March 06--They made up the first basketball starting lineup I memorized as a 7-year-old boy growing up in small-town Indiana:forwards Scott May and Tom Abernethy, guards Quinn Buckner and Bobby Wilkerson and center Kent Benson.
They played the game the way they taught it to kids at basketball camps across a state that revered the sport; making the extra pass on offense and the extra effort on defense, executing box-outs and bounce passes like guys majoring in Basketball Fundamentals, winning battles for loose balls and ball games.
They were the 1975-76 Indiana Hoosiers, the best college basketball team of my boyhood and perhaps all-time, certainly a team more worthy of being considered the greatest ever than this year's Kentucky Wildcats.
The unbeaten Wildcats, so deep and dangerous, are athletic wonders. The 32-0 Hoosiers, equally skilled and smart, were aesthetic marvels. Whereas the Wildcats have established themselves as the class of a college basketball season, the Hoosiers set a standard of how the game should be played for a generation. Kentucky might boast better individual talent with at least four NBA first-round draft picks but Indiana defined what team play was supposed to look like -- with three players taken among the first 11 in the 1976 NBA draft running the patented motion offense. Individually, Kentucky likely gets the edge in overall depth. Collectively, it's Indiana.
The early migration of college players to the NBA cannot be overlooked when evaluating Kentucky's dominance now against Indiana's 39 years ago. The differences in the ages of the respective opponents matters, especially considering Indiana beat four top 10 teams on its way to the title. All four of those teams included contributing upperclassmen that simply aren't as easy to find these days on elite teams. Will Kentucky's path be as challenging? The question cannot be answered until April 6 but I doubt it.
In today's diluted college game, the toughest team Kentucky might have to overcome is itself -- and with due respect to coach John Calipari's fine team, the Wildcats remain young enough to warrant such fears. Indiana never had that problem. The veteran Hoosiers possessed too much savvy to suffer letdowns coach Bob Knight simply wouldn't tolerate and they never disappointed The General -- or all the Hoosier kids like me who watched in awe.
dhaugh@tribpub.com
