On January 19, 1974, the University of Notre Dame men\u2019s basketball team defeats the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) 71-70, in South Bend, Indiana, snapping UCLA\u2019s record-setting 88-game winning streak.<\/p>\n
The Irish entered the game undefeated for the season and ranked No. 2 in the country. UCLA, coached by John Wooden and led by the future Hall of Fame center Bill Walton, held the No. 1 ranking. Despite injuring his back in a fall the previous week against Washington State, Walton played all 40 minutes of the game, wearing an elastic brace. He performed impressively, scoring 24 points and grabbing nine rebounds.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
With three and a half minutes left in the game, the Irish were trailing by 11 points when they began an aggressive press that caught UCLA off guard. Notre Dame won the next 12 points, spurred by the play of center John Shumate (24 points), guard Gary Brokaw (25 points) and Dwight Clay, who scored the winning two points on a jump shot from the right corner, with 29 seconds remaining. When Walton missed a 12-foot shot in the final seconds, the game was over\u2013as was UCLA\u2019s long streak of wins. Many in the stunned crowd of 11,343 at Notre Dame\u2019s Athletic and Convocation Center rushed onto the court to congratulate Coach Digger Phelps and the victorious players. \u201cThis was great for college basketball,\u201d Phelps told the press. \u201cI\u2019m sure everyone was rooting for us the way they used to root against the New York Yankees.\u201d It was the second big Irish upset that season, coming just three weeks after Notre Dame\u2019s football team beat Alabama in a thrilling Sugar Bowl to gain the No. 1 spot.<\/p>\n
The Irish played a pivotal role at several points in UCLA\u2019s historic streak. The Bruins\u2019 last loss had been on January 23, 1971, in South Bend. The previous year, the Bruins had broken the collegiate record for consecutive wins with their 61st straight victory\u2013over Notre Dame. A week after their streak ended, the Walton Gang would get revenge, beating Phelps\u2019 squad 94-75 in a return game at Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles to regain the No. 1 ranking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On January 19, 1974, the University of Notre Dame men\u2019s basketball team defeats the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) 71-70, in South Bend, Indiana, snapping UCLA\u2019s record-setting 88-game winning streak. The Irish entered the game undefeated for the season and ranked No. 2 in the country. UCLA, coached by John Wooden and led […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3503],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}