Arizona vs. Kentucky, 1997: Seven things you didn’t know about their epic NCAA title game

The 1997 NCAA championship game culminated among the remarkable runs in competitionhistory In beating the Kentucky Wildcats in overtime, Arizona beat a No. 1 seed for the 3rd time in 4games Competition logistics make it difficult for any team to beat all 4 No. ones, which indicates it’s difficult to leading U of A’s achievement.

It belonged to a string of 3 successive title-game looks for Kentucky, which got in the 1997 competition as ruling champ.

Here are seven things you didn’t know about the Kentucky vs. Arizona 1997 NCAA championship game:

1. Kentucky Wildcats vs. the Arizona Wildcats was not the first NCAA title game in which both teams passed the very same label In 1951, the Kentucky Wildcats beat the Kansas State Wildcats. Those are the only 2 times this has actually taken place in 8 years of NCAA Competition finals.

2. Present Georgia Tech head coach Josh Pastner remained in his first year as a walk-on for Arizona He appeared in 8 games that season however did not get in any NCAA Competition game that year. He did handle to crash the midcourt event the active Arizona players staged after they ‘d clinched a triumph over Kentucky to claim their school’s first title– and Pastner was plainly noticeable on the Sporting News cover that consisted of protection of that game.

MORE: The 36 best teams to not win the NCAA Competition

3. The Arizona game was the second of 3 successive title-game looks for Kentucky, however the only gamer to appear in all 3 games for UK was wing Allen Edwards He was a deep reserve in 1996 and 1997, playing just 3 minutes in the win over Syracuse and 6 in the loss toArizona The next season, he played 24 minutes in a championship success over Utah.

4. Arizona completed 25 -9 after winning the 6 competition games required to declare thetitle That ties 1985 Villanova for the least triumphes by any champ in the broadened bracket period, and one need to go all the method back to 1958 to discover a winner (Kentucky, 23 -6) with less wins.

5. Arizona guard Miles Simon, who made A lot of Exceptional Gamer bestow his 30- point efficiency in the championship game, went on to play 5 games in the NBA prior to introducing effective professions in broadcasting andcoaching That’s the least NBA experience any A Lot Of Exceptional Gamer has actually acquired in the past 25 years, conserve for 2013 winner Luke Hancock, who did not play in the league, and existing novice Kyle Person, who up until now has actually appeared two times for the Sacramento Kings.

6. The Arizona- Kentucky game was the 5th overtime NCAA championship game in competition history There have actually been just 2 considering that, consisting of last season’s Virginia success over Texas Tech.

7. Forward Derek Anderson was lost for the season with a knee injury in a January game versus Auburn. He tore an ACL, which required plastic surgery. When the Wildcats reached the Final 4, Anderson dressed for the national semifinal versus Minnesota and coach Rick Pitino assured he would offer him a chance to shoot any technical complimentary tosses granted to UK. Sure enough, early in the second half versus the Gophers, official Jim Burr T had actually up coach Clem Haskins for tossing his sportcoat and other remonstrations, and Anderson got in the game and made both shots.

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