Great Video: Our First Basketball Championship, the 1984 NIT
The first post-season basketball championship of any kind won by U-M was the 1984 NIT. Here's a video of the entire final game against Notre Dame. The video quality is poor, but for those of us who remember that era, it's still priceless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97dcroD7x64
A couple things I remember:
- So many great names on this team: Tim McCormick, Roy Tarpley, Antoine Joubert, Eric Turner, Richard Rellford...
- For unknown reasons, they used a red-white-and-blue basketball in the NIT this year, like the old ABA.
An NIT championship is like kissing your sister, but damn, this whole ride was fun 31 years ago.
February 21st, 2015 at 11:19 PM ^
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February 21st, 2015 at 11:24 PM ^
People weren't as cynical about the NIT as they are now. It was a great time. That team paved the way for Michigan to eventually win an NCAA Championship by making it "cool" for elite players to play in Ann Arbor again.
February 21st, 2015 at 11:34 PM ^
There was actually a point in time long, long ago when the NIT was more prestigious than the NCAA tournament.
February 21st, 2015 at 11:49 PM ^
In 1949-50, City College of New York (CCNY) became the only school to ever win both the NCAA and NIT Championship in the same season.
Sadly for them, the whole thing was tainted and overshadowed by a point shaving scandal.
They ultimately moved down to Division 3 due to it and haven't been heard from since.
The CCNY Beavers.
February 22nd, 2015 at 2:23 AM ^
How is that even possible?.... Will have to look that up...
February 22nd, 2015 at 6:57 AM ^
It was possible I think in the 40's. In 1984 it was definitely a consolation prize.
February 22nd, 2015 at 12:19 PM ^
It was, but it was fun to win it in '84. The BB team had sucked a few years before then, so this was us waking from the darkness.
February 22nd, 2015 at 10:05 AM ^
February 22nd, 2015 at 1:22 AM ^
It was probably Joubert who was a Top-10 recruit who started the parade of elite players to UM after this, but this team in reality was already loaded.
McCormick, Turner, Rellford, Wade, Henderson, Jokisch, Joubert and Garde Thompson were all Top-50 players, and that's not counting Tarpley who was the diamond in the rough. Can you imagine that kind of talent on the team today?
And the bigs were beasts too...I was in high school and playing Loy Vaught every day in gym class when he was just starting to come on as a junior, '84 was a great time for BB in the state. Hard to believe when people say we can't compete with Duke or Kansas for players now when you look back at what level we were recruiting at in the 80's. UM didn't take a back seat to anyone and really only UNC was matching Michigan in recruiting from about '82 on.
February 22nd, 2015 at 8:39 AM ^
When I think of that team I'm sometimes reminded of the late '90s group at Michigan. Several heralded players (Willie Mitchell, anyone?) whose on-court production didn't match their recruiting ranking/stars/whatever. Looking at the group:
* McCormick: WYSIWYG, pretty much. He was a McDonald's AA and wound up going in the first round.
* Turner: Maybe left a little early, but was pretty productive player.
* Rellford: Another McDonald's guy who always looked like a football player (which he was in high school, IIRC, at a high level ... same school as AC) out there. High-energy, decent mid-range baseline jumper, not much else. I think he had a cup of coffee in the NBA. Relative to expectations, an underperformer ...
* Wade: Good role player ... not sure about the Top 50 ranking.
* Henderson: Pretty high-profile recruit who never really put it together in college.
* Jokisch: Rellford light. I thought he was much better at football.
* Joubert: Let's start with his height, which was closer to 6'3" than 6'5". He's easily one of the most overrated recruits of the modern era. If he'd been a Top 100/150 guy, you could say he met expectations. Top 10/15? Not so much ...
* Thompson: I don't remember him having a high profile as a recruit. Seemed like a regional, lower-end Big Ten guy. Quite productive at Michigan ... poor man's (or maybe middle class) Louis Bullock. Anyway, he was in his first year at that point.
We're left with what, then? A mature big man with NBA potential (McCormick), a fringe NBA point guard (Turner), a guy who was starting to blow up (Tarpley), and a bunch of role players. Sounds pretty "NIT" to me when you consider that the NCAA field was only 32 back then.
Where's Rockymore, by the way? I thought he was pretty good. Did he play that year?
February 22nd, 2015 at 6:32 PM ^
I wish I could find one of those old Bob Gibbons type Top 150 lists to back this up, but my recollection anyways is that Butch Wade was the second highest recruit in 1982; Rellford was about 20th and Wade was somewhere in the high twenties. Henderson and Jokisch were around 40 iirc. Remember Henderson had some sort of problem with his hands? They were always taped and he couldn't seem to catch the ball.
Yeah Rockymore was a really good player too, I think he was a Top 100 type and in fact Quincy Turner from Benton Harbor was too but I don't know what ever happened to Turner. Garde Thompson was a great HS player at EGR, he was on all of the lists of Top underclassmen and then kind of dropped a little as a senior for some reason although he was still 2nd in Mr. Basketball. I think he may have gotten injured at some point which maybe affected his ranking and being Class B on the West side probably didn't help either. He was not only skilled and a great shooter but he could really get up too.
Joubert was probably still a pretty skilled guy but he never seemed to get back to the rock star he was as a HS junior, maybe because he was thinner then and like you said he was 6'5" with hair. I remember him going up for a jumper as a freshman at UM and Dennis Hopson slamming the ball right back in his face and everyone kind of went "Uh Oh", it seemed like a lot of the recruiting people kind of overstated his athleticism. I still think though that a coach like Beilein could have worked wonders with the talent that was on that team.
February 22nd, 2015 at 2:27 PM ^
My high school, Lansing Sexton, was ranked number 1 in the state for most of the year. They knocked off a loaded and eventual state champion Flint Northwestern team that had Glen Rice, Jeff Grayer (Iowa State, Milwaukee Bucks), Andre Rison and Anthony Pendleton (USC), during the regular season. They lost a regional final to a Jackson High team led by Iowa State star Gary Thompkins, a team they had beaten twice earlier in the season. Robert Henderson was Mr. Basketball (the first one ever I believe) from Lansing Eastern Class of "82. 1984 was kind of the the end of an era (Magic Johnson, Jay and Sam Vincent), for the golden age of Lansing area hoops.
February 21st, 2015 at 11:47 PM ^
my oldest and her team won their semi-final hoops match tonight down in mt. pleasant, and they will play for the state championship in 2 weeks.
as for the '84 team, those were our contemporaries and were some pretty good guys. we had some fun back in the day. funniest thing you ever saw was hockey players taking basketball tips from the hoops players. by ncaa regulations we couldn't take the ice until a couple of weeks into school, so the coaches would have us play b-ball. our idea of a foul differed markedly from most basketball experts.
February 22nd, 2015 at 12:58 AM ^
What sparked the change in the perception of the two tournaments? (NIT / NCAA)
February 22nd, 2015 at 10:19 AM ^
February 22nd, 2015 at 10:45 AM ^
Yes, by the time the NCAA expanded to 64 teams, the NIT became irrelevant in the eyes of most fans.
February 22nd, 2015 at 11:28 AM ^
Texas Western's roster actually was pretty racially mixed. But its starting five was all black.
I think the NCAA tournament had already become a bigger deal by then, though. I'm not positive.
February 22nd, 2015 at 2:38 AM ^
The talent in the 80s was unreal.
February 22nd, 2015 at 7:42 AM ^
It was a great decade to live in and if I had a hot tub time machine, I would go back to it in a minute.
The sports were great during that decade and from a high school basketball perspective it was the golden age of hoops in the state of Michigan during that time.
February 22nd, 2015 at 11:33 AM ^
Pro basketball in Michigan was also fun with the Pistons steadily climbing the ladder until they finally won it all in 1989. With U-M also winning it all, Michigan was the basketball capital of the country.
February 22nd, 2015 at 7:52 AM ^
off the top of my old head, when the NCAA was 16 teams, obviously, the NIT had better teams than now.
Al McGuire did not like the region they put Marquette into one year, and declined the NCAA bid to go to the NIT. I think they won it; all the games were in Madison Square Garden, so the invited field tilted toward NY.
After that, the NCAA required that teams accepte bids.
The regionals were not even on network TV, I remember watching Artis Gilmore (Jacksonville State?) tournament games on a UHF station.
We should have had a bid in 84, I think Frieder called someone on the committee to lobby, or whatever, and that was held against him.
They had earlier changed it so the tournament was played at the same time as the NIT, so a school could not accept bids to both.
February 22nd, 2015 at 10:11 AM ^
February 22nd, 2015 at 8:15 AM ^
playing years so this group of players and the Harbaugh football teams were my heroes, along with the Pistons and Tigers.
They called Antoine Joubert "Prince on Roller Skates." Hilarious.
February 22nd, 2015 at 10:23 AM ^
February 22nd, 2015 at 9:28 AM ^
That 1982 class was loaded. Came across this 2010 AA News update on Butch Wade who at the time was teaching in Florida.
http://www.annarbor.com/sports/um-basketball/former-michigan-basketball…