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(More customer reviews)As a kid in high school in Des Moines, I got to enjoy the Drake University Basketball team coached by Maury John. They had a fast, exciting game that was fun to watch. Their star was a guard by the name of Willie McCarter but there was a lot more fire power with the likes of Dolph Pulliam, Willie Wise, Don Draper, Rich Wanamaker as well as a very decent bench. My brother was a freshman at Drake that year and I tagged along with him to a few games at the Veteran's Memorial Auditorium.
Drake, UCLA, North Carolina, and Purdue were the Final Four that year. Drake was such a relative unknown participant that they were often mistakenly referred to as Duke by some of the announcers. Their initial task was to take on two-time defending national champion UCLA starring the great Lew Alcindor. They were something like 84-2 if I recall correctly and, as much as we loved our Drake Bulldogs, nobody was placing any bets on the home team. Their game was the prime time event the first night and most of us started rationalizing that it was nice to have at least made it to the Final Four as they quickly went down 11-0. But as we continued to rationalize, the Bulldogs started whittling away at the lead and actually took the lead well into the game. I'm sure folks in Des Moines are still talking about Wanamaker's blocking Alcinder's shot. The ebb and flo kept us all rivitted to our TV set til the end of the game. You can always tell a Drake fan because they use the phrase "lost by one point at the buzzer". We don't ever count those two UCLA free throws after time ran out.
As it turned out, that was the only game that wasn't a blowout. They still played the consilation game back then and in it Drake beat North Carolina 104-84. UCLA clobbered Rick Mount's Purdue team for the championship (gee, I hope I'm not giving anything away here). We read in the "Register" that the crowds were chanting "Drake's Number 1 1/2". Curt Gowdy called Drake "The most under-rated team to ever play in the Final Four". (If he was still with us he might include George Mason as well).
Well, this was fun remembering that game and that tournament. For decades I wished that, somehow, I could get a video of the game. Then I discovered this DVD and ordered before I realized that it covers the whole tournament and the 1969 All-American Team in a mere 30 minutes. Still, it was worth the price to get the five or so minutes of Drake's brush with Cinderella. Merle Harmon narrates the video and the script is in the present tense ("He's a Junior so he'll be back next season"). There's some fantastics shot of the great Rick Mount as well as the greater Lew Alcindor (soon to become Kareem Abdul Jabbar). I'll watch this one again again again but first, I think I'll mail it to my brother.
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