Final Four or not, there remained some disbelievers about Loyola’s title credentials. Cincinnati fans, who learned to love HC Ed Jucker’s disciplined style (which took some getting used to after the racehorse pace employed by the Oscar Robertson Bearcat teams in the late ‘50s), became devoted to Jucker’s methodical ways; to them, run-and-gun teams like the Ramblers appealed only to those untutored in the finer points of basketball. Sports Illustrated, the definitive word in the sports world at the time, was not quite convinced Loyola was title-worthy, either...but just in case offered a warning to its readers. “A Saturday night championship game between Duke and Cincinnati would match the two best teams in the country,” said SI in its preview of the Final Four. “However, Loyola, for all its undisciplined, madcap ways, has looked hotter than anybody in the regionals. Either way, a couple of gunners are loose in Lexington, and Cincinnati is their target.”

That “other” gunner happened to be Vic Bubas’ Duke Blue Devils, who entered the Big Dance after running roughshod through the ACC, going undefeated in league play and then cruising through the normally-treacherous ACC Tournament with three wins by double-digit margins. Indeed, thanks to Loyola’s late-season losses to Bowling Green and Wichita State, Duke (still an all-white team in ‘63) had leapfrogged the Ramblers in the national rankings, with the Blue Devils now number two in the polls behind Cincinnati after beating NYU and Jack Ramsay’s St. Joe’s in the East Regional. At 27-2, and without a defeat since late December when Miami-Florida (led by soph Rick Barry) and Davidson scored wins in the same week, the Blue Devils were on a nation’s best 20-game win streak and were led by high-scoring 6'5 F Art Heyman, whose career scoring average in Durham (25.1 ppg) still dwarfs any of those recorded by any of Mike Krzyzewski’s stars several decades later. Heyman, who would be the top pick in the upcoming NBA Draft by the Knicks, was complemented by jr. G Jeff Mullins, another future first-round NBA selection. It was no wonder the Blue Devils were fourth nationally in scoring per game, a category in which those “madcap” Ramblers were at the front of the queue.

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In the other semifinal matchup, the twice defending national champs from Cincinnati would be facing Slats Gill’s surprise West Regional winner Oregon State, which upset Ned Wulk’s 4th-ranked Arizona State squad featuring future St. Louis and Atlanta Hawk star “Jumpin’” Joe Caldwell, 93-79, in the West final. The tipoff for Bearcats-Beavers could come a half hour after the conclusion of Duke-Loyola, a battle some believed could last all night, given the respective firepower on each side.

The city of Louisville was certainly excited about sports in those days, with local product Cassius Clay moving up the heavyweight rankings and preparing for an elimination bout with Doug Jones at Madison Square Garden on April 13. Freedom Hall, just seven years old at the time, had also emerged as one of the premier basketball facilities in the country, and was hosting its second consecutive Final Four and fourth in six seasons. The city was a natural for the Final Four, as it had long been a college hoops hotbed, with local Louisville, plus nearby Kentucky, Indiana, and Cincinnati all less than two hours driving distance (even Chicago was only 299 miles north). So it was no surprise that a standing-room only crowd of 19,153 jammed the big arena at the fairgrounds, just a mile or so from Churchill Downs, where Chateaugay, under the poised Panamanian, Braulio Baeza, would win the Kentucky Derby six weeks later.

Although Duke had the majority of the crowd on its side at the outset, sentiment changed throughout the evening, as Loyola would gain a lot of new fans (and more respect) before the game concluded. Bubas’ fast-paced strategy that had worked so well in the ACC was rendered ineffective against the masters of pace and tempo from the Windy City. Loyola’s quickness advantage was evident early, as the Ramblers built a 13-point edge in the first half when their quick passing consistently found holes in the Duke zone. And when the Blue Devils started to extend their defense to “cheat” on Jerry Harkness and Ron Miller out on the perimeter, Les Hunter was usually free in the paint. At halftime, Loyola led, 44-31.

At that point, it appeared as if the depth issues that had hounded Loyola HC George Ireland since the late-season academic suspensions of Billy Smith and Pablo Robertson were not going to be an issue, at least as long as the Ramblers didn’t encounter any foul trouble. Ireland was going to stick with his starters as long as he needed, although for a time in the second half, it appeared as if that “iron man” strategy might be ready to backfire.

With Heyman finding the range, and Duke’s defense doing a better job slowing the Rambler transition game, the Blue Devils climbed to within 3 points, 74-71, with just over 4 minutes remaining. At that point, however, Loyola got its second wind...and third and fourth winds, for that matter. Miller scored two quick buckets, one on a jumper, another on a drive to the bucket. Hunter blocked a Heyman shot, which quickly resulted in a Harkness breakaway bucket the other way. Duke was beginning to lose its poise, and Blue Devil fouls on Loyola’s next two possessions resulted in both Hunter and John Egan canning two free throws apiece. In just over 2 minutes, the Ramblers exploded on a 10-0 burst to put the game away, and ended the game on a 20-4 run in an eventual 94-75 win.

With 42 seconds left in the game, Loyola fans (including some of those aforementioned spectators that didn't enter the building as Loyola fans) began the “We want Cincinnati!” chant. Chicago Tribune sports writer Roy Damer wrote about the crowd gasping at “one of the most decisive spurts ever seen on a basketball court.” After the game, Harkness told Robert Markus of the Chicago Tribune, “I didn’t play too well tonight, felt kind of tight. But you see, we're not a one-man team. If I have an off night or Egan does, then Hunter and Rouse make up for it like they did tonight.”

Hunter indeed made up for whatever Harkness believed he was lacking that night, as Les led the Ramblers with 29 points on 11-of-20 shooting from the field, tying Heyman for game-high honors in scoring. Hunter also added 18 rebounds in an overall monster effort. Harkness, despite his own self-criticism, still ended with 20 points, with Miller adding 18, Egan another 14, and Rouse 13. “They just have fine balance,” an impressed Duke HC Bubas told the Chicago Tribune. "Harkness, all of them. They're just a great group of jumpers and tremendous runners. Their board play in the first 10 minutes was too good for us. We got it straightened out, but not in time.”

Still, only the true Loyola believers had a lot of confidence heading into the finale after Cincinnati demolished Oregon State by a whopping 80-46 count in the nightcap. Cincy led by only three points at halftime, 30-27, and OSU cut the lead to one with the first basket after the break. But when the Beavers’ 7'0 C Mel Counts (old Laker and Celtic fans have to remember the Coos Bay, OR native!) fouled out early in the second half, the Bearcats ran roughshod, eventually outscoring OSU 50-19 in the second half. Moreover, Jucker was able to practically clear his Cincy bench and rest his starters late in the game, with 11 Bearcats seeing action.

From a sheer intimidation standpoint, there was no other team that the Ramblers could have faced in the final that was more imposing than Cincinnati. The Bearcats were the two-time defending national champions, and they had accumulated a 110-7 record in the previous four seasons heading into the game. Those who believe college basketball didn’t have any dynasties prior to John Wooden’s amazing string of national titles at UCLA in the ‘60s and ‘70s probably never heard of the Cincinnati teams that preceded the Bruins in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Because if there was a “UCLA” in the years before Wooden won his first title with Walt Hazzard & Co. in 1964, it was Ed Jucker’s Bearcats. And in 1963, the powerful Cincy squad was sailing in the sort of privileged college hoop waters that only Wooden’s teams, and perhaps Mike Krzyzewski’s Duke teams three decades later, ever journeyed.

Since the beginning of the NCAA tournament in 1939, no team had reached three straight championship games, much less win straight titles, but the Bearcats were on the verge in 1963 after their final game wins over the Ohio State Buckeyes of Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, and a reserve Buckeye performer named Bobby Knight, the previous two seasons. The Bearcats were on as impressive a roll as any college team had ever been. Over the last six years, they had won the tough Missouri Valley Conference six times, finished the regular season ranked either No. 1 or No. 2 five times, and reached the Final Four five years running. The first two of those had been on teams featuring the incomparable Oscar Robertson, although those Bearcats had lost in the national semis in back-to-back years vs. Pete Newell’s Cal Bears in 1959 & 1960.

Indeed, many college fans might be surprised to know that Cincy didn’t start to win NCAA titles until the “Big O” had graduated to the NBA’s Cincinnati Royals. Jucker, who was promoted to the head coaching job when George Smith retired following the Big O’s senior season, changed Cincy from a racehorse-style team that scored 90 ppg in Robertson’s days to a methodical, disciplined outfit that instead wore down its opposition. Jucker had to do a sales job on sorts such as Tom Thacker, whose flashy tendencies had to be curbed, and Ron Bonham, whose shot selection was altered (Bonham, who entered Cincy never seeing a shot he didn’t like, slowly came around to Jucker’s thinking). Jucker replaced star 6'9 C Paul Hogue from the ‘61 and ’62 title teams by moving 6'8 F George Wilson to center, while switching the explosive 6'2 Thacker from guard to forward and bringing in heady 5'10 Larry Shingleton to run the offense. Shingleton’s backcourt mate, Tony Yates, who would eventually become Cincy’s coach in the ‘80s, was considered one of the best perimeter defenders in the game, while the other starter, Bonham, was one of the best pure shooters in the country, and led Cincy scorers at 20.7 ppg.

In the 1962-63 season, the Bearcats were ranked number one from the pre-season poll to the final poll of the year, often receiving a unanimous number one vote. They allowed a nation’s-low 51.9 ppg while drawing only 13 fouls pg, a remarkably-low number. They had also forged a 37-game winning streak lasting well over a year before losing to a dangerous Wichita State team by one point on the road. And then they recovered to win their next seven in a row to meet Loyola in the NCAA Tournament Final with a 29-1 record. Under Jucker, Cincinnati had a perfect 11-0 NCAA Tournament record heading into the game with the Ramblers—and the Bearcats had won against superior-ranked talent (Ohio State) the previous two years.

Although it seemed folly for anyone not emotionally connected to Loyola to even suggest that the Ramblers had a chance, a few insiders thought the Chicagoans might be worth a look. None other than Slats Gill, the coach of the Oregon State team that had been routed by the Bearcats in the second semifinal, suggested that he might consider backing the Ramblers in the final. Gill told the Chicago Tribune that it would take “good ball handlers, good shooting, and quickness” to beat Cincinnati. “I'd say [Loyola is] very quick. I think from what I saw tonight, Loyola is better. Don't you? Those two big boys Rouse and Hunter really go up. (Cincinnati is) very good, but they're not the great team they were. I think they can be beaten.”

Another standing room-only crowd of 19,152—the majority of them Bearcat fans who drove just over 100 miles for the coronation on Cincinnati's great season —showed up in Louisville not caring a hoot about what Slats Gill might have said. The game, with veteran Bill Flemming at the TV play-by-play microphone, was televised live in many parts of the country, but in Chicago, WGN-TV—the Tribune-owned station—decided to show the game on tape delay following the Carver-Centralia game for the Illinois High School State Championship at the brand-new Assemby Hall in Champaign-Urbana. For those Loyola fans and others interested in Chicago who couldn’t wait for the tape delay, they had to settle for Red Rush’s radio play-by-play on WCFL-AM.

Meanwhile, a few hundreds miles away at Freedom Hall, things didn’t start too well for Loyola. The Bearcats controlled the opening tip and methodically worked the ball to the inside, where George Wilson made the first two Cincinnati points with an emphatic dunk off a missed shot. With the score 4-4, the Bearcats took advantage of miserable Loyola field goal shooting to open up a 12-5 lead with 9:56 left in the first half. Cincy’s All-American Ron Bonham scored five of the Bearcats’ points on their 8-1 run. The Ramblers had only one field goal, a lean-in jumper by Miller, in an 11-minute stretch of futility. Loyola grimly stayed within earshot only because of some stellar defensive work that featured two blocked shots by Hunter and another by Harkness that kept Cincinnati from running away and hiding.

Jucker’s methodical offense worked to near perfection. The Bearcats were scoring off screens, cuts to the basket, offensive rebounds, and trips to the charity stripe courtesy of Loyola's fouls borne of frustration. Cincinnati opened a 19-9 lead with less than six minutes left in the first half. But Loyola cut into the Bearcats’ lead in the closing minutes of the half with five points from Les Hunter, four from Vic Rouse, and three from John Egan to cut the deficit to 29-21 at the break. While Bonham was fantastic for the Bearcats in the first half, scoring 11 of Cincy’s 29 points, Loyola shot poorly in the first 20 minutes, missing 13 of its first 14 shots from the field. The Ramblers simply couldn’t find any space on the floor to shoot in the first half against the number one defensive team in the country. There were no open jump shots, only a few chances off the dribble that didn't go down. Many of the Ramblers shots were wild rebound tips off missed jumpers. Even more troubling was the fact that Loyola's consensus All-American—Harkness, who entered scoring better than 21 ppg—had not made a single field goal in the first half. Indeed, Loyola was lucky to be trailing by only eight points at the break.

The Ramblers scored the first two points of the second half, and then after a jumper by Tom Thacker restored Cincinnati’s eight-point lead, Hunter scored on an offensive rebound. On Cincy’s next possession, Loyola's full-court press forced a turnover, and the Ramblers had a chance to cut the deficit to four. But Hunter's missed shot off the glass came down into Tony Yates’ hands, and the Bearcats were off to the races. Yates hit 20-foot jumper; Thacker hit a “leaping Lena” eight footer; Ron Bonham was wide open for a lay-up under the basket. The Ramblers, who had at one me early in the half had a chance to cut the lead to four, now found but themselves down 37-25 against the best defensive team in the nation. Within three minutes, the score had ballooned to 45-30. Now ahead by 15 points with fewer than 12 minutes remaining until their third consecutive title, the Bearcats could begin their vaunted stall. Hardly the position in which Loyola looked as if it was going to pull the upset.

“At that point, I was angry, not at anybody in particular, just at us in general,” G John Egan recalled in a later interview. “I was probably more outspoken than anyone about the value of our team, the quality of our team-and I really believed it, I wasn't just saying it. And to get that far and not perform, that just gave me a sickening feeling.”

The Ramblers, desperate to make a respectable showing at the very least, turned up the heat on the full-court press. Loyola cut the margin to 45-33 before Bearcat frontliner George Wilson picked up his fourth foul, prompting the only substitution of the game for either side—Dale Heidotting replaced Wilson for four minutes. But with Wilson out of the game with four fouls, and Thacker and Yates each beginning to get into foul trouble as well, the Cincinnati lead suddenly began to dwindle.

Hoping to counteract his players’ foul trouble, Jucker put the Bearcats into their famous stall. Cincinnati was nationally-renowned for controlling the tempo, taking care of the ball, and waiting patiently for a good shot. But there were still over 10 minutes left to play, too soon for the deep freeze, even in the pre-shot clock era. The score was still 47-35 with 8:38 left to play after Ron Miller's second basket of the game, and 48-37 with 7:38 left to play, but a jumper by Rouse, an offensive foul by Thacker, and two free throws by Les Hunter, and suddenly it was 48-41 with six minutes left. This was the rally Loyola’s fans had been waiting for, one that seemed unlikely just a few minutes earlier!

The fightback continued. After a missed Yates free throw, Hunter controlled the rebound, and on the next trip downcourt, Harkness hit on a turnaround jumper from just inside the free throw line—his first field goal of the game—to cut Cincy's lead to 48-43 with just under five minutes left to play. Any heretofore neutrals in the crowd began to threw their support behind the Ramblers. After a ho-hum first 40 minutes of action, tension was suddenly mounting—quickly—in Freedom Hall.

Harkness’ basket, in particular, was an awakening, and seemed to undermine the confident Bearcats. As Cincinnati brought the ball upcourt, Harkness stepped into the passing lane to intercept the ball, and he took it straight to the hoop for an easy lay-up. After more than 35 minutes without a field goal, Harkness had two in six seconds. Now it was a three-point game with 4:24 remaining!

After two free throws by Bonham, Harkness answered with one of his own at the other end to make it 50-46. Harkness missed the second free throw, but it was tipped out of bounds by Cincinnati. The Ramblers held possession, and the suddenly-hot Harkness scored on a seven-foot jumper over a double-team to make it 50-48 with 2:42 left in the contest. Cincinnati went back into the stall yet again, looking to eat the clock, forcing Harkness to step out and foul Yates. Yates hit the first free throw, but missed the second shot, although teammate George Wilson controlled the rebound. Forced to foul, Ron Miller stepped out to foul Yates, but the Cincinnati G missed on his first shot, and a determined Hunter skied for the rebound. Quickly downcourt, Harkness worked into the lane for a six-foot floater that was flyswatted by George Wilson...who was called for goaltending. Remarkably, the Bearcats’ lead had been cut to 51-50 with just over a minute left to play!

For a moment, however, Cincy looked as if it might dodge the proverbial bullet, as Loyola, thinking steal on the inbounds pass following the goaltending call, was instead burned on a long baseball pass to Thacker, who scored on a lay-in to up the score to 53-50. The Ramblers hurried upcourt, only to see Hunter miss off the rim from ten feet, and suddenly Cincy had the ball and a chance to open a 55-50 lead with precious time ticking off the clock. Thacker dribbled the ball to the free throw line, but instead of pulling the ball back to let time tick off the clock, under the basket he found a wide-open Yates...who incredibly took and missed his open five-foot shot!

Still down three and time running out, Harkness brought the ball upcourt, but missed a short jumper. The ever-present Hunter, however, was there for a crucial tip-in to once again cut the margin to 1 point (53-52) with 15 seconds to play. As soon as the ball was inbounded, Harkness fouled Shingleton to put the 5'10" Cincinnati guard on the line with 12 seconds left in the game. Shingleton made the first shot to put the Bearcats up by two. One more free throw could put the game out of reach for the Ramblers; even Vic Rouse seemed to sense the end was at hand, and offered a congratulation of sorts to Bonham. Shingleton, however, missed the second free throw (“You know, if I’d made that shot, I could probably have been the youngest senator in the history of the state of Ohio,” said Shingleton to Sports Illustrated years later). Hunter rebounded and quickly outletted to Miller, who might have traveled (“He walked from here to that wall,” Jucker would later say) before flipping the ball to Harkness, who canned a 12-foot jumper to finally level the score at 54 apiece with 6 seconds to play! Unable to hear Jucker’s appeal for a timeout above the din of the crowd, the Bearcats couldn’t advance the ball, and overtime ensued.

The Loyola players were no longer concerned with being embarrassed. “We were thinking, ‘We’re back!’ and we wished we had another half to play so we wouldn’t get squeaked out on a garbage play—particularly since they were famous for holding the ball," Egan says.

But the Ramblers turned the tables on the Bearcats. Harkness opened the overtime period with a quick basket on a feed from Hunter to give Loyola its first lead of the entire game. After George Wilson countered for Cincy on a lay-up, Miller made a 25-foot rainbow jumper to put Loyola in front again, 58-56. After a couple of empty possessions, Thacker rebounded a Loyola miss and hit Shingleton for a breakaway lay-up, leveling matters at 58 with 2:15 left to play. Now it was time for Loyola to hold the ball for a final shot against the team that was most notorious for the stall!

After a timeout with 1:49 to play, Egan, Loyola's best ball handler, dribbled around the halfcourt for a few seconds, passing the ball to Miller, Harkness, Rouse, and then back to Miller again. It was apparent that the Ramblers were going to wait for a last opportunity to put up a late shot for the win. But Loyola was not suited to playing Cincinnati's stall game-Loyola was built to run and shoot, not dribble and hold. Only two and a half years earlier, Miller was a center—not accustomed to dribbling and passing the ball. As he attempted to pass the ball back to Egan with 1:20 left to play, disaster struck.

The ball squirted away from Egan, and rolled along the floor toward the center of the court. Several players dived in to get a hand on the ball. Cincinnati's Shingleton corralled the ball, but only just before a desperate Egan got his hands on it for a jump ball.

“I'm happy that I get a jump ball out of the situation,” said Egan in a later interview. “Shingleton wasn't that much taller than me. But I didn't really question whether or not I could get the jump ball, I thought I could jump higher than he could. The idea was to tip the ball between two of our guys to control it.”

Ron Miller got control of the tip in the backcourt, and immediately got the ball to the better ball handlers. Harkness dribbled off several seconds before passing back to Egan, who passed it back to Harkness, who made half-hearted drives toward the lane before shoveling the ball off to Miller. Then Miller passed the ball back to Egan to start the process over again.

With eight seconds left, Egan passed the ball to Harkness on the left wing. Harkness dribbled and took three strides, guarded closely by Ron Bonham. Momentarily losing grip on the ball, Harkness instead passed to Hunter, about 10 feet out, just left of the lane, where Hunter put up a rainbow jumper with 4 seconds to play that bounced off the front of the rim up onto the glass. Vic Rouse was shoulder to shoulder with George Wilson, and the ball caromed past Wilson off the glass toward Rouse, who got both hands on the ball and laid it in neatly off the glass just before the buzzer sounded.

At the moment Vic Rouse's tip-in beat the buzzer in Louisville, most in the Windy City were oblivious to the fact that a Chicago school had won the national championship. The Illinois state high school championship game featuring Chicago's Carver High School and downstate Centralia took place at the brand new Assembly Hall in Champaign the same night, with the tip-off coming an hour before the NCAA championship was set to start. As mentioned earlier, Tribune-owned WGN-TV, trying to please two audiences, delayed the televised start of the Loyola-Cincy game until after the completion of the high school championship, which Carver won on a late steal and a basket, 53-52.

But some folks, including just about every Loyola fan that couldn't make it to Louisville, listened to Red Rush call the game on WCFL radio. When the radio listeners learned that Loyola was the 1963 NCAA National Basketball Champions, Chicagoland television viewers were still watching the Ramblers' first half futility!

Nearby campus, on Sheridan Road, Loyola fans suddenly began to spill on to the street, although they must have come from somewhere other than the university, because just 300 or so lived at Loyola Hall, the only dorm on campus, where most had been listening to the game in the basement. Traffic stopped for a while on Sheridan Road as the partying, quite tame in comparison to the party North Carolina fans had in Chapel Hill following alst week’s title game win, continued into the night. Loyola fans, students, and neighborhood residents erupted into jubilant snake dances and conga lines that shut down Sheridan Road, under the El tracks, and past the Grenada Theater to Devon Avenue.

Back at Freedom Hall, there was a bit of disbelief on each side, and with good reason. Almost everyone in the building must have expected that Jerry Harkness was going to take the last shot for Loyola. When Cincinnati's defense collapsed on Harkness to leave Hunter open for a jumper from ten feet out, it was a gamble that the Bearcats were willing to take. A missed shot from Hunter probably meant that there would be a second overtime, especially after the Bearcats had dominated the boards much of the night. The tip-in by Rouse was the result of a lucky bounce and great execution from a player that had been considered fully defended out of the play.

After spending a mostly-sleepless night at Louisville's elegant Brown Hotel, the Ramblers boarded a charter plane to return to Chicago the next morning. Several hundred fans and Mayor Richard Daley greeted the Ramblers at new O'Hare Airport, which he had helped christen with President Kennedy the previous week. “I was dumbfounded by the reaction (in Chicago),” said Miller. “I didn't expect Mayor Daley to be greeting us at the airport.” As for Daley’s appearance, that shouldn’t have been a surprise; it was a great photo opportunity before an election just two weeks away. After greeting the victorious Ramblers, Daley went to Carver High School to shake more hands—they had an even larger celebration for the state high school championship at Carver than they did at Loyola, where a crowd of 3000 or so students and fans waited to cheer the conquering Ramblers.

In retrospect, it remains interesting that the peripheral issues surrounding that Loyola team were not acknowledged by Tribune beat writers who never wrote a word that year about the difficulties that Loyola players had in dealing with many overt acts of racism on the road. Not one of the Chicago newspapers sent their Loyola beat writers to road games during the regular season that year, even though Loyola was ranked as high as number 2 in the country. Not only did the local beat writers not see the extent of the racism that Loyola endured on the road, the Tribune beat writers wrote stories that painted the opposite picture—implying that Loyola players were violent, and that their mostly-Catholic student supporters held violent and dangerous celebrations when they won.

That “celebration” was for a national basketball championship by a small, private Catholic university that came from 15 points behind against the two-time defending champions. It was for a team that would eventually see its five starters earn a total of 11 college degrees, which is probably a record for academic achievement by a championship team, or any tourney team in NCAA tourney history. All five starters graduated; Egan earned a law degree, Miller an MBA, and the late Rouse (who sadly passed away in 1999) earned three masters degrees and a doctorate. Meanwhile, Harkness became a successful businessman in Indianapolis after spending considerable time with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference when it joined forces with the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO) to form the landmark Chicago Freedom Movement later in the 60s.

Of the Ramblers, Les Hunter had the most successful pro basketball career, tallying over 12 ppg in seven NBA-ABA years before opening a barbeque restaurant in suburban Kansas City. Harkness’ NBA career didn’t pan out after being drafted by the Knicks in ‘63, although he did return to the ABA in its inaugural year of 1967-68 and hit the longest-ever shot in pro history with an 88-footer (which the referees originally forgot to count for 3 points) against the Dallas Chaparrals.

Were the 1962-63 Ramblers one of the best college teams of all time? Perhaps not. But they were one of the most entertaining, most interesting, and eventually, most accomplished off the court. Although the Ramblers were about a quarter-century too early to get an anthem like CBS’s “One Shining Moment” dedicated to them at the end of the tournament, we don’t know of a championship team that was ever more worthy of the tune.

And it will take some doing by any future title winner to replace that Loyola team as our favorite of them all!