March 20

From Hoopedia

• 1887 - Hall of Fame player Harlan Page, who led the University of Chicago to the 1908 and 1909 Helms Foundation National Championships, is born in Watervliet, Michigan.

• 1940 - Springfield College, birthplace of basketball, manages to connect on only eight of 63 shots from the field (12.7%) against Indiana, setting the NCAA Division I Men's Tournament record for both fewest field goals made and lowest field-goal shooting percentage.

• 1945 - Legendary player, team president, and coach, Pat Riley is born Rome, New York.

• 1951 - The undefeated Columbia Lions cannot hold on to a seven-point halftime lead, and lose to Illinois, 79-71, in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

• 1954 - La Salle beats Bradley, 92-76, in the first televised NCAA championship game.

• 1954 - Bobby Plump sinks a last-second shot to lead Milan High School (enrollment 161) to the Indiana High School State Tournament championship over Muncie Central. The 1986 film Hoosiers was a fictionalized account of the event.

• 1965 - Bill Bradley erupts for 58 points -- a Final Four record -- in the consolation game of the NCAA tournament. Bradley and Princeton trounce Wichita State, 118-82.

• 1965 - St. Johns's turns back Villanova, 55-51, to win their fifth National Invitation Tournament (NIT) championship.

• 1960 - Leo Rautins, perhaps the best player produced by Canada until Steve Nash, is born in Toronto.

• 1968 - Dave Bing of the Detroit Pistons finishes the season with a league-leading 27.1 PPG average, becoming the first guard in 20 years to lead the NBA in scoring.

• 1968 - Wilt Chamberlain of Philadelphia becomes the first center in NBA history to lead the league in assists with a total of 702, for an average of 8.6 APG. Chamberlain looked back on leading the league in assists as one of the top achievements of his NBA career.

• 1969 - UCLA blows a nine-point lead with 70 seconds remaining in the national semifinals of the NCAA tournament, allowing Drake to pull within one. Drake misses the go-ahead basket, however, and UCLA hangs on for an 85-82 win.

• 1971 - UCLA has its closest call in its 38-game playoff winning streak (1967-73), when they encounter a tenacious Long Beach State team coached by Jerry "The Shark" Tarkanian. The Bruins claw back from an 11-point deficit, despite shooting only 29% from the field.

• 1971 - Lew Alcindor (later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) is named NBA Most Valuable Player for the first of his record-breaking six times. In his second NBA season he averages 31.7 PPG (hitting 57.7% of his field goal attempts) and 16 RPG.

• 1976 - John Havlicek of the Boston Celtics becomes the first NBA player to score more than 1,000 points per season for 14 consecutive years.

• 1993 - Grant Hill (Duke) steals the ball eight times from UC-Berkeley, tying the NCAA Division I Men's Tournament record set two days earlier by Darrell Hawkins.