YouTube Gold: The 1967 National Championship Game
Featuring a young Kareem, then known as Lew Alcindor.
John Wooden won back-to-back titles with UCLA in 1964 and 1965 but UCLA wasn’t invited in 1966. Texas Western won that year in one of the most significant wins in college basketball history.
Freshmen were ineligible in 1966 however, which meant that Lew Alcindor, now known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, could not play varsity ball.
He was eligible in 1966-67 however, and he was a weapon that no one was prepared to deal with.
UCLA went 30-0, winning the championship again over the Dayton Flyers.
Dayton is one of those teams that people often overlook in favor of big power conference schools, but the Flyers have a tremendous tradition. The First Four is not held in Dayton by chance.
There was not a chance that Dayton was going to upset UCLA though. John Wooden had kicked things into high gear in Westwood: if you take out the down year of 1966, the Bruins lost seven games between 1963-64 and 1973-74. Add 1966 in and the Bruins still lost just 15 games in 10 years.
The only win the Flyers had in this game was the opening tip. Everything else was UCLA’s.