Traditions unlike any other?
Regional blogs: Midwest - West - East - South | More West features | More exclusive tourney analysis
Stone's Sacramento blog: Business as usual for Pac-10 teams | Vandy athletics: Better than nothing
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – D.J. White didn't know what year it was.
It was perhaps the most famous shot in Hoosier history – well, at least that didn't involve Milan High – but White wasn't sure when Keith Smart hit the jumper that lifted Indiana to its fifth, latest and most storied national championship.
Sound like another example of kids caring more about the size of a school's locker room than the size of the trophies it won a generation ago?
Think again.
"I think tradition in the school always means something," White said. "It just shows what players for this school have done for this program on a national level.
"It has something to do with our decision for all three of us [White and his teammates at the press conference] to come to this school."
Now that's what you would expect to hear before a matchup of teams, Indiana and UCLA, that have combined for 16 national titles. It's a clash of a school that has embraced college basketball in the shadow of Hollywood and a school based in a state that, well, inspired Hollywood to make Hoosiers.
And Saturday's game features the second-largest combined championship total ever for NCAA tourney opponents, behind only the 1998 matchup between the Bruins and their 11 titles and Kentucky, which was on its way to a seventh championship.
Although fans in Westwood and Bloomington may not have a lot in common, they do share a passion to see that number of championships click up a notch – and soon. UCLA hasn't cut down the nets since 1995, but it came within a game last season. For Indiana, the wait goes all the way back to 1987, when D.J. White was 7 months old.
Even though those titles came long ago, their impact lingers on the recruiting trail like Tyus Edney's coast-to-coast drive and Bill Walton's 21-for-22 championship game lingers in Bruin lore.
"Obviously the tradition there that had already been established was vital to my decision [to attend UCLA]," Pac-10 player of the year Arron Afflalo said. "At the time, UCLA had had a few down years, so to be part of bringing the tradition back was a great opportunity I saw for myself as an individual."
And players seem to embrace the hoops hysteria that envelops them once they're on campus, particularly at UCLA, where John Wooden still comes to Pauley Pavilion and a bevy of college basketball legends never are far away.
"It's a confidence thing for the younger players," Josh Shipp said. "Just to know that they went to the same school and accomplished a lot of good things that we're striving to accomplish.
"One day we could follow in those footsteps."
UCLA coach Ben Howland is following in the biggest footsteps of them all, those of the Wizard of Westwood himself. And the significance of the State of Indiana's role in the Bruins' success wasn't lost on him.
"How lucky and blessed were we at UCLA to take a man from Indiana – let's not forget that. It is a man from Indiana who built this program," Howland said of Wooden, a three-time All-American at Purdue from 1930 to 1932. "It is and always will be his program." Wooden led UCLA to 10 of its 11 championships.
The most famous former Indiana coach? Bob Knight's name didn’t come up Friday. Indiana's current coach, Kelvin Sampson, gave a nod to the tradition and hoopla surrounding the matchup. But he also noted that things have changed since Wooden won 10 titles in 12 years and Knight led college basketball's last unbeaten team in 1975-76.
"Tradition is important, but I think the future is more important," Sampson said. "Twenty years ago there were a handful of teams that got great exposure, and those were the teams you always heard of.
"Today, who is not on television? It seems like there is so much equality to exposure today than when Indiana and UCLA were the traditional powers."
On Saturday, in prime time, the spotlight shifts back to them.
