The NCAA rematch that wasn’t: Loyola vs. Cincinnati, 55 years later

Vic Rouse for the epic win.

Vic Rouse for the epic win.

Nothing against Nevada, but the hope here was that Cincinnati would face Loyola-Chicago in a South Regional semifinal at Philips Arena on Thursday. A previous Cincy-Loyola game remains my first memory of college basketball, though I can’t claim that my recollection is vivid. I was 7, watching on black-and-white TV in Maysville, Ky.

They played for for the 1963 NCAA championship. Maybe you’re old enough to have seen it, too. If not, you missed one of the greatest finals this tournament has ever produced. As much as we remember Texas Western’s victory over Kentucky three years later for its galvanic impact, Loyola over Cincinnati carried societal weight of its own – and was a much better game.

The Bearcats were within a game of what would have been a record third consecutive national title. They were gracing the Final Four – which was staged at Louisville’s Freedom Hall, less than a two-hour drive down I-71 – for fifth year running. Their first two losing appearances came with Oscar Robertson, then and maybe still the greatest non-center in the history of college basketball. Only after the Big O went pro did Cincinnati break through, beating Ohio State – which had Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, Larry Siegfried and a good-shooting reserve named Bobby Knight – in back-to-back title games.

The leading scorers from Cincinnati’s first two championship teams – forward Bob Wiesenhahn and center Paul Hogue, known as Tall Paul – were gone. The ’63 Bearcats featured the shooter Ron Bonham and the frontcourt duo of George Wilson, a 6-8 center, and Tom Thacker, a 6-2 forward. (Yes, times have changed.) The Bearcats were regarded as the nation’s best defensive team –there was no KenPom to verify – and arrived at the Final Four having lost only once, that coming at Wichita State by one point.

Put simply, Cincinnati was about to become UCLA just before UCLA became UCLA. (The Bruins’ run of 10 championships in 12 years would begin the next March.) College basketball was then a regional sport, but the Bearcats had become its standard-bearer. They’d been ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press poll every week of the season. As for Loyola …

The Chicago school – then known as Loyola (Ill.) – began the season ranked No. 4 by AP; it entered the tournament No. 3. (No seedings then.) It thumped the nation’s No. 2 team, the Duke of Art Heyman and Jeff Mullins, 95-74 in the Final Four. That was Loyola coach’s George Ireland’s calling card: His team played fast and scored lots of points. The Ramblers averaged 91.3 points, breaking 100 in 11 of 31 games. They beat Tennessee Tech 111-42 in their NCAA opener.

Loyola, which featured four African-American starters, was paired against SEC champ Mississippi State in the regional semis. (Nobody called it the Sweet 16 back then, just as the Final Four wasn’t yet the Final Four.) Mississippi governor Ross Barnett ordered the all-white Maroons, as State was then nicknamed, not to play the game. The legislature and judiciary got involved. A restraining order was issued to prevent the team from leaving the state.

Coach Babe McCarthy and his players ignored it. The team had to slip out of Mississippi. (There was even a decoy strategy, which turned out to be unnecessary, involving the subs.) The Maroons flew to East Lansing, Mich., site of the game. Loyola’s Jerry Harkness, who is black, would say later that he recalled nothing about the game, which the Ramblers won 61-51. He remembered only the pregame handshake with State captain Joe Dan Gold, which became a famous photograph. Much later, the event would be dubbed the “Game of Change.”

Eight days later, the Ramblers and Bearcats – with seven African-American starters between them – met for the championship. Cincinnati’s defense took immediate hold. Loyola missed 13 of its first 14 shots. Cincy led 29-21 at the half, 45-30 with 13:56 remaining. The Bearcats took to holding the ball, as was their wont when ahead. (No shot clock then.)

(Personal aside: As we watched, I remember my dad – who wasn’t one for pronouncements – saying, “Tony Yates can dribble that ball all night.”

The expert ballhandler Yates indeed did much dribbling, but Cincinnati missed free throws and kept throwing the ball away. All but beaten, Loyola drew close. With 12 seconds left and Bearcats leading 53-52, the Bearcats’ Larry Shingleton was fouled. He made the first. The second would have given Cincy an unprecedented third title. (No 3-point shot, either.) He missed.

Loyola’s Les Hunter – known as Big Game Hunter – snatched the rebound. Ron Miller pushed the ball upcourt. (Bearcats fans insisted he traveled. He probably did.) He found the All-American Harkness on the left wing. His baseline runner with six seconds remaining forced overtime.

The final minute of OT found Loyola with the ball in a tie game, holding for a last shot. Red Rush, the Ramblers’ play-by-play man, told his radio audience: “I guarantee you one thing – they’ll give it to Harkness when it’s time.” They did. Again on the left baseline, Harkness rose to shoot, but surprising everyone, chose to pass to Hunter in the lane.

Hunter hoisted an ungainly fallaway. Vic Rouse, a 6-7 forward who was Hunter’s teammate at Nashville’s Pearl High, had position on the smaller Thacker on the right side of the hoop. Rouse caught the miss as it kerranged off the rim and guided it home. The shot often is described as a tip-in. It was not. It was a controlled follow.

Red Rush: “It’s over! It’s over! We won! We won the ballgame! Loyola won the ballgame! OHHHHH! We won – 60 to 58!”

Rouse’s putback was the first buzzer-beating title-winner in NCAA finals history. Lorenzo Charles’ catch-and-dunk would come two decades later, Kris Jenkins’ trey 23 years after that. You’ve seen the latter two a million times. You mightn’t have seen Rouse’s. There was no ESPN in 1963, no billion-dollar rights fee for the NCAA tournament, no March Madness app. Even now, there are no extended highlights to be found online of that monumental championship game.

For both Loyola and Cincinnati, there was little follow-through. The Bearcats, who reached those five Final Fours in succession, have graced one since – in 1992 under Bob Huggins, when they lost to Michigan’s Fab Five. Loyola won five tournament games en route to its title; it would win four over the next 44 years.

And since you asked: Sister Jean – the 98-year-old who has become the most famous nun since Mother Teresa – was not on hand for Loyola's 1963 triumph. Then a teacher at Mundelein College, an all-female school next door to Loyola, she was watching on a tiny black-and-white TV. "It was a (tape) delay thing," she told ESPN last year. "Of course, we didn't have cellphones, so nobody told us we won the game. All the fellas from (Loyola) came to our residence hall at Mundelein and got all the gals, and they walked down the white line on Sheridan Road saying, 'We won! We won!' "

Loyola and Cincinnati have met 10 times since. This would have been their first NCAA collision since that epic night 55 years ago. (The date of that game was March 23; Thursday will be March 22.) For this lover of hoops history, I wish it would have happened. Because the Bearcats still haven’t learned how to hold a lead, it won’t.

(More personal notes: A 7-year-old's foggy memory of that long-ago game was massively augmented by a story written in USA Today by my pal Mike Lopresti, who now works for NCAA.com, and one in Sports Illustrated by Ron Fimrite. SI's original game story by John Underwood also was fascinating. And there's a nice documentary regarding the 1963 Ramblers available on YouTube.)

(Oh, and one thing more. In 1996, Mason County High School – I went to Maysville; the two have since consolidated – made a terrible mistake and handed me an alumni award. I was introduced at the commencement by school superintendent Joe Dan Gold, meaning I was privileged to shake hands with the man who shook Jerry Harkness’ hand.)