inhospitable road venues at New Mexico and Stanford. By Selection Sunday, the Wildcats were 31-2 and a No. 1 seed.
Someone wrote a song called “Wild About the Cats.”
Someone filmed a documentary, “Memories ’88.”
A marquee outside a local business said, “Air Lute, All the Way to KC.”
In the NCAA Tournament, Arizona beat Cornell by 40, Seton Hall by 29 and Iowa by 20 in a rematch of the epic game in Iowa City three months earlier. All that remained was a much-anticipated showdown at the Seattle Kingdome with North Carolina and Hall of Fame coach Dean Smith.
“This is what we’ve wanted all year,” said Kerr. “If you’re going to get to the Final Four, you have to beat a team like North Carolina.”
Olson rebuffed the critics, including those in the media audience in Seattle, who knew how weak the Pac-10 of 1988 had been.
“We felt we’ve had a great ball club all year long,” Olson said. “I don’t think a lot of other people did. I’ve heard all kinds of things like, “Well, wait’ll they’re tested,’ or ‘How good are they going to be when somebody is right there with the pressure on?’”
The Tar Heels led 28-26 at the half, and Olson didn’t hold back. He told Tolbert, a senior center, that if he didn’t play with more fire, the Wildcats would lose.
“I asked Tom, ‘Don’t you want to go to the Final Four?’” Olson said.
Trailing 42-40 with 14:09 remaining, Tolbert answered his coach. He scored on a twisting, backward, blind layup and was fouled by UNC’s J.R. Reid. The three-point play gave Arizona the lead. Five minutes later it was 55-46 and Arizona was in control. UA would win 70-52 as Tolbert would score 21 points.
His three-point play is probably the seminal shot/play in UA basketball history. It fueled the team’s drive to its first Final Four and won what some insist is the most meaningful game in school history.
At game’s end, Smith knew the better team had won.
“We did better than anyone else,” he said with a half smile.
“They only beat us by 18 points instead of 20.”
Arizona shot 54.9 percent. Its underrated defense held the Tar Heels to 35.7 percent shooting .
Arizona flew home from Seattle that night and drove directly to McKale Center. At about 10 p.m., a crowd of almost 8,000 fans sat in the seats and cheered as Olson and his wife, Bobbi, led the team to center court for a late-night celebration.
Where are they now? Tolbert is a sports talk-show host in San Francisco and part of the Golden State Warriors’ radio broadcast crew. McMillan is the head basketball coach at Santa Rosa Junior College near San Francisco, where he won the state championship in 2013.
How he did it: “I wasn’t very amazed,” Tolbert said of his game-changing three-point shot. “I used to mess around in my driveway when I was little with shots like that all the time. It wasn’t the shot itself; it was having somebody that weighs 300 pounds come down on me. I thought it was Hulk Hogan or something coming down off the top rope.”
