As the NCAA Tournament excitement builds while we move from the Sweet 16 to the Elite 8 and then the Final 4, my reminiscing cells have started revving up to recall tournaments of past years.

I didn’t fill out a bracket this year for the first time in many years. Perhaps there was a wee bit of rebellion going on. I was really looking forward to postseason basketball a year ago when the COVID-19 reared its ugly head to wipe out everything from high school to junior college to the NCAAs. At the high school level, Ponca City had earned a spot in the Class 6A Girls State Basketball Tournament. At the junior college level, NOC from Tonkawa was going to the NJCAA Tournament in Hutchinson, Kan., and at the NCAA level, there were a bunch of teams I love to watch who were expected to do well. It was a huge bummer for me as a fan to have all those potential memories wiped out. One of the reasons for

One of the reasons for not filling out a bracket, I told myself, was that I knew very little about teams this year. I had followed the Big 12 pretty well, but other than that my knowledge of the national scene was practically nil. Then after a moment to reflect, reality hit. That wasn’t a valid excuse. Remembering the number of years I have torn up my brackets after the first round, knowledge of the teams really hasn’t helped me much in the past.

My first recollection of Final Fours goes all the way back to 1952. I was a mere child then, but our family radio was always on when there was a big sporting event to be listened to. In 1952, Dad was following the Kansas Jayhawks. He wasn’t particularly a KU fan, but we lived in Kansas and the Jayhawks were involved in the Final Four. I remember him commenting on KU’s star player Clyde Lovellette. For some reason Dad always mispronounced the guy’s name. He called him Love-a-let. I had just begun listening to the games, but I knew the play-by-play announcers were saying La-vel-ette. When I pointed that out to Dad, he would look at me and say “whatever” and go back to pronouncing the man’s name wrong. Kansas went on to win the NCAAs that year. It was a Summer Olympics year and the common practice in those years was to invite most of the players on the NCAA championship team to participate on Team USA. Lovellette and his crew played in the Olympics and brought home gold.

There are many other Final Fours in my memory after that initial one almost 70 years ago. Kansas was the runner-up the next year (1953) led by B. H. Born. I don’t remember Dad having any difficulty pronouncing his name. Flashing forward, one of my favorite Final Fours was in 1988 when the Big 8 had two teams in the championship game--Oklahoma and Kansas. I was a big fan of both teams, with Billy Tubbs coaching at OU and Danny Manning playing for the Jayhawks. Kansas won, but I wouldn’t have been disappointed had the Sooners been the champions. It was an exciting time.

But probably the one Final Four that will always stand out in my memory was the one that took place in 1964. I was there, the only time I have been fortunate to take in the event in person.

I was a student at Kansas State and just happened to be the sports editor of the K-State Collegian (campus newspaper). It was a very long shot that I would be in attendance at the NCAA tournament for dozens of reasons.

One of the major reasons was that K-State wasn’t expected to be Big 8 Champion. Teams had to win their conferences back in those years to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. Colorado and Kansas were preseason favorites although it was expected that Kansas State would be pretty competitive. As the season progressed, Willie Murrell, Sammy Robinson and Jeff Simon were propelling the Wildcats to the conference title.

The Midwest Regional was in Wichita that year and Wichita (not Wichita State yet) was expected to wipe the floor with the other teams that might participate. There were two play-in games. Texas Western and Texas A&M were scheduled to play for a spot in the Wichita Regional and Creighton and Oklahoma City were playing in a second such contest. Texas Western and Creighton won those games and the bracket was set. Wichita would face Creighton and Kansas State at the bottom of the bracket had Texas Western as its first opponent.

Since the regional was in Wichita, my superiors at the paper decided that I needed to go. I applied for press credentials and got some for me and for my assistant sports editor Mark Meske. Mark was a paraplegic who got around remarkably well. My best friend just happened to win tickets in the campus lottery, so the three of us went to the tournament together.

The venerable Roundhouse at Wichita University was reverberating with noise that first night (I’m told it still does whenever WSU plays there}. Texas Western had a young coach (I later learned he grew up in Enid) Don Haskins and had an All-American Jim “Bad News” Barnes. K-State was able to bottle up Bad News enough to win by three or four points. Wichita, which featured Dave Stallworth, Nate Bowman and Kelly Pete, all of whom later played in the NBA, smothered Creighton. The finals was down to the two Kansas teams.

Kansas State surprised the heavily favored Wichita Shockers in the finals. Willie Murrell was good as always, but the star of the night was Jeff Simon, who scored more than his share of points and played outstanding defense on Stallworth. K-State’s Coach Tex Winter contributed by wearing his faded, but lucky, brown suit. He refused to have the suit cleaned during the season, much to the chagrin of his family. K-State scored 94 points and won by eight. I remember how shocked Mark and I were that K-State actually had earned a spot in the Final Four.

Besides the game, a highlight was visiting the locker rooms after the game. I remember a very saddened Coach Ralph Miller talking about his team’s loss to K-State. He said over and over, “I just got outcoached” a statement that opposing coaches often said about playing Tex Winter coached teams. Miller was no slouch of a coach himself. He built powerhouse teams at Iowa and Oregon State after his stint at Wichita. Miller (no relation) was a heavy smoker and in those days coaches could light up in the locker room. I remember him having a smoke going the entire time of the interview. His habit may have contributed to his gravelly voice, along with yelling at his players.

Miller’s complimenting Winter was funny in a way. In the K-State locker room, Tex Winter couldn’t get over how difficult it was to beat a coach of Miller’s caliber. “He was constantly out thinking me,” Winter said. Regardless of who was the better coach, K-State was the winner of this game.

Going to the big dance was another issue. The Final Four was in Kansas City that year. But the hierarchy at the paper was disinclined to pay for a room for me to go and cover. I didn’t have transportation and didn’t believe I was going to be able to go. But then my best friend, who had won the student lottery for the Regional Tickets and wasn’t eligible this time, persuaded his cousin to enter the drawing for the Final Four. Lo and behold, she won and having no interest in basketball passed her ticket on to my friend. I had transportation, but still no place to stay overnight. Mark Meske had made the decision that he wasn’t interested in going--he anticipated difficulty maneuvering his crutches through all the commotion.

In the final four that year were Michigan, Duke, UCLA and K-State. The games were in Municipal Auditorium, which housed the Big 8 tournament every year and had been the site of lots of important games including other Final Fours. The building reeked of history and I was impressed by that just walking in the door. There were only 10,000 or 11,000 seats for basketball games, small by today’s standards. But it was a great place to watch a game. Being in the press corps, I had great seats, although I was placed on the back row, behind the big shots from the east and west coasts, plus the national media folks. K-State’s first opponent was UCLA, unbeaten on the year so far. The two teams had played around Christmas in Manhattan, and UCLA won that one rather handily. That was before Tex Winter had started wearing his tattered brown suit to games.

Duke and Michigan played the first game. Michigan was favored because it had players like Oliver Darden, Bill Buntin and Cazzie Russell. Later all three went as high picks in an NBA draft. However, Michigan was no match for Duke that night as the Blue Devils won 91-80. The K-State-UCLA rematch was better than the first game, but UCLA came away a winner. John Wooden was the UCLA coach in his 15th year, but had never been to a Final Four before. As we know now, he was to return to the event many many times in the future. Walt Haz zard was the team star and had really lived up to his reputation in the two games played against K-State that year. UCLA was outsized in just about every game they played and the story was that Wooden reluctantly had his team play a zone instead of his favorite manfor-man defense that year. The zone helped his short players to speed up the game’s tempo, an advantage for the Bruins.

I will never forget the post-game interview with Coach Wooden. I bashfully attempted to ask a question, but was constantly interrupted by a national media figure. As the interview drew to a close, Wooden called on me, introducing me as his friend from Manhattan who had asked a really great question back in December. Now I was on the spot. My question had better be good. My question may have been about him using the zone defense, but I don’t remember for sure what I asked. Coach Wooden was gracious to answer and finish with “Another great question young man.” That comment meant much more in future years after he had won so many national championships.

The sleeping accommodations turned out to be sharing a room with 10 others, a few of whom weren’t at the basketball game. I remember we made a special effort to be quiet afraid that too much noise might alert the hotel folks that we were overcrowding their room. I remember trying to sleep on the floor with a chair cushion as a pillow.

The next night K-State played in the third place game with Michigan. Coach Winter’s brown suit obviously ran out of its magic and Michigan scored 100 points to win. The UCLA-Duke game was a good one with the Bruins winning by six or seven points. Hazzard was named MVP of the tournament and rightfully so. I was especially impressed by UCLA’s sixth man, Kenny Washington, who had come off the bench in both games to really shine. I mentioned to the reporter sitting next to me (from Los Angeles) that I was voting for Washington to make the All-Tournament team. He laughed and said “subs never make all-tournament teams.” I was delighted to see that enough press folks agreed with me to give Washington a spot on the outfit. The only thing better would have been if Kansas State had won the championship. For someone who loves to reminisce, this year’s tournament has helped bring up all kinds of memories. It has been fun going back all the way to 1964.