Notre Dame's greatest basketball victory

If you think – like so many fans -- that it was ND’s victory over UCLA in 1974, breaking the Bruins 88-game winning streak, you'd be wrong.

Notre Dame’s greatest victory occurred three years earlier on January 23,1971 when they defeated defending champs UCLA 89 – 82 on its way to its fifth straight national championship. It was the Bruins only loss that season. Jack Lori, ND’s long-standing radio announcer of that era, still calls it “the greatest victory in Notre Dame history because that was the first time it put itself on the national stage against the national champs – and flat-out beat them. It wasn’t a fluke. UCLA finished 29-1 that year and won the title again. No other Notre Dame team can say it was the only one to defeat a national champion in a given year.”

The 1974 Bruins not only lost to Notre Dame but endured three other losses that season and for the first time in eight years did not repeat as national champs. The 1971 game features four NBA first-round draft choices: Austin Carr, Sidney Wicks, Collis Jones, and Curtis Rowe. Carr was named the national player of the year and the #1 draft pick; Wicks the runner-up and selected #2. Carr scored 46 points, the most ever scored against a John Wooden-coached team. It was “the national game of the week” with Dick Enberg and Hot Rod Huntley on the call.

The quality of the original video tape is uneven as it was originally filmed on Sony’s first reel-to-reel video home model… but if you’re patient and bit forgiving, it’s quite enjoyable to watch. Note the following:

• The pace of the game is frenetic… the first two minutes of the film is the entire game in microcosm. Up and down, up and down. ND dominates the board with second shots and tip-ins.

• Like today’s college game, you'll see 6’8” and 6’9” big men handle the ball like guards, but occasionally will also see them get tangled up in the midst of the game's fast pace.

• Players do not palm or carry the ball like you so often see today and the refs call fouls on any defender who reaches for the ball or the man he is covering. The emphasis is on offense … “freedom of movement.” Virtually every player on the floor has a green light to shoot the ball. That year, ND was the highest scoring team in the nation, averaging 93 PPG; in fact, 35 teams that season averaged 85 points or more points per game. To put it in perspective, in the 2019-20 season, only one D-1 team averaged that much.

• Notre Dame never surrenders the lead, building a 13-point lead late in the first half. UCLA ties it up in the first five minutes of the second half… but quickly falls behind when Carr literally "takes over.” In the final six minutes, Carr scores 15 of ND’s final 17 points. Sidney Wicks who is guarding him, fouls out of the game.