Wishing everyone a blessed, Merry Christmas, and hoping all are celebrating the holiday with loved ones.
This Christmas Day marks 30 years since one of the amazing-and to this day rather overlooked-upsets in college basketball history. It was on this night in 1988 that UC Riverside-then an NCAA Division II school-stunned No. 4-ranked Iowa 110-92 in the championship game of the eight-team Chaminade Christmas Classic.
That’s right. A (then) Division II team took it to a Big Ten squad, an Iowa team in the latter stages of arguably the greatest three-year stretch in school history. The Hawkeyes’ run included three straight years never leaving the Associated Press top 20 (it was just 20 teams then, not 25), highlighted by a No. 1 ranking for a time two years earlier. Under Dr. Tom Davis there was an Elite Eight appearance in 1987 and a Sweet 16 the following year, and a total of seven NBA draft picks in that time, highlighted by three of the first 39 players selected in the 1989 NBA Draft, including two (B.J. Armstrong and Roy Marble) in the first round. It’s not an exaggeration to say Iowa was one of the elite powers in the sport at the time.
The Highlanders knocked off the undefeated, 10-0 Hawkeyes with what was at the time-and would be for many years-an almost unfathomable perimeter shooting display. UCR set an NCAA all-division record with 21 three-pointers, draining 21 of 36 from behind the half-moon line, to not just beat a top-five team but win going away.
(To indulge a little personal memory, this writer remembers attempting from the middle of Wisconsin to tune in a faraway Iowa radio broadcast of the game on the AM radio that night. I was 11, presumably one of the last to still scan the airwaves in search of any game one could hear a few minutes of, no matter how faint the signal. And while memories of that night are fuzzy now and the broadcast was too, it was incredible to hear through the static the play-by-play and score updates indicating that the vaunted Hawkeyes were getting challenged by a little Division II school.)
For those who see the Villanovas, Notre Dames, Marquettes and the like ring up 14-15 three-pointers in a game now several times a season, it may be a little harder to picture how awe-inspiring UC Riverside’s performance was. It might be said the Highlanders on that night were about 30 years ahead of their time.
The 1988-89 season was just the third with the three-pointer, and the average made threes per team in a game that year per NCAA records was 4.4-close to half of last year’s all-time high of 7.7. A team making 10 triples in a game was news at this time; to make 21 was literally almost unimaginable. Providence set the NCAA Tournament single-game record in 1987 with 14, a mark that lasted for three years until Loyola Marymount and its out-of-this-world offense hit 21 in blowing out Michigan in 1990. And UCR broke the NCAA record at the time by a full three triples-and did it against one of the top teams in the country.
UC Riverside wasn’t even supposed to be in the Chaminade tourney; the Highlanders were a last-minute addition after New Mexico State skipped out of the tournament late. UCR also barely made it out of the event’s first round, defeating host Chaminade in overtime before edging Eastern Washington by six points in the semis. On the other end, Iowa hadn’t even played a game closer than 18 points to start the season until getting by Saint Louis 83-80 in the Honolulu tournament’s semifinals.
UC Riverside was an excellent team; the Highlanders would go on to finish 30-4 and advance to the national semifinals in Division II that year, and were a frequent D-II tourney participant in those days and had three final four appearances. In fact, Riverside eventually made the move to NCAA Division I, where it has struggled mightily to match that success and has just one winning season since 2001.
For as incredible as the Highlanders’ triumph was, it has long slipped under the radar to a degree. For certain it was a different media climate at the time, but being played on Christmas night and so far away so late meant that of course the score did not make the next morning’s newspapers. Furthermore, it also was only three days later when another highly ranked, undefeated Big Ten team lost to another top Division II program, as Alaska-Anchorage shocked No. 2-ranked Michigan 70-66 in the Utah Classic, meaning UCR’s win wasn’t even the biggest surprise of the week.
That the game happened in the Chaminade Christmas tourney was appropriate in that the Silverswords are associated with the greatest upset in the sport’s history, beating Ralph Sampson and No. 1 Virginia in 1982. Chaminade’s precedent also is the stick by which all stunners are measured by, though, and is a standard that will be virtually impossible for any team to duplicate.
Still, UC Riverside’s victory deserves to go down as one of the all-time upsets in the sport’s history. It’s also a flashing neon sign of what makes college basketball special.
We’ve often waxed nostalgic about the old Great Alaska Shootout and its eventual demise, and also are critical of the Maui Invitational reducing Chaminade’s role in that tourney, but there always was something special about Alaska-Anchorage frequently beating or giving Division I schools a game. The same goes for anytime Chaminade was in a game into the second half at Maui.
Such games like these give college basketball a flavor that can’t be duplicated, and at a time of year in the non-conference season when it’s sorely needed. While some no doubt enjoy seeing major conference schools play each other out of conference, the fact is their games frequently provide little different from what we see in all of January and February when such schools already play regularly.
A UC Riverside getting a shot at Iowa, playing for a tournament title and then capitalizing on it is exactly the type of story college hoops can capitalize on. The sport sure is better when it has stories like them and a team like UCR gets a chance at such an accomplishment, no matter how tiny that chance is.
Today’s Menu:
- The highlight of Christmas Day this year is the title game of the Diamond Head Classic. Indiana State takes on TCU (9 p.m. Eastern, ESPN2). Among the number of lousy traits of today’s current NCAA exempt tournament format is that it results in frequent double-dipping with teams playing within a tournament but also outside it as well. The Horned Frogs just dumped the Sycamores by 20 only nine days ago in Fort Worth. In ISU’s defense, it had just gotten transfers Christian Williams and Cooper Neese eligible before that contest, and both are acclimating themselves to the team. An excellent three-point shooting team this season (45.5%), Indiana State also made just 3 of 16 triples in that first matchup; if the Sycamores can shoot closer to their norm, maybe they can hang with a TCU team that is hitting its stride since Jaylen Fisher came back.
- The third-place game has Bucknell against UNLV (6:30 p.m., ESPNU). A two-win trip for the Bison would be a major success and confidence builder heading into Patriot League play.
- Rhode Island and host Hawaii meet for fifth place (3:30 p.m., ESPNU). The Rainbow Warriors already have two wins over teams from the Pac-12 this year and now shoot for an Atlantic 10 team.
- Colorado, thought by some to be a contender in the Pac-12, tries to avoid a winless trip to Hawaii when it faces UNC Charlotte for seventh place (1 p.m., ESPNU).
Merry Christmas to all.
Twitter: @HoopvilleAdam
