Indiana University Olympians. David Woods

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      Scott May, 1976.

       IU Archives P0039895.

      Quinn Buckner and

       Scott May

      1976

       Winning Back the Gold “Stolen” at Munich 1972

      NO AMATEUR BASKETBALL PLAYER HAS EVER HAD, OR EVER WILL HAVE, A year like Quinn Buckner and Scott May did. It is no longer possible in a one-anddone era that features pros in the Olympic Games.

      It was momentous enough that the 1975–76 Indiana Hoosiers, at 32–0, are the last NCAA champions to go undefeated. Buckner and May? They were 40–0.

      They were key pieces on the US team that exacted revenge in the Montreal Olympics for what happened at Munich in 1972. Officials had awarded a do-over to the Soviet Union, which beat Team USA 51–50 for the gold medal.

      “That was all part and parcel to the additional drive that many of us had, to right that wrong,” Buckner said. “They stole it. It’s that simple.”

      Buckner and May were 32–0 in college and 7–0 in the Olympics. They were 1–0 versus the Soviet Union. They helped the Hoosiers to a 94–78 victory over the reigning world champions in an exhibition before a sellout of 17,377 at Indianapolis’s Market Square Arena on November 5, 1975. May scored thirty-four points on thirteen-of-fifteen shooting.

      That was not Buckner’s first experience against the Soviets, nor was it his first in international basketball. He was on a team that toured China in 1973 as part of US diplomacy.

      After his sophomore year, nineteen-year-old Buckner was on the youngest and least internationally experienced team the United States had ever assembled. The Americans played in the world championship held in July 1974 at San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Soviets had five veterans from their 1972 Olympic gold medalists.

      After the round-robin medal round, the United States, Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia were all tied at 6–1. The Americans defeated Yugoslavia 91–88 but lost to the Soviets 105–94. On a tiebreaker, the Soviets were awarded gold, Yugoslavia silver, and the USA bronze. Buckner averaged 6.6 points a game, eighth on the team, and learned what international basketball was about.

      “First of all, they’re men,” Buckner said of the foreign opponents. “We found that out along the way. I even say this now to some people. The want to take kids from the Baltic . . . guys, they live in some war-torn place. They’re tougher than you think they are.”

      No one ever questioned the toughness of Buckner and May, who were all-state players in football and basketball. Buckner played two years of football for the Hoosiers. Both players belong to the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. Also, Buckner is one of three men to have won a high school state title plus NCAA, Olympic, and NBA championships. The two others: Jerry Lucas and Magic Johnson.

      Buckner was born August 20, 1954, in Phoenix, Illinois. His father, Bill, played football for the Hoosiers’ unbeaten Big Ten champions in 1945. Quinn played football and basketball at Thornridge High School in Dolton, a suburb south of Chicago, and was on hoop teams that went 32–1 and 33–0 in his junior and senior years. In 1971–72, the Falcons won every game by fourteen or more points and won the state championship 104–69 over Quincy. That Thornridge team is still considered the best in Illinois history.

      Scott May was born March 19, 1954, in Sandusky, Ohio, the son of a steelworker. He was a high school All-American and averaged twenty-five points as a senior. He was academically ineligible as a freshman at IU but soon found his footing in the classroom and on the court. Without May, Indiana reached the 1973 Final Four and lost to number one UCLA 70–59 in a national semifinal in St. Louis.

      Buckner once thought about transferring from Indiana but eventually developed a close relationship with coach Bob Knight. Buckner said his father told him to get used to the way Knight communicates.

      “That was the switch,” Buckner said. “That’s just the way Coach Knight communicates. He was right 99.9 percent of the time, so I fully appreciated what Coach Knight was saying.”

      In 1974–75, the Hoosiers became the first team to sweep an eighteen-game Big Ten schedule, winning by an average of 22.8 points. But in their twenty-sixth game—an 83–82 victory at Purdue, clinching the Big Ten championship—May broke his left arm. He returned to play limited minutes in a few games, but the goal of an unbeaten season and national championship ended in a 92–90 loss to Kentucky in the Mideast Regional final.

      There was no stopping the Hoosiers that next season. Not only did they beat the Soviet Union, they opened with an 84–64 victory over UCLA’s defending national champions in St. Louis. May scored thirty-three. Then he scored twenty-four in an 83–59 rout of Florida State, which trailed by twenty-seven at the half. The Hoosiers’ route to the championship was so difficult—number one Indiana met number two Marquette in a regional semifinal—that the NCAA subsequently began seeding the tournament.

      In order, Indiana defeated St. John’s 90–70, number seven Alabama 74–69, number two Marquette 65–56, number five UCLA 65–51, and number nine Michigan 86–68. In Philadelphia, the Hoosiers beat the Wolverines for a third time. May scored 26 points, Kent Benson 25, and Buckner 16. Benson was most outstanding player of the Final Four, and May swept the college player of the year awards. May averaged 23.5 points and 7.7 rebounds a game, and he shot 53 percent.

      “Scotty,” Knight once said, “can do it all.”

      In three seasons together, Buckner and May were 86–6 and won the Big Ten championship each year. Soon after they cut down the nets in Philly, СКАЧАТЬ