Craig talks about Team USA basketball

Craig talks about Team USA basketball and updates you on the game againat Brazil. He also mentions the old Team USA teams from the past and draws parralels to this years team. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
As I mentioned, we're going to we'll keep you updated
on the Olympic Games and USA national basketball team. The
Olympic basketball team is having its way right now with Brazil,
and they've pretty much dominated a lot of the first half,

(00:22):
still in the first half, and they're up fourteen right
now at forty twenty six. Now, they did call the
time out because Brazil just scored five unanswered points to
get it back to a fourteen point deficit. It was
forty twenty one and they called the time out there,
So it's forty twenty six the US on top of
five and a half to go in the first half
on that one. So we'll keep you posted on that. Also,

(00:46):
speaking of Olympic basketball, today, France beat Canada to get
to the semifinals. That's on the other side of the bracket.
Germany beat Greece and France won. And if France won, yes,

(01:08):
Victor wimbin Yama would would have a good game. He
had twelve rebounds in the game. Gerri Sean Yabaseley had
twenty two points to lead the French. They beat Canada
eighty two seventy three. Isaiah Cordonnier added twenty points for France.
And of course they won the silver in Tokyo in

(01:29):
the last Olympic Games. But they're going to play Germany,
who beat Greece on Thursday. Wimby had seven points along
with twelve rebounds, five assists, three steals and a block.
Canada was down nineteen in the second half and they
cut it a five and under three minutes to go,
but they could get in closer. Shay Gilger's Alexander of

(01:49):
the Oklahoma City Thunder led Canada twenty seven points are
Jay Barrett at sixteen. Canada has not reached the Olympic
Final four since nineteen eighty four and they won't get
there this year. So Canada also couldn't get some of
the other guys really going out. France had an eleven

(02:16):
point leading the fourth quarter, Wembayama, Rudy Gobert and Nicholas
Batoum combining for just three points at that point. Gobert
apparently has a finger injury as well that he's having
to deal with. So but that's not on the same
side as the United States we'll have to deal with,
I believe. Yeah, assuming the United States coaches on the victory,

(02:39):
they're gonna have a rematch with Nikola Jokic and Serbia,
and they handled him pretty easily. The first time. Jokic
had twenty one points and fourteen rebounds, but Serbia had
to go overtime to beat Australia. This afternoon, ninety bug
Don Bogdanovich had seventeen for Serbia. They were down twenty

(03:02):
four points in the first half and rally back and
they're looking for their first Olympic medal since twenty sixteen
in Rio when they won the silver, and that was
the first Olympics for Jokichi was twenty one years old
then and Bgdanovitch was. He admitted, he admitted that they

(03:23):
all kind of doubted a little bit if they'd be
able to pull off the comeback when they were down
twenty four. He said, honestly, we didn't keep cool, but
we knew we were down and we needed to find
some momentum rhythm. They had the whole momentum of the game.
As I said, this is the biggest pressure of the tournament,
the quarterfinals. You know, if you lose, you're out. And
it's a good point because if you do win, if

(03:44):
you do lose in the in the semifinals, let's say
you get to the final four. Say you get to
the semi files, you win your quarter final, you're in
the semifinals. Even if you lose the semifinal, you're still
playing for medal. You're playing for a bronze medal. At
that point in that third place came. Now, college basketball
has by and large gotten rid of its third place games.

(04:07):
It certainly has in the NCAA Tournament. The last time
they had that was nineteen to eighty one in the
final four. And there had been some people who had
kind of questioned the wisdom and importance of playing a
third place game anyway, in nineteen seventy four, when UCLA
was a seven time national champion. They'd won seven consecutive

(04:30):
national championships from sixty seven through seventy three. Then they
got beat in the semifinals by North Carolina State in
nineteen seventy four, that NC State team that had David
Thompson and Monty Tao and all those other Tom burleson
the seven foot center and all that sort of stuff.
That was the semifinal. And I've told this story before,
but for those who didn't know, in that semifinal, because

(04:52):
a lot of people think that NC State UCLA Epic
double overtime games for the National Championship. It wasn't was
in the semifinals. Actually was in Greensboro in my hometown,
and my dad had tickets on the baseline for that.
He didn't take me. He took one of my uncles,
one of his brothers. He took him. He didn't take me,

(05:12):
But he said to me, he goes, why would you
want to go. You're not an NC State fan, You're
a Carolina fan. Still, it's a final one, but I
understood he took it. He took one of my uncles.
But he always said that. In the first minute of
the game, Tom Burlson, who was seven feet four inches tall,
did a skyhook right over the top of Bill Walton,
and when they ran back down the floor, Walton flipped

(05:34):
him off. So all the years later, this would have
been around twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, Bill Walton came in
to work a Texas Kansas game for ESPN. That was
the game may many of you may remember where he
took off his shirt and he were in and put
on the keep Austin weird T shirt and all that.
And we just lost Bill pretty recently to cancer. Back

(05:58):
a couple of months ago. Nice guy. He was really
nice guy. As goofy as he could be at times,
he was still a nice guy. And he was seated,
you know, right beside me where our broadcast position is,
then at the Irwin Center and now at Moody. And
we got to a break and I said, you know, Bill,

(06:18):
I said, there's something I've always wanted to ask you.
Ask your question, Craig, And I said, well, you know this.
This has to do with the seventy four Final four.
Oh you would have to go there, I said, no, no, wait,
I have a specific reason for asking this. My dad
was at that Final four and he swears that in

(06:43):
the opening minute of the game, Tom bertleas and he
hit a hook shot over you, and that you flipped
him off going back down the floor. Is that true?
And Bill Walton paused, He went, oh, I'd like to
think I was a better person than that. And then
he paused and said, but your father was probably right. Anyway,
when UCLA lost that game, they had the third place

(07:05):
game on money and they're supposed to play Kansas in
the Monday night game. Kansas had lost to Marquette and
NC State beat Marquette wined that national championship. Walton almost
refused to play the game, almost boycat the game because
of its uselessness to play a third place game. He
ended up playing UCLA. I think won by seven points,
but he ended up ended up playing them. The third

(07:28):
place game did have some usefulness to this day, and
the NCAA has put no delineation between what is a
third place game and a national championship game or a
semifinal game. If you are in the Final four and
you play a game, it's a final four game, even

(07:50):
if even if it was a third place game. The
reason why I bring this up, the most points ever
scored in a Final four game were scored by Bill Bradley,
played for the next later the Senator. You know Bill Bradley,
but he played for Princeton at the time, and they
got to the Final four, and they lost in the
semifinals I believe to Michigan, who then lost to UCLA,

(08:12):
which had won the first of its two back to
back in sixty four and sixty five, and then after
Texas Western now UTAP one in sixty six, UCLA launched
its seven in a row, but Princeton played which a
toss State in the third place game, and Bill Bradley
scored fifty eight points in that game, which to this day,

(08:34):
if you look in the nc Basketball Tournament record book,
is still listed as the most points ever scored in
a final four game. It's not the most points ever
scored in any NCAA tournament game, Austin Carr did that
for Notre Dame in nineteen seventy, but the most points
ever scored in what was classified as a final four game.

(08:59):
Bill Radley scored fifty eight for Prinsidents wichitall Stdium what
was technically a third place game. UCLA played Michigan that
night for the national championship and won the title. But
that's still the most point. But by and large, a
lot of people didn't find much use for the third
place game, and so finally, the last year they played
it was nineteen eighty one. And here's what got rid

(09:22):
of the third place game. The nineteen eighty one national
championship was won by Indiana. They had Isaiah Thomas. They
beat North Carolina to win the national title in Philadelphia.
Earlier that day, President Reagan was shot. That was the
assassination attemp from Johnny Heinkley Junior. Now, of course we
know the president survived, and the attempt on Donald Trump

(09:45):
was the most serious assassination attempt by someone on either
a president or former president since that nineteen eighty one
assassination attempt by Johnny Heinkley Junior. So they had him
in the he was in the hospital, and there was
real dabtles to whether they were even going to play

(10:05):
the National Championship that night between Indiana and North Carolina
until they were told the president's out of danger and
he has said you should go ahead and play the games.
So they said, okay, Well there was a third place
game that had to happen. First. LSU in the third
place game against Virginia, which had Ralph Sampson, and LSU

(10:26):
was in the third place game, and somebody asked Rudy Macklin,
who played for LSU that afternoon, do you think that
you guys should be playing a third place game in
the aftermath that, you know, with the president being shot
and here's President Reagan. Losmo has been shot. And Rudy
Macklin's responsible to say, and I quote, why not he

(10:47):
ain't no kin of mine? That might have been the
comment that did the trick at that point and and
you might say, eliminated the third place game. So there's
been no third place game in the NCAA tournament since,
but there has been the third place game in the Olympics.

(11:09):
Why because you're playing for a bronze medal. That's why
maybe that's what they should do with the final four.
You know, give a gold medal to the champion, the
silver to the team that loses the final, play the
third place game, and give a bronze medal to the
team that wins the game between the two semifinals, and
that's not never gonna happen so anyway, But that's why
they still play it in the Olympics, because you were

(11:30):
actually playing for a bronze medal. So the point was
well made there by Bogdanovic who said, this is the
pressure game, the quarterfinal, he said, because if you lose,
you're out, you go home with nothing. But if you win,
you get to the semifinals. And then even if you lose,

(11:52):
you still get to play for a bronze medal. In
the third place game. Now, obviously you want to win
and you want to get to the gold medal game,
like US Women's soccer has done. They won today an
extra time one nil over Germany, so they will play
the winner of the Spain Brazil matchup that's going on

(12:13):
right now. They will play the winner of that matchup
in the gold medal game, but the loser of that
game will play Germany for a bronze medal. Third place
is the bronze medal. As we know, third place in
the pool is a bronze medal. Third place in track
and field is a bronze medal. Third place in skeet
shooting you are in a bronze medal. So that's how
that works in the Olympics. All right, we'll update the

(12:36):
Olympic scoreboard, and we got some football notes to get
to when we come back on Sports Radio AM thirteen
under the zone of the iHeartRadio app.