Designers in the Star’s composing room completed Page 8A a few hours before Arizona would play Kentucky in the 1997 Final Four championship game. But in newspaper lingo, they couldn’t put the page “to bed” until the game ended sometime around 10 p.m.
Twenty-four Tucson businesses paid to have their names and a short message on 8A beneath the headline “Congratulations NATIONAL CHAMPIONS.” Beneath, in letters 4 inches high, it said “We Love You!”
There was a potential problem. What words would be substituted late at night if Kentucky won?
“Congratulations for finishing second?”
“We still love you?”
Advertisers were told the page would roll on March 31, and it would cost the same whether Arizona won or lost. No one backed out. The advertisers, those who wanted to be part of Wildcats’ captivating journey to Indianapolis, touched every part of the community:
Tucson Rolling Shutters.
Hearing Tech.
AA Exhaust and Automotive Repair.
Eastside Cycle.
Goldberg’s Bagels.
Mac’s Indian Jewelry.
Twenty years ago Friday, on the night of March 31, 1997, Page 8A rolled off the presses without any changes. Arizona won 84-79 in overtime. The memories endure.
• • •
Thousands awoke early to get to Arizona Stadium, part of 48,000 happy fans at a welcome-home celebration. Some got a tattoo with the final score. Some began using 8479 as a password for their work computer or their banking code.
Arizona’s championship engulfed Tucsonans everywhere.
Some, like Tucson engineer Frank Scussel, a 1961 UA grad, hiked back to civilization from an overnight stay at the Grand Canyon’s Phantom Ranch.
Scussel had planned a 1997 Easter weekend excursion to the floor of the Grand Canyon. Like most of us, he had not factored in Arizona’s unlikely race to the Final Four.
“After we checked and were told there would be no radio or TV reception available at Phantom Ranch, we decided to go ahead with the hike anyway,” Scussel said. “I ended up making multiple telephone calls from Phantom Ranch to my sister in Flagstaff for game updates. I kept the other overnight hikers in the canteen and beer hall informed and we all celebrated the UA’s victory from the bottom of the Grand Canyon.”
More than 8,000 miles away, in Sarawak, Malaysia, former Tucsonan Daniel Alli, a procurement official at the Brooke Dockyard, awoke at 5 a.m. and put on his lucky red Arizona T-shirt. The telecast, via satellite, began about 8 a.m. in Sarawak. Two hours later Alli ran around shouting “National champs! National champs!”
“People thought I had flipped out,” he said.
It was about 3 a.m., at the downtown Omni Hotel in Indianapolis when I walked to the room of Seattle Times basketball writer Bud Withers. A group of reporters from Pac-12 cities had gathered to toast the Wildcats.
Most of the seven reporters and photographers the Star sent to Indianapolis were summoned to Withers’ room. About 3:30, someone mentioned the possibility of getting a few hours’ sleep.
It was too late for that. I had a noon flight out of Chicago, about 200 miles north. My other colleagues were scheduled to fly out of Louisville and Columbus, Ohio. Nobody went to bed.
About 5 a.m., as I waited for a shuttle to the airport rental car center, Arizona guards Mike Bibby and Miles Simon walked out of a downtown Steak ’n Shake
restaurant adjacent to the hotel. They were immediately identified and surrounded by long-celebrating UA fans.
They didn’t sleep, either.
• • •
Arizona’s euphoric ride to the 1997 national championship began innocently. After finishing fifth in the Pac-10, earning a No. 4 seed in the tournament, the Wildcats trailed South Alabama 53-43 in a first-round game. They survived a second-round game, beating College of Charleston after trailing 48-39.
Coach Lute Olson and his wife, Bobbi, did not have plans that included winning the national championship March 31 in Indianapolis. They had reserved a weekend getaway in Acapulco.
But when the Wildcats beat No. 1 overall seed Kansas in the Birmingham, Alabama, Sweet 16, everything changed. An overtime victory over Providence secured a berth opposite No. 1 seeds North Carolina and Kentucky at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis.
The fourth team? Minnesota. Does anyone outside Minneapolis remember that?
Some things aren’t forgotten. Such as:
Bibby, the nation’s top freshman, showed up at Indianapolis wearing Penny Hardaway-model Nikes, then selling for $205 a pair.
“They are my lucky shoes,” he said.
Bibby scored 40 points in Indianapolis. Not luck, skill.
Simon, a senior who would be the Final Four MVP, scoring 30 in the championship game against Kentucky, had missed the season’s first 11 games while academically ineligible.
“I’m too old for stage fright,” he said after a semifinal victory over North Carolina. “Nothing was as hard as sitting in those classes, just me and my professor, knowing if I didn’t do my best, I wouldn’t play any more basketball.”
At the championship game, attended by celebrities Kevin Costner and Ted Danson, among others, Wildcat fans embraced then-Chicago Bulls guard Steve Kerr, who had driven to the game with Bulls and former Arizona teammate Jud Buechler.
“They’re gonna win,” said Kerr.
“Guaranteed,” said Buechler.
After beating Kentucky, the Star’s banner headline was a simple two words: “TOP CATS.” Those two words said all that was necessary.
When Simon, Bibby, Lute and Bobbi Olson and the sleep-deprived UA entourage arrived back in Tucson late on the morning of April 1, they were given a motorcade from the airport to Arizona Stadium. Olson had already spoken with President Clinton and accepted an invitation to “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” a day later.
As Olson and his wife left an open convertible to enter the football stadium, Bobbi carried a copy of that morning’s Indianapolis Star.
The big headline said “Indy-Structible.”
