UCLA will honor its 1968 NCAA men’s basketball championship team at halftime of Saturday evening’s game against Stanford at Pauley Pavilion.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is among the team members expected to be in attendance for the ceremony, along with Lucius Allen, Mike Warren, Lynn Shackelford, Gene Sutherland and Neville Saner along with assistant coach Jerry Norman.
The 1967-68 Bruins returned all five starters from their 1966-67 team that won the first of an unprecedented streak of seven consecutive NCAA championships. UCLA started the season with a 73-71 victory over Purdue, then won their next 12 games, including 11 by 24 or more points.
The Bruins 47-game winning streak was ended in a 71-69 loss to Houston at the Astrodome before a crowd announced at 52,693, then the largest to see a basketball game in the U.S. in what was dubbed “The Game of the Century.”
Abdul-Jabar, then known as Lew Alcindor, was suffering from vertical double vision and impaired depth perception in his injured left eye, according to a UCLA doctor and “appeared out of condition after having spent three days bedded down in the UCLA eye clinic,” Jeff Prugh of the Los Angeles Times wrote.
Houston forward Elvin Hayes, who would go on to be selected as one of the NBA’s 50 greatest players in its first 50 seasons, scored 39 points, including the tie-breaking free throws with 28 seconds to play.
UCLA then won its next 14 games, setting up a rematch with Houston in the Final Four, played at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.
Coach John Wooden deployed a diamond-and-one defense, with Shackelford assigned to Hayes, limiting him to 10 points in a 101-69 Bruins victory, before a crowd announced at 15,742, then the most to watch a college basketball game in Los Angeles. UCLA defeated North Carolina, 78-55, the next day to win the national championship.
—City News Service