1979 isn’t just a song by Smashing Pumpkins. It was the year that Larry Bird and Magic Johnson met for the first time on the basketball court.
The next year, Bird (from French Lick, Indiana, and the star player for Indiana State), and Johnson (from Lansing, Michigan, and the star player for Michigan State), both were drafted into the National Basketball Association and together virtually saved the NBA from extinction.
Ratings and interest in the league were so low, that speculation swirled about the future of the sport in America. But that all changed when Bird and Johnson (who played each other three times in the NBA Finals) transformed the NBA into a fan-friendly, electrifying game.
Something else happened in 1979. It was the year that, in my humble opinion, the first Cinderella story emerged. The University of Pennsylvania, members of the brainiac Ivy League – the same league that chose to deemphasize football a year before to focus on academics – made it to the Final Four in the 40-team NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
The tournament had expanded from 32 teams to 40 in 1978-79. In 1980, 48 teams played in the year-end tourney. In 1984, it expanded even more, to 64 teams.
In 1979, the Penn Quakers, coached by Bob Weinhauer, finished 25-7 and won the Ivy League championship for the eighth time in 10 seasons. They were the ninth seed in the 10-team East Region.
The magical run began with a win Iona. And, true to tradition, Penn’s first basket of the game was followed by a shower of red and blue streamers. While not many people outside of the Penn men’s basketball program believed the Quakers could make history, four senior starters (Tony Price, Tim Smith, Matthew White and Bobby Willis) thought differently.
Next came a shocking upset (yes, I said that word) over top-seed North Carolina, coached by legendary Dean Smith. Wins over Syracuse (led by third-year head coach Jim Boeheim) and St. John’s earned Penn a berth in the Final Four along with Michigan State, Indiana State and DePaul.
The storied season ended with a 101-67 loss to Michigan State. The Quakers lost 96-93 in the national third-place game to DePaul.
Years have passed, and other teams have also fit the bill of Cinderellas. Here are some: Providence in 1987, Cincinnati in 1992, VCU in 2011 and Loyola-Chicago in 2018.
But no one will duplicate what Penn did in 1979.
