March 14

From Hoopedia

• 1942 - Hall of Famer Kay Yow, North Carolina State Wolfpack coach, winner of over 700 games, and honorary chair of the Kay Yow/WBCA Cancer Fund, is born in Gibsonville, North Carolina.

• 1946 - Hall of Famer Wes Unseld, NBA MVP and Rookie of the Year in 1969, is born in Louisville, Kentucky.

• 1953 - Walter Dukes scores 21 points and pulls down 20 rebounds to lead Seton Hall over St. John's, 58-46, for the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) championship at Madison Square Garden. Dukes sets the collegiate single-season record for rebounds (734), which still stands.

• 1954 - Baltimore drops a 65-54 decision at Milwaukee, giving the Bullets their 20th consecutive road loss for the season, and making them the only team in NBA history to go an entire season without winning a game on the road.

• 1960 - Philadelphia Warriors rookie Wilt Chamberlain scores a then-NBA Playoff record 53 points in the Warriors’ 132-112 win over Syracuse in the third and deciding game of the Eastern Division Semifinals.

• 1962 - In Philadelphia’s 119-115 OT win at Chicago, Wilt Chamberlain completes his banner regular season of setting records that still stand by averaging 50.4 points and 48.5 minutes per game. He also set the single game scoring record when he scored 100 points on March 2 against New York. He becomes the first NBA player to record more than 4,000 points in a season.

• 1962 - Cincinnati Royal Oscar Robertson closes out his second NBA season averaging a triple-double: 30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds and 11.4 assists per game.

• 1963 - Guy Rodgers of the San Francisco Warriors dishes out 28 assists, tying Bob Cousy's record. That record would not be broken for 15 years.

• 1965 - The Boston Celtics become the first NBA team to reach 61 wins in a season, following a 106-98 win over San Francisco, led by Bill Russell’s 40 rebounds and 20 points. Boston finished the 1964-65 season with 62 wins.

• 1970 - Jacksonville, led by Artis Gilmore, upsets #1-ranked Kentucky, 106-100, in the Mideast Regional championship game of the NCAA tournament. Kentucky stayed in the game, despite four players fouling out, including top-scorer Dan Issell.

• 1981 - Arkansas eliminates defending champion Louisville in the second round of the NCAA tournament. U.S. Reed makes a desperation shot from mid-court as time runs out to win the game, 74-73.

• 1981 - With 12 seconds left in the game and DePaul leading by one, Skip Dillard (known as "Money" to his teammates) steps to the line and misses the front end of a one-and-one. As the clock ticks down, #9-seed St. Joseph's John Smith gets an open lay-up to win the game, 49-48, thus eliminating the #1-seed Blue Demons from the NCAA tournament in the Round of 32.

• 1986 - Forward Rod Higgins becomes the first player in NBA history to play for four teams in the same season when he takes the court for Chicago. In the 1985-86 season he played for Seattle, San Antonio and New Jersey.

• 1987 - Fennis Dembo leads the Wyoming Cowboys to an upset win over mighty UCLA, 78-68, in the NCAA tournament's second round. Dembo's line: 41 points, nine rebounds and six assists.

• 1996 - #13-seed Princeton upsets defending national champ and #4-seed UCLA, 43-41, in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. It would be the last collegiate victory for retiring Coach Pete Carril, the creator of the Princeton Offense.

• 1998 - The Harvard University women's basketball team makes history by becoming the first #16 seed to defeat a #1 seed in either the men's or women's NCAA Division I tournaments. The Crimson stuns Stanford University, 71-67, at Maples Pavilion, Stanford's home court.

• 2001 - The United Nations appoints Eduardo Najera of the Dallas Mavericks to be the UN Goodwill Ambassador for Sports Against Drugs.