LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- When the University of Louisville men's basketball team started its two-hour bus ride to Indianapolis for the 1980 NCAA Final Four, the conversation centered on Iowa, the Cardinals' opponent in the national semifinals.
But Wiley Brown and Rodney McCray, the Cards' primary inside players, could not resist talking about the guy everybody in college basketball talked about that season: Joe Barry Carroll, Purdue's center, who figured to be waiting for the Cards in the national championship game.
Carroll scored more than 22 points per game. He averaged nearly nine rebounds, three blocks and six free throw attempts per game.
Until Zach Edey arrived, Carroll was the signature player on the last Purdue squad to make a Final Four. And the silo-sized Carroll stood 7-feet tall, weighing 225 pounds.
McCray, the Cards' center, was 6 feet, 7 inches tall. Brown was an inch taller.
"I remember asking Rod, 'What are we going to do with this guy? " Brown said. "He shot that fadeaway jump shot that nobody could block.
"He had really soft hands and great touch around the basket."
What did Louisville do with Carroll, the Boilermakers' center who was taken with the first pick in the 1980 NBA Draft, one spot ahead of Louisville legend Darrell Griffith?
Not one thing. Ignored him.
The Purdue-Louisville matchup never happened. Brown and McCray thought it would happen. Las Vegas thought it would happen, installing the Boilermakers as a 1.5-point favorite for the national semifinal game at Market Square Arena.
UCLA did not let that happen. Kiki Vandeweghe scored 24 points, and the Bruins limited Carroll to 5 points less than his average. UCLA, an unranked No. 8 seed that started the tournament with a 17-9 record, upset No. 20 Purdue, 67-62.
That was the loss that started 44 years of West Lafayette heartburn that the Boilermakers will flush when they play North Carolina State on Saturday in the Final Four in suburban Phoenix.
It was UCLA, not Purdue, that Denny Crum's team dispatched for the program's first men's NCAA title. After beating Iowa, 80-72, Louisville was a 2.5-point favorite when the Cards beat UCLA, 59-54.
Jerry Eaves and Roger Burkman, guards on that U of L squad, said they expected UCLA to take down Purdue.
The Bruins were rolling. Before defeating the Boilermakers, UCLA handled No. 1 DePaul and No. 10 Ohio State on the way to Indianapolis. UCLA was coached by Larry Brown, a Hall of Famer who later won college (Kansas) and NBA (Pistons) titles.
"UCLA was the hottest team in the country and they had so much quickness and speed," Eaves said. "I wasn't surprised they beat Purdue."
"They had Kiki Vandeweghe, who could really score," Burkman said. "And their guards, 'Rocket' Rod Foster and Michael Holton, were impossible to stay in front of. They got hot at the right time."
Brown and Tony Branch, another U of L guard, disagreed with their teammates. They are still convinced Purdue would have been the more difficult matchup.
"When you have big guy like that, it changes everything," Brown said. "You can always go to him."
Branch, who later coached as an assistant to Gene Keady at Purdue for three seasons, explained it by looking at some of the issues the Cards that during their magical season.
"When you look the three teams that beat us that season, what was one thing they had in common?" Branch said.
Louisville lost to Utah by 2 in Salt Lake City, to Illinois by 13 in Honolulu and to Iona by 17 in Madison Square Garden.
"Size," Branch said. "Size was something that I worried about.
"We were not a big team. Derek Smith was 6-6, Rodney was 6-7, and Wiley was 6-8. Teams with big frontcourt players who could really score gave us trouble. You could start with Jeff Ruland."
Ruland was mammoth, standing 6 feet, 11 inches tall and 240 pounds. He punished Louisville with 38 points and 20 rebounds during a 77-60 Iona win on Feb. 21 in Madison Square Garden. The Cards managed only seven total rebounds in the second half as the Gaels ended U of L's 18-game winning streak.
Tom Chambers, a mobile 6-foot-10-inch center/forward, had 17 points and nine boards and Karl Bankowski, a 6-foot7-inch forward, had 20 points when the Utes upset the Cards, 71-69.
Illinois was not a big team. The Illini beat the Cards with balance and defense. Louisville shot less than 40% and the Illini had seven players score 8 or more points in their 77-64 victory in Hawaii.
What would the Cards have done with Carroll?
We'll never know.
"It's crazy," Branch said. "If you're really honest about it, you know that if you played the tournament 10 different times, you could easily have 10 different winners.
"But if you asked me if I wanted to play Purdue that year, I would have said, 'Heavens, NO!'"
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