Mark Montieth: Can Purdue win it all?

Purdue’s basketball team will be playing in the Final Four this weekend, in case you hadn’t got wind of that yet, starting with Saturday’s game against North Carolina State. Should the Boilermakers win, as they are favored to do, they will play for the national championship on Monday.

It seems appropriate they would be playing in the final game on the same day as a total solar eclipse, given the rarity of both events. But an eclipse, total or otherwise, is a routine occurrence compared with Purdue appearances in the Final Four. Those have happened just twice since the NCAA tournament began in 1939—in 1969 and again in 1980.

It’s no wonder, then, that this weekend has the feel of a celestial event for Purdue fans. The collective memory of the random incidents that played a part in preventing previous Purdue teams from advancing to the Final Four—untimely injuries, a missed free throw, a banked-in 3-pointer—had aroused an otherworldly angst among Purdue’s fan base. That’s why, when the Boilermakers eliminated Tennessee on Sunday, there was such a great outpouring of (1) relief, (2) joy and (3) tears. It had been a long time coming. Forty-four years to be exact.

Brian Walker, point guard for the 1980 Final Four team that played in Market Square Arena, was among the wet-eyed watchers from a vacation residence in Cabo, Mexico, as the final seconds ticked off Sunday’s victory over Tennessee.

“A lot of emotions were unleashed,” he said.

It’s probably foolish to compare basketball teams across eras, because the game changes so much. Is this Purdue team better than the previous two that reached the Final Four? Hard to say. The ’69 team had three players who went on to have significant professional careers, while the ’80 team had the No. 1 pick in that year’s NBA draft and another future first-round draft pick.

This season’s team doesn’t appear to feature any of those assets, but much of its strength lies in what it lacks: injuries, internal conflict and distractions.

1969

Purdue’s 1969 Final Four team remains the most star-studded in school history.

Shooting guard Rick Mount was a first-team All-American who averaged 33.3 points (without a 3-point line) that season while hitting better than 50% of his field goal attempts. He went on to play five seasons in the American Basketball Association, two with the Indiana Pacers, then retired.

Point guard Bill Keller, like Mount a former Indiana Mr. Basketball, averaged 13.2 points that season. He was the first winner of the Frances Pomeroy Naismith award as the best player in the country under 6 feet tall and went on to play seven seasons with the ABA Pacers. Herm Gilliam was a standout athlete who averaged 15.7 points and 9.7 rebounds as a 6-foot-3 forward. He went on to become the eighth overall pick in the NBA draft and play eight seasons, finishing his career as a member of Portland’s championship team in 1977.

The team also included 7-foot center Chuck Bavis, a high school All-American who rarely got to shoot because of the talent around him but was a physical presence inside.

Talent doesn’t mean much if compromised by injury, however. Gilliam suffered an Achilles heel injury late in the season and missed Purdue’s first game in the NCAA tournament, which included just 25 teams that year. Bavis followed by separating his shoulder in that game, a 20-point victory over Miami of Ohio, and was lost for the rest of the tournament. Gilliam returned but wasn’t full strength.

Purdue advanced to the final four (which wasn’t yet trademarked and capitalized) with an overtime victory over Marquette, courtesy of Mount’s game-winning jumper at the final buzzer. It easily defeated North Carolina, 92-65, in the semifinal game, with Mount scoring 36 points and limiting Tar Heels star Charlie Scott to 16. But Keller, who scored 20 points, suffered a knee injury in the final minutes and had to be injected with a painkiller to play in the championship game.

Purdue had held UCLA’s All-American, Lew Alcindor, to 17 and 18 points in the teams’ regular-season meetings over the previous two seasons with a collapsing zone defense. But without Bavis’ height and girth as an anchor, Alcindor easily scored 37 points while hitting 15 of 20 shots against Purdue’s man-to-man defense and grabbing 20 rebounds in a 92-72 victory.

“Chuck could body him up and keep him away from the basket,” Keller said. “We were in trouble without him.”

His presence probably wouldn’t have mattered, though, given Purdue’s errant shooting.

Mount experienced a first-half nightmare. After hitting jump shots that might be 3-pointers today on Purdue’s first two possessions, he missed 14 in a row. He recovered to finish with 28 points, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

His misery had company, though. Keller and Gilliam, both compromised physically, combined to hit six of 31 shots.

The game haunts Mount to this day. He says he always played “in a zone,” unable to hear crowd noise during the game. But after hitting his first two shots, his filter began failing him. He recalls asking coach George King to take him out for a few minutes to collect his thoughts, but King declined, thinking it was only a matter of time before one of college basketball’s all-time great shooters regained his touch.

“What caused that … in the biggest game of your life?” Mount wonders now. “That still puzzles my mind. I’ll never know.”

The ’69 Purdue team gathered 20 years later for a reunion. Keller recalls Gilliam saying he never got over that loss. Keller did, though. The ’69 UCLA team was on its way to winning seven consecutive national championships, and Alcindor, who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, remains one of basketball’s all-time greatest players.

“I feel proud that we got that far and played against the best,” Keller said. “We didn’t play our best, but we had guys who were hurt, and Bavis was out. We did our best. You have to feel proud we got where we did.

“It’s not a thorn in my side at this point.”

1980

Purdue’s 1980 Final Four team was healthy physically, but not mentally.

Its coach, Lee Rose, was regarded as a brilliant tactician and presented a genteel Southern personality to the public, but some players resented his harsh verbal jabs during practices that seemed personal.

“He could cut to the bone,” recalls Keller, who was back at Purdue as an assistant on Rose’s staff after his playing career ended. “There were several guys who did not like playing for Lee.”

Rose also clashed with King, who had become Purdue’s athletic director by then, and was bothered by what he considered a lack of financial commitment from the university’s administrators—a common complaint among Purdue coaches over the years. Rumors were circulating throughout Final Four weekend that Rose would leave after the season, which Rose brushed off as best he could in the press conferences.

Still, amid the uncomfortable undercurrents, Purdue had Joe Barry Carroll, the first player taken in the NBA draft that year, and Keith Edmonson, the 10th overall pick in 1982, along with a solid cast of supporting players. After playing their first two tournament games on their home court, the Boilermakers went on to defeat bluebloods Indiana and Duke in Lexington to reach the Final Four.

It seemed like a dream scenario, playing in Indianapolis at MSA. It didn’t turn out that way. Purdue’s spring break curtailed fan turnout, particularly among students, and taking a bus down Interstate 65 to the games made them seem ordinary. The Boilermakers lost to UCLA in the semifinal game, 67-62.

Today, Walker says the scouting report failed to recognize UCLA star Kiki Vandeweghe’s quickness. Another Purdue player, Drake Morris, says Rose should have gone with a smaller lineup. He openly stated his desire for Rose to leave after hearing the rumors.

Regardless of the reasons for the defeat, Purdue’s players admitted in the postgame press conference they had not been at their best. They were two nights later in the consolation game when they crushed Iowa, 75-58, for whatever that was worth.

“We would have been better off if we hadn’t been playing in our backyard in Indy,” said Walker, who was among Rose’s supporters. “There was no fanfare. We would have been better as a unit in a hotel somewhere else.”

Not that a different locale would have solved everything.

“We didn’t have the camaraderie that they have today,” Walker said. “We would go to practice, have training table, and then everybody went their way. We weren’t together like they are now.”

And now

Indeed, this version of a Purdue team seems to have everything in order heading into the third Final Four in school history. Its players are by all accounts well-connected on and off the court. They will be playing far away in Phoenix, which should help minimize distractions. There are no significant injuries. No rumors of Painter leaving after the season. Unlike the ’69 team, their starting center, Zach Edey, is available. Like the ’80 team, he is dominant.

That’s why Keller, Mount and Walker are optimistic about Purdue’s chances this weekend, beyond simply wanting them to win.

Mount, who knows something about focus in a Final Four game, likes the team’s mental state.

“They might win it, because nothing is going to get them out of focus, I don’t think,” he said. “They know what they want like we knew what we wanted. There’s no hot-dogging; they just want to win. That’s how we were.”

Keller, who has seen what happens when a team has mixed feelings about the coach, likes how the players respond to Painter.

“I’ve always liked Painter’s demeanor on the sideline,” he said. “He encourages his kids and gives them freedom. But if you’re going to win, you’ve got to have the players, and you have to have the players healthy and ready to go.”

Walker, a season-ticket holder who will be in Phoenix this weekend, has seen enough of them to believe. He texted Painter before Purdue’s game at Illinois on March 5 to say his team would win it all if it had the focus and will to win that game three days after clinching a tie for the Big Ten title. And it did.

He stands by that prediction.

“I thought Tennessee would be the toughest game,” Walker said. “I think they’re going to win it all.”

A national championship would eclipse a lot of bad memories.•

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Montieth, an Indianapolis native, is a longtime newspaper reporter and freelance writer. He is the author of three books: “Passion Play: Coach Gene Keady and the Purdue Boilermakers,” “Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indianapolis,” and “Extra Innings: My Life in Baseball,” with former Indianapolis Indians President Max Schumacher.