WILKES-BARRE — Every year when March Madness rolls around, I stop and recall my journey to Syracuse for the 1983 NCAA Eastern Regional Tournament.
This trip was supposed to be about basketball — top-level basketball. And it was, to an extent, but it was also filled with, well, madness.
I made the trip with three friends to Syracuse University’s Carrier Dome — a huge facility with thousands of seats.
To protect the guilty, I’ll use aliases for the names of my friends — Danny, a former high school basketball coach who once told me the best place to coach is at an orphanage (no parents to complain); Freddy, a local athletic director who tried to keep decorum throughout the trip; and Johnny, who ate a large hoagie on the way and never consumed another morsel of food for three days, downing plenty of hops and barley.
This turned out to be the “Animal House” of basketball trips.
The four teams in the regional were Georgia, Ohio State, St. John’s, and North Carolina, which happened to have a pretty good sophomore named Michael Jordan, who would go on to become a logo for a sneaker company, in addition to winning several NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls.
The Carolina team stayed in the same hotel as we did, so we got to meet Coach Dean Smith and his wife and most of the players — Sam Perkins, Brad Daugherty, Matt Doherty, Warren Martin, Buzz Peterson, to name a few.
St. John’s had Chris Mullen and Bill Wennington — who lives at Harveys Lake these days — while Georgia had Vern Fleming.
To the surprise of many, Georgia advanced to the Final Four that year.
This was also the time Dean Smith was actively recruiting Ashley’s Dave Popson, the 6-foot-10 star at Bishop O’Reilly High School. On the way into “The Library” — a popular nightspot in Syracuse — we saw Coach Smith and his wife leaving. I stopped the legendary coach and boldly told him not to worry, that Popson would attend Carolina. Smith told me to make sure that happened.
Popson went on to have a decent career at Carolina and a very brief, journeyman-like run in the NBA.
Anyway, on the night of Georgia’s defeat of Carolina to punch their ticket to the Final Four, we returned to the hotel to change before heading out for the evening. Johnny, inebriated the entire trip, spied Smith and his wife sitting at the hotel bar. Johnny shouted, “Hey Coach, how ‘bout them Da-Wags?” That was a poor, alcohol-induced attempt to jab Smith for his Tar Heels’ loss to the Georgia Bulldogs or “Dawgs,” as they were called.
We then moved to the elevator, where a crowd was waiting for the next available lift. The door opened, with a crowd already inside, so we waited and waited and waited and waited for a clear elevator.
Finally, the door opened for about the sixth time with no room for more. The door closed again, and Coach Danny implemented his game plan.
When the door closed, Danny hit the button, and the door opened again. People with blank stares faced us. The door closed, and again Danny hit the button to open the door. This happened a third time, prompting Danny to say, “There are way too many on there. You’re over capacity. Somebody will have to get off.”
About five people got out, Danny got on and waved Johnny, Freddy, and me on. The door closed, and away we went. I still wish I could have seen the expressions on the faces of the people who had gotten off that elevator.
Our game seats were in what is commonly called “the nosebleed section” — high up near the rafters, where we could see the game but couldn’t identify any of the players. We could barely hear the referee’s whistle.
But Freddy had a plan.
“C’mon, guys, we’re going downstairs.”
He had spotted a sea of empty black chairs behind the team benches about an hour before tip-off of the first semifinal game. Freddy studied the situation and decided on four seats about five rows behind the Carolina bench. Freddy, Danny, me and the still-inebriated Johnny sat down.
As the crowd flowed, the black chairs filled up. Each time somebody would stop at our row, Freddy had us stand up, look casual, and wait for the people to sit in their paid-for, expensive seats. We would then sit back down in the unoccupied seats.
The section filled, except for our four seats. We were set.
We returned two days later for the championship game. We walked in like we owned the place and sat in the exact same seats — except for Johnny, who had a late night at The Library.
Again, nobody showed for the four seats. They were ours. We could hear Dean Smith shouting instructions to his players. We witnessed the coming of age of Jordan, who had several spectacular dunks.
How Freddy figured that out, I’ll never know.
After the game, we headed home. We had seen some awesome basketball. We had fun. We pranked a few people.
The Final Four? Georgia, Louisville, Houston, and the storybook North Carolina State Wolfpack of Jim Valvano.
What a trip. What a year.
This year, my Final Four will be Florida over Michigan State and Purdue over Michigan, with Purdue winning it all.
I know, “Madness.”