The five highest-scoring individual performances in NCAA Championship game history: #1-Bill Walton-(UCLA) 44 points in this game against Memphis St. in 1973. #2-Gail Goodrich-(UCLA) 42 points against Michigan in 1965. #3-Jack Givens-(Kentucky) 41 points against Duke in 1978. #4-Lou Alcindor/Kareem Abdul Jabbar-(UCLA) 37 points against Purdue in 1969. #5-John Morton-(Seton Hall) 35 points against Michigan in 1989.

Class at its best

NEVER!!! 💙💛💙💛💙

And the one he missed was a tip in! And the MSU center ended up being a good NBA player.

Not sure he was even fully healthy here. Both knees are heavily wrapped

No one can

UCLA in the 70's after Wooden was crazy! My mother worked in the Veterinary Clinic there at the time and went to all the games. They were always ranked in the top 5 and went to the final 4 a several times but she and all the fans were crushed if they did not win it all. Bartow and Cunningham were fine coaches.... but UCLA lost just a bit of an edge and mystic without Wooden. The expectations went on into the 80's and to this day UCLA old timers still are that hard on coaches.

That’s so awesome! I wish I was alive for this I’m only 16 though! I’m coming back here because my grandpa actually played for Memphis he was number 11 Jerry Teztlaff! So neat you remember watching thins!

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥TRUTH!!!

OMFG were those UCLA uniforms ever beautiful! ... These guys were true basketball royalty and those cobalt blue and gold uniforms were awesome!

Bill had tendinitis in his knees (and back problems) throughout most of his career at UCLA. There's an interview of him from 1971 where he is talking about tendinitis and icing his knees at the beginning of his sophomore year. Can you imagine what else he could have accomplished if his body hadn't betrayed him at so young an age?

Big man have a low life expectancy. Proven fact.

Finch did not star in the NBA, rather he only played in the ABA with the Memphis TAMs(Tennesseeans, Arkansans and Missourians) and the "Sounds" in the same city. The most interesting story surrounded MSU's Bill Laurie..a billionaire marrying into the James "Bud" Walton/Kroenke clan and becoming filthy rich.

Walton early and often

Keith Wilkes....when did he change his name later on?

And Gene Bartow of Memphis State would succeed John Wooden as head coach at UCLA for the 1975-1976 season.

@@markkness8829 And Bartow would take UCLA to the Final Four before their defeat to Indiana.

Noooo! 😂 I’m a huge Memphis fan my grandpa Jerry teztlaff for the tigers actually played in this game!

I like it, but... 7 and 1/2 minutes missing, and a crucial part of the game for that matter. "Full" game?

@@brianarbenz7206 ESPN Classic always did that shit.....hated it.....to this day still do. I liked Classic Sports better before ESPN got their grubby hands on it. You got full games always. Just without network logos.

Hey, he missed one! I remember one final against Jacksonville when Sidney Wicks dunked (DQed also) over Artis Gilmore or the other 7 footer they had. Wow on both.

How about being 10-0 in championship games

...or 88 consecutive games overall. The UConn women broke that record, but no men's team did, or has.

TRUTH!!!!!

I never missed a single one of the late-night replays since the Alcindor days.

Cool story but the Pac 8 games in those days were always scheduled for Friday and Saturday nights, they didn't play on school nights...

John Wooden supposedly shared a small office on campus with an assistant coach, probably Gary Cunningham.

This comment makes me barf at what some of the UCLA coaches are making now.

Parity came to college basketball (and to college football, for that matter). Witness what happened to Nebraska football.

Three reasons: One. Wooden was amazing. That's hard to duplicate. Two. The tournament stopped grouping all the west coast teams in the same bracket so UCLA only played the scrub teams from the west for a round or two. Three. UCLA was no longer able to pay players insane amounts of money to play for 4 years, including sitting on the bench behind other allstars.

Agreed - called fouls should have been play-continues, a couple of goal tending were not, traveling calls were bad calls!

He was great, but not better than Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) who also went to UCLA.

agree on many of your pts. this memphis st game symbolized his whole career--bad knees, grew too fast, ice every game and he went down at the end but what a performance, 44pts and boards, passes, blocks, assists. when his legs were healthy he had amazing quick feet for a big man. had moves, could score in paint or outside shots, even did a dr j under basket flipping it back off board, swish! i kinda recall his first round of trouble in pros, bone spurs, refused surgery, wanted natural health cure. plenty of other injuries, but he showed great flashes - too bad all those seasons lost, but he had the magic 1977 run with the blazers, and yes, a tough veteran role player w/celts. today i enjoy his pointed sometimes grating commentary but he calls it like he sees it. go big red, even if he is white haired now. zig is out, atop the wooden pyramid...

Well, if you consider a guy who was healthy for less than half his seasons in the NBA and yet is still in the Hall of Fame, underrated, then yeah. He was great when he was healthy, which was pretty rare.

@@Seattle-2017 valid pt on his inury riddled career, but when he was on he was on, nba champ, finals mvp, later a 6th Man award proving he was team player, accepted his role on celts. plus the ncaa titles, college player of yr, etc. It is incredible to think, if only he'd stayed healthy, what more he would have done. to do football comparison, i find nfl fans who think namath is overrated and if he'd lost to colts he would have been known as a pretty good qb, flashy image. but not a champ. yet namath's 1st 5 yrs, 1965-69, he passed for 4000 yds and won super bowl. after that he had 2 healthy seasons on .500 jet teams. so how do you judge him? seems walton, namath made most of their careers while they could, i give em credit for guts at any rate, coming back from crippling injuries for one more day on the field.

He could have been the greatest player ever period

@@codyvarn1824 "Could have been", right. A lot of "could have been" players can make that claim. And then you have Michael Jorden, who broke his foot on his 2nd year in the NBA, practiced then played against the advice of team doctors late that same season, then knocked down 63 points against the NBA champion Celtics. Then played another 12 record setting years, winning NBA titles in half of them. That's not "could have been", it's reality - it all happened.

You’re saying that the core group of Thompson, Burleson, and Towe were better the year before their championship is ridiculous. UCLA crushed them in December of 73 and then blew two leads late in the semifinals of 74.

@@johnm8096 the year before NC State was UNDEFEATED, 27-0. The championship year UCLA blew them out at a neutral site. Ever heard of a team having a bad game? Think hard because I know you'll recall some of your favorite teams doing just that. The semi-final game wasn't UCLA blowing leads. It was about a better team finding a way to win. If you don't think NC State was a great team, ask Bill Walton what HE thinks about David Thompson the next time you run into him.

Bill Walton had congenital defects in the skeletal construction of his feet. No one else in his family had that problem. Jumping and running put tremendous pressure on his foot bones and their attached ligaments, in particular the navicular bone. His foot bones were fractured by the constant pounding they took. His vertical jump was better when he was a sophmore than when he was a senior at UCLA. Then tendinitis in his knees didn't help but it was the undiagnosed foot problems that did him in. The doctors back then didn't discover his problem till his second season in the NBA. In those days they didn't know how to fix it. Today they could have. Too bad. He could have had a great NBA career.

Keith Wilkes would later change his name to Jamaal Wilkes and go on to win a few NBA Championships playing with notables Rick Barry, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and Magic Johnson. In case you weren't aware.

radar0412 I am familiar with Jamaal, but I didn’t know his name was Keith. Who can forget Jamaal’s unique jump shot! Thanks for the info!

@@bigkahunaburger5185 Also Jamaal had an uncanny ability to get himself open around the Basket for an easy layup. 1/2 of Magic's career assists must've come from finding Wilkes around the Basket! LOL!

Keith and Jamaal are the same guy. He switched to his middle name for some reason.

Reason was he converted to Islam.

I think that it is Tom Hawkins

@@milart12 Former Laker, right?

@@karlc2869 Right

Ok. BTW here's hoping NBC will air the Final Four again and enter the NCAA men's college hoops title game in the yearly rotation with CBS and TBS.

Today you can travel, palm, double dribble & can not hand-check. This is BASKETBALL. Today the sport is "Ballet-ball", a game for wussies.

They've aged well as far as I'm concerned. We're talking 50 years ago.

@@user-vl4kh6yt9i Remember this game well. I was a senior in High School

it's sad he never reached his potential in the pros but that was due to injury not tragedy. He still won 2 championships and had a 13 year career, not bad for guy who played on one leg most of the time.

We'll never know, it might've been a better game...........but UCLA played Providence during the regular season and won by 24. Game was at Pauly, but still....

Loved watching Ernie D play

@@bemore1134 That game UCLA played Providence was in December….We are talking March and Providence was on fire and they were not afraid of UCLA it would’ve been a much better game I have no doubt about that and I think Ernie was playing unstoppable basketball at that time just like Walton but I don’t think Walton would’ve had the game he had if he was playing against Marvin Barnes

Coulda, woulda, shoulda. What do you know about basketball? Memphis deserved to be in the finals. I saw the Tigers' dominant Providence. Marvin Barnes was an average player at his best.

chubbier later as coach lol

And the best guard in college basketball. How frigging trim are you?

HAHAHA....😂😂 WALTON destroyed those boys. Larry Kennon was helpless against him.

@@debbiehenson1096 This game put Memphis on the map. Tough not being in a "Power 5" conference. Don't get the same players. But we manage. Oh and that guard for Memphis, Bill Laurie, he now runs a little 5 and dime store. I believe they call it Walmart.

Walton tipped most of his "dunks" when the ball was in the cylinder. In 72 that was illegal. If Kenon hadn't got in foul trouble his ass would be grass.

You guys know NOTHING about basketball!