With the 2019 NCAA tourney tipping off next month, we will spend this month taking a walk down memory lane with a choice collection of players/coaches who are celebrating an awesome anniversary this year. From a comeback win to clinch the 1954 tourney title (65th anniversary) through a last-second loss in the 2014 Final 4 (5th anniversary), these legends have all carved out a little piece of history in past Marches. We continue our series with Earl Tatum, who was an All-American under Coach Al McGuire at Marquette. McGuire is primarily known as a coach but was also a fine player who led St. John’s to a 3rd place finish at the 1951 NIT as team captain before spending several years in the NBA. John Wooden owned the 1st half of the 1970s at UCLA with 5 titles in a 6-year span from 1970-75, but McGuire was pretty successful at Marquette: 1970 NIT title, 1974 NCAA title game loss to NC State, and 1977 NCAA title game win over North Carolina. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with Earl about the 45th anniversary of the 1974 NCAA tourney run all the way to the title game and his memories of McGuire’s post-coaching career as a broadcaster.
Take me through the 1967 NIT when McGuire was coach at Marquette:
Jimmy Walker scored 36 PTS but missed a jumper at the end of the game in a 1-PT OT loss by Providence: was everyone stunned that Walker (who led the nation in scoring that year) missed the shot? Jimmy was a big name on the East Coast back then, so we got to see him on TV a lot.
NIT MVP Walt Frazier had 21 PTS/11 REB to lead Southern Illinois to a win over Marquette in the title game: could everyone tell back then that Frazier was going to become a legend? I did not know much about Frazier back then, but Coach Raymonds told us that he was great. He was unknown before that game.
In the 1969 NCAA tourney Rick Mount scored 26 PTS including a deep shot from the baseline with 2 seconds left in the final seconds of a 2-PT OT win by eventual national runner-up Purdue: where does “the most famous shot in Boilermaker history” rank among the most clutch shots that you have ever seen? I was in high school at the time and promised myself to go home from the playground in time to watch that game. I actually stayed too late to watch the game but I saw it on video later on. It was a heck of a shot: Purdue had a great club that year.
What are your memories of the 1970 NIT (after McGuire turned down an NCAA tourney bid in Texas to stay in New York City and play in the NIT, tourney MVP Dean Meminger scored 16 PTS to help beat McGuire’s alma mater St. John’s and win the title)? Marquette had some wild uniforms back then and Dean was a New York guy. I was receiving a lot of recruiting mail from Indiana at the time but Al had a way of having his own guys convince players to come to Marquette. I knew that I was going there 1 day when Al started eating off of my dinner plate!
Take me through the 1974 NCAA tourney:
Bo Ellis had 15 PTS/10 REB in a 2-PT win over Michigan: did the team start to feel it had enough momentum to win it all? I was just having a conversation about this the other day. I remember seeing Michigan coach Johnny Orr visiting our campus the previous spring: when we played them I noticed that they ran a lot of the same plays we did!
Tourney MOP David Thompson scored 21 PTS in a win by NC State in Greensboro, NC: how did McGuire feel about being named national COY while also becoming the 1st coach to ever be ejected from a title game? I would never blame that on Coach. In my opinion the refs will sometimes throw a coach out because he has a power trip.
Take me through the magical 1977 NCAA tourney:
A few months earlier McGuire had announced that he would retire at the end of the season to become vice chairman of Medalist Industries: how did he reach this decision? I graduated in 1976 and at the time we knew that we had a championship club in the making. I followed the program while I was a rookie with the Lakers: they were really up and down before making the tourney.
Butch Lee scored 26 PTS in a 1-PT win over Kansas State: how angry did McGuire get during his 7-minute postgame tirade (he was called for a technical foul in the 2nd half after an official thought that a choking signal McGuire gave to his team was directed at the official)? The refs back then were so edgy: you cannot watch the game and the coach at the same time! Al knew the game very well.
Lee made a full-court inbounds pass toward Ellis with 3 seconds left, but after the ball deflected to Jerome Whitehead his partially-blocked dunk hit the backboard/bounced off the rim/fell through the net as time expired in 2-PT win over NC-Charlotte: where does that rank among the most exciting finishes in school history? I have seen some amazing finishes by guys like Christian Laettner but that was 1 of the finest college games I have ever seen. I do not think they could ever duplicate that shot.
Tourney MOP Lee scored 19 PTS in an 8-PT win over North Carolina in the title game: what did it mean to him to win an NCAA title? He did not do cartwheels on TV: he just let it sink in. He had spent so much time to get to that point and was just happy to finally wear the crown. When I would see him later on he would talk about life, not basketball.
After retiring from coaching he became a popular commentator for NBC/CBS, where his on-air arguments with Billy Packer helped increase the popularity of college basketball across the nation: why did he get into broadcasting, and what made him such a viewer favorite? He is the kind of guy who just wanted to see what TV was like. People liked that he was just off-the-cuff with his old-time flavor of the game. If he could not remember someone’s name he would just give him a nickname!
McGuire and his brother Dick (who led the NBA in AST in 1949) are the only pair of brothers inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame: what was it like to grow up in such a successful family, and who is considered the best? Coach told me that he was a bruiser but that his brother was a player. I remember that from day 1 he said that we were a family and would take care of our own. I thought he was just saying that to get me to go there but he was a wonderful/caring human being. He liked hunting and collecting souvenirs: he was much more than just a coach.