In the shadows of Arizona's tournament win over LIU, is a 1951 controversy | Greg Hansen

Arizona has won 15 first-round NCAA Tournament games by 15 or more points, so many that you've probably forgotten these scores:

– Arizona 90, Cornell 50

– Arizona 90, Valparaiso 51

– Arizona 99, Nicholls State 60

– Arizona 94, Robert Morris 60

– Arizona 80, Vermont 51

You get the idea. They are certainly not throw-away games, not after Arizona's sad history of losing first-round games to 15th seeds Princeton and Santa Clara, but they are easily forgotten in the madness created each March.

But Friday's stress-free 92-58 first-round victory over LIU has too much history to let it go without a few comments.

Do you realize that from the time Bear Down Gym opened in 1926 to a Sweet 16 victory over No. 3 UNLV in 1976, the greatest victory in UA school history was against LIU? That's a half-century of hoops. The LIU team of 1951 was the best team Arizona beat across 50 years.

It was so long ago that LIU was then known as the Blackbirds. (Today, they are the Sharks).

There was so much drama attached to the 1951 Arizona-LIU game at Bear Down Gym that the New York Times and New York Daily News turned it into headlines.

It began in December 1950 when Arizona played (and beat) former No. 1-ranked CCNY in a doubleheader at Madison Square Garden. LIU played Western Kentucky in the nightcap of that twin bill. Trouble brewed for the Wildcats.

Ex-Arizona basketball player Harold "Porque" Patten, then a congressman, and UA assistant athletic director Charles Tribolet sat behind the LIU bench and cheered loudly for Western Kentucky. LIU coach Clair Bee told reporters that Patten and Tribolet used racial terms while yelling at his players. Security escorted Tribolet and Patten from their seats and kicked them out of the famous arena.

Bee then threatened to cancel the scheduled Jan. 28 game against Arizona at Bear Down Gym, but later softened his view when UA coach Fred Enke assured him that LIU's Black players would be treated well in Tucson. Enke and Bee became friends; when LIU and Arizona played in a late-January doubleheader bordering San Francisco at Cow Palace two days before they were to meet at Bear Down Gym, LIU and Arizona shared a plane to Tucson.

All reserved tickets for the game had been sold by Jan. 3. A record Bear Down Gym crowd of 4,650 squeezed in. Arizona had a 72-game winning streak at Bear Down Gym.

Star columnist Abe Chanin wrote, "this could be the starting point toward making Tucson the basketball capital of the Southwest."

But there was trouble. The two referees called LIU for four technical fouls. LIU's best player, All-American Sherman White, fouled out. The LIU manager accused the official scorekeeper of shifting fouls from another LIU player to White, who missed the final 8:15.

The No. 14 Wildcats rallied to beat the No. 2 Blackbirds 62-61, but Bee, the angry LIU coach, accused Arizona of cheating.

"They took the game away from us just as everyone on the West Coast told us they would," Bee told reporters. "They'll never get another (ranked) team to play here. If I had the greatest ball club in the world, I wouldn't be able to beat Arizona here."

The two referees, both from Phoenix, struck back.

"There isn't enough money in the world to make it worthwhile to take such abuse from Clair Bee," said referee Willard Taylor.

"LIU was a bunch of poor sports," said referee W.H. Kisner. "The world's worst."

Said Enke: "The referees gave us no advantage at all. We were called for 24 fouls. LIU, 19."

Imagine that much drama in college basketball today. ESPN would do a documentary on it.

Instead, memories of the 1951 Arizona-LIU game faded away.

When TNT studio host Adam Lefkoe began Friday's preview of the UA-LIU game, he incorrectly said "LIU beat Arizona the last time they played in 1951."

Today, who cares? Time heals all wounds, even in college basketball. Survive and advance, right?