For One-Loss Wonders, It’s a Whole New Season

After all the speculative hubbub about the chance of an undefeated team winning the NCAA championship -- Indiana’s 1976 record is safe again -- something has been overlooked.

One-loss teams haven’t done so well, either.

Not since the 1974 North Carolina State team led by David Thompson took revenge on UCLA for its single loss by defeating the Bruins in the NCAA semifinals on the way to the title has an NCAA champion finished with a “1” at the end of its record.

Stanford and Saint Joseph’s are the 18th and 19th teams since then to enter the NCAA tournament with a single loss.

Only three -- Nevada Las Vegas in 1987, Massachusetts in 1996 and Duke in 1999 -- even made it to the Final Four.

What does it all mean? Perhaps not very much.

“The reality of it is, all the numbers go out the window now,” Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery said when asked about the Cardinal’s No. 1 seeding and 29-1 record.

“We’re proud we accomplished what we accomplished, but we’re well aware this is now the season everyone’s pointing toward, and it’s a six-game season.

“Loser out. No more second chances.”

Over the years, that one loss has affected different teams in different ways.

“Actually, it kind of brought our team together, and it was a motivating factor,” Thompson said of the 1974 regular-season loss to UCLA.

“We wanted tremendously to play UCLA again and redeem ourselves. They’d been to the finals the seven previous years, and we knew they’d be back again.”

Monte Towe, the point guard on that team and now the coach at New Orleans, remembers what a driving force the loss was.

“They thumped us pretty good,” he said. “I felt like it motivated our team to get better, because if we had a chance to play those guys again, we wanted to play better.

“But I’m not a big proponent of the idea losing helps you. I think winning helps you.”

Stanford, which plays Texas San Antonio in a first-round game today, got its revenge on Washington in the Pacific 10 Conference tournament, and has moved on.

“In some respects, we had forgotten what a loss felt like,” guard Matt Lottich said. “Recognizing how much we didn’t like that feeling might help.”

The last one-loss team to try to win the NCAA tournament was Duke in 1999.

But unlike Stanford and St. Joe’s, whose losses came in the final two weeks of the season, Duke lost early in the season, to Cincinnati.

By March, a Blue Devil team led by Elton Brand and Trajan Langdon that included Shane Battier and freshman Corey Maggette was being compared to the best in the history of the college game.

They might as well have been undefeated, for all the pressure they were under.

Duke won by 41, 41, 17 and 21 points before defeating Michigan State by six in the semifinals, and the Blue Devils were already being fitted for crowns before Connecticut won the championship in a stunning title game upset.

Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski has said he doesn’t think even the 1991 UNLV team that entered the tournament undefeated was under the scrutiny that Duke team was.

Jerry Tarkanian, coach of that 1991 team, said lack of competition during the season hurt the Rebels too.

“We never had a close game,” he said.

Stanford certainly can’t say that.

The Cardinal defeated Arizona State on a basket by Josh Childress with one second left, came from 19 behind to defeat Oregon, and defeated Arizona and Washington State on buzzer-beaters before finally losing to Washington.

The Cardinal, you might say, is within a paper’s width of having lost four or five games.

If Stanford ends up in a close game, unlike that UNLV team or that Duke team, the Cardinal might be ready.

And of course Stanford has an advantage over St. Joe’s, because it lost a regular-season game and was able to regroup in the Pac-10 tournament.

St. Joe’s lost an Atlantic 10 tournament game, so the Hawks got no chance to recover before their first-round NCAA game today against Liberty.

Stanford’s conference tournament run allowed the Cardinal to relax and ease Justin Davis back into the lineup after a knee injury.

“There was less pressure than if we’d been undefeated,” Davis said.

Tarkanian, whose 1987 team entered the NCAA tournament with one loss and reached the Final Four before losing to eventual champion Indiana in the semifinals, doesn’t believe the record is the issue.

“Too many people make too much of what losing does to you psychologically,” he said. “You feel bad you lost, you move on. You’ve got to win the next game.

“It depends on how good you are, really and truly. I don’t know how good St. Joe’s is. They may be really good. I’ve heard some coaches say good things about them.

“I like Stanford. They’re really deep and strong and I love their point guard [Chris Hernandez.]

“You go into a tournament at this time of year, I don’t think you think back to ‘We lost this game,’ or ‘We lost that game.’

“Maybe the [media] gets off you -- when you’re undefeated, the press is a big issue.

“You’ve just got to get ready to play.”

Bring it on, Lottich said.

“It’s a fresh season. Everyone’s 0-0. We’re looking for a six-game winning streak.

“Every team has pressure now, because if you don’t win, you go home.”

*

(Begin Text of Infobox)

At a Loss

The 1974 North Carolina State team was the last to enter the NCAA men’s Division I tournament with one defeat and won the championship. Since then, 19 schools have gone in the tournament with one loss, which includes Saint Joseph’s and Stanford this season. A look at those teams’ records before the tournament and how each finished:

*--* Year School Record Result 1976 Marquette 25-1 lost in regional final 1976 UNLV 28-1 lost in second round 1977 Arkansas 26-1 lost in first round 1977 San Francisco 29-1 lost in first round 1980 Alcorn State 27-1 lost in second round 1980 DePaul 26-1 lost in first round 1981 DePaul 27-1 lost in first round 1981 Oregon State 26-1 lost in first round 1982 DePaul 26-1 lost in first round 1987 UNLV 33-1 lost in national semifinals 1988 Temple 29-1 lost in regional final 1990 La Salle 29-1 lost in second round 1996 Massachusetts 31-1 lost in national semifinals 1996 Texas Tech 28-1 lost in regional semifinals 1997 Kansas 32-1 lost in regional semifinals 1998 Princeton 26-1 lost in second round 1999 Duke 32-1 lost in championship game 2004 Saint Joseph’s 27-1 2004 Stanford 29-1

*--*

*

The Tournament

Today’s first-round games. (*-game starts 30 minutes after previous game):

*--* ST. LOUIS 7 Michigan State (18-11) vs. 10 Nevada (23-8), 4:35 p.m. 2 Gonzaga (27-2) vs. 15 Valparaiso (18-12)* PHOENIX 4 Maryland (19-11) vs. 13 UTEP (24-7), 9:40 a.m. Ch. 2 5 Syracuse (21-7) vs. 12 Brigham Young (21-8)* Ch. 2 8 Alabama (17-12) vs. 9 Southern Ill. (25-4), 11:40 a.m. 1 Stanford (29-1) vs. 16 Texas San Antonio (19-13)* 2 Connecticut (27-6) vs. 15 Vermont (22-8), 4:10 p.m. 7 DePaul (21-9) vs. 10 Dayton (24-8)*

*--*

*--* EAST RUTHERFORD 5 Florida (20-10) vs. 12 Manhattan (24-5), 9:20 a.m. 4 Wake Forest (19-9) vs. 13 Va. Commonwealth (23-7)* 8 Texas Tech (22-10) vs. 9 Charlotte (21-8), 9:25 a.m. 1 Saint Joseph’s (27-1) vs. 16 Liberty (18-14)* ATLANTA 1 Duke (27-5) vs. 16 Ala. St. (16-14), 4:10 p.m. Ch. 2 8 Seton Hall vs. (20-9) vs. 9 Arizona (20-9)* Ch. 2 3 Texas (23-7) vs. 14 Princeton (20-7), 4:20 p.m. 6 North Carolina (18-10) vs. 11 Air Force (22-6)*

*--*