Hawkeyes' 1980 Final Four run 'still puts chills up and down your spine'
Mar 21, 2020
By Don Doxie
Quad City Times
The games themselves were great. Thrilling. Exciting Fulfilling.
But the thing almost everyone connected with the 1980 University of Iowa basketball team seems to remember most vividly about their run to the Final Four was the reaction of the Hawkeyes' fans.
Jim Rosborough, a Moline native who was one of Lute Olson’s assistant coaches on that team, said he thinks the fans reinforced just exactly what the Hawkeyes had accomplished when they defeated Georgetown 81-80 in the NCAA Tournament’s East Regional final.
"We were all so young, I don’t think we quite understood the magnitude of what it meant going to the Final Four," Rosborough said. "I mean, everybody was happy, jumping around the floor and acting stupid and all that kind of stuff, but I don’t know if anybody quite understood the magnitude of what had happened."
Not until they arrived home.
Ronnie Lester, the star point guard on that Iowa team, said there were fans everywhere at the Cedar Rapids airport when the team landed shortly before midnight after flying home from Philadelphia. The fans even lined the road leading out of the airport to cheer their team.
"We thought that was it until we got back to the university and walked out into the fieldhouse and saw that it was full of people," Lester said. "It was an unbelievable sight."
The Iowa wrestling team had won the NCAA championship that day and arrived home ahead of the basketball team to a cheering throng in the old fieldhouse. Head coach Dan Gable pulled out a bottle of champagne and some of the wrestlers spoke to the crowd.
"And then we pulled in and it was just a mob scene," Rosborough recalled. "It still puts chills up and down your spine. There was 12,000 people there just going crazy."
Things went downhill from there. The Hawkeyes lost to Louisville in the NCAA semifinals in a game that was played 40 years ago Sunday, then lost to Purdue in the third-place game.
But that trip to the Final Four has not been duplicated by an Iowa team in the four decades since.
And it will never be forgotten by the men who did it.
Adversity strikes
The Hawkeyes entered that season with plenty of promise. Olson’s squad had shared the Big Ten title the previous season and, if nothing else, it had one of the most electrifying guards in the country. Lester had averaged close to 20 points and six assists per game in each of the two preceding seasons.
"He was so much better than all the rest of us and he was such a quiet leader," said Mark Gannon, who was a freshman on that team. "He was so quiet. Now he talks a lot more but he doesn’t want to take credit for anything. He goes right back to how good the team was and how good the coaches were and how great the medical staff and training staff was."
The Hawkeyes had two other returning starters in 6-foot-11 Steve Waite and hard-nosed wing player Kevin Boyle. There was another quality big man in Steve Krafcisin and a couple of other returnees, Kenny Arnold and Vince Brookins, who hadn’t played that much the season before but showed great potential. Providing depth were a pair of gifted Iowa-bred freshmen, Gannon and Bobby Hansen.
"It was a special group of guys," Boyle said. "That was Lute Olson for you. He knew how to put a team together. There was some blue collar players, hard-working guys who weren’t that gifted athletically, and we had some athletes and we all meshed well together."
The Hawkeyes won their first 10 games but then things took a turn for the worse as Lester badly injured his knee in a Christmas tournament in Dayton, Ohio.
"We were leading the nation in scoring at the time," Rosborough said. "We had a dynamite team. We had eight or nine kids that were playing. … It was really a good team that was playing well and then Ronnie hurt his knee."
Two weeks later, Gannon tore his ACL in the second Big Ten game, at Michigan.
Arnold, who slid into the point guard position with Lester out, broke a finger. Hansen broke his left hand. Krafcisin suffered so many minor injuries that, in Hansen’s words, he was "a bundle of athletic tape."
Most of them continued to play with their injuries. Gannon even came back later in the season with his battered knee.
"There was no real surgery if you tore an ACL in 1980 so I just played the rest of my career without one," he said.
"John Strief (the team’s trainer) really earned his keep because it took everything in his power to keep that group of wounded guys going," he added.
Lester missed six games, tried to come back too quickly and reinjured the knee again three games later.
Grinding away
The Hawkeyes still did reasonably well in the Big Ten, staying a game or two above .500 in league play.
"I think it was a blessing in disguise because when I got hurt, other guys had to make adjustments and step up," Lester said. "Kenny Arnold went from the 2 guard to the point position. Other guys like Bobby Hansen, who was a freshman that year, got to play more.
"And I think playing that year and getting through the Big Ten was a big advantage for our team because the Big Ten is always very, very tough. I think it developed our guys to be tough-minded. When I came back, it gave us a big boost because guys were able to move back to their normal positions and we could play like we did before."
Late in season, there was an even more serious mishap. Assistant coach Tony McAndrews, a Davenport native and St. Ambrose graduate, was returning home from a recruiting trip when the small plane in which he was riding crashed into the Rock River near the Quad-Cities Airport.
McAndrews, who orchestrated much of what the team did defensively, suffered multiple fractures and head injuries and was finished for the season.
But the Hawkeyes kept grinding away.
"Everybody just kind of did what we had to do," Hansen said.
"For us to reinvent our roles … and manage without our All-American and just qualify for the NCAA Tournament was an achievement in itself," Boyle said.
They were in fourth place and on the NCAA bubble — no one used that term in those days — entering a home game against Illinois on the final day of the regular season.
"There was a great deal of question as to whether we were even going to get into the tournament," Gannon said. "I think we had to beat the Illini in the last game of the year to even have a chance to get in. The field was smaller in those days and we’d been without Ronnie for a long time."
But Lester returned to the lineup again on senior day and scored a team-high 15 points in a 75-71 victory over Illinois.
The Hawkeyes entered what was then a 48-team NCAA Tournament with a 19-8 record and were not on anyone’s radar as a Final Four possibility, especially since it didn’t appear Lester was the same player he had been before.
"I was probably 75 percent when I came back to play so it took me a little while," Lester admitted. "I knew I couldn’t just walk out there after being out for three months and be the same player I was before."
Story continues in the next post...
Mar 21, 2020
By Don Doxie
Quad City Times
The games themselves were great. Thrilling. Exciting Fulfilling.
But the thing almost everyone connected with the 1980 University of Iowa basketball team seems to remember most vividly about their run to the Final Four was the reaction of the Hawkeyes' fans.
Jim Rosborough, a Moline native who was one of Lute Olson’s assistant coaches on that team, said he thinks the fans reinforced just exactly what the Hawkeyes had accomplished when they defeated Georgetown 81-80 in the NCAA Tournament’s East Regional final.
"We were all so young, I don’t think we quite understood the magnitude of what it meant going to the Final Four," Rosborough said. "I mean, everybody was happy, jumping around the floor and acting stupid and all that kind of stuff, but I don’t know if anybody quite understood the magnitude of what had happened."
Not until they arrived home.
Ronnie Lester, the star point guard on that Iowa team, said there were fans everywhere at the Cedar Rapids airport when the team landed shortly before midnight after flying home from Philadelphia. The fans even lined the road leading out of the airport to cheer their team.
"We thought that was it until we got back to the university and walked out into the fieldhouse and saw that it was full of people," Lester said. "It was an unbelievable sight."
The Iowa wrestling team had won the NCAA championship that day and arrived home ahead of the basketball team to a cheering throng in the old fieldhouse. Head coach Dan Gable pulled out a bottle of champagne and some of the wrestlers spoke to the crowd.
"And then we pulled in and it was just a mob scene," Rosborough recalled. "It still puts chills up and down your spine. There was 12,000 people there just going crazy."
Things went downhill from there. The Hawkeyes lost to Louisville in the NCAA semifinals in a game that was played 40 years ago Sunday, then lost to Purdue in the third-place game.
But that trip to the Final Four has not been duplicated by an Iowa team in the four decades since.
And it will never be forgotten by the men who did it.
Adversity strikes
The Hawkeyes entered that season with plenty of promise. Olson’s squad had shared the Big Ten title the previous season and, if nothing else, it had one of the most electrifying guards in the country. Lester had averaged close to 20 points and six assists per game in each of the two preceding seasons.
"He was so much better than all the rest of us and he was such a quiet leader," said Mark Gannon, who was a freshman on that team. "He was so quiet. Now he talks a lot more but he doesn’t want to take credit for anything. He goes right back to how good the team was and how good the coaches were and how great the medical staff and training staff was."
The Hawkeyes had two other returning starters in 6-foot-11 Steve Waite and hard-nosed wing player Kevin Boyle. There was another quality big man in Steve Krafcisin and a couple of other returnees, Kenny Arnold and Vince Brookins, who hadn’t played that much the season before but showed great potential. Providing depth were a pair of gifted Iowa-bred freshmen, Gannon and Bobby Hansen.
"It was a special group of guys," Boyle said. "That was Lute Olson for you. He knew how to put a team together. There was some blue collar players, hard-working guys who weren’t that gifted athletically, and we had some athletes and we all meshed well together."
The Hawkeyes won their first 10 games but then things took a turn for the worse as Lester badly injured his knee in a Christmas tournament in Dayton, Ohio.
"We were leading the nation in scoring at the time," Rosborough said. "We had a dynamite team. We had eight or nine kids that were playing. … It was really a good team that was playing well and then Ronnie hurt his knee."
Two weeks later, Gannon tore his ACL in the second Big Ten game, at Michigan.
Arnold, who slid into the point guard position with Lester out, broke a finger. Hansen broke his left hand. Krafcisin suffered so many minor injuries that, in Hansen’s words, he was "a bundle of athletic tape."
Most of them continued to play with their injuries. Gannon even came back later in the season with his battered knee.
"There was no real surgery if you tore an ACL in 1980 so I just played the rest of my career without one," he said.
"John Strief (the team’s trainer) really earned his keep because it took everything in his power to keep that group of wounded guys going," he added.
Lester missed six games, tried to come back too quickly and reinjured the knee again three games later.
Grinding away
The Hawkeyes still did reasonably well in the Big Ten, staying a game or two above .500 in league play.
"I think it was a blessing in disguise because when I got hurt, other guys had to make adjustments and step up," Lester said. "Kenny Arnold went from the 2 guard to the point position. Other guys like Bobby Hansen, who was a freshman that year, got to play more.
"And I think playing that year and getting through the Big Ten was a big advantage for our team because the Big Ten is always very, very tough. I think it developed our guys to be tough-minded. When I came back, it gave us a big boost because guys were able to move back to their normal positions and we could play like we did before."
Late in season, there was an even more serious mishap. Assistant coach Tony McAndrews, a Davenport native and St. Ambrose graduate, was returning home from a recruiting trip when the small plane in which he was riding crashed into the Rock River near the Quad-Cities Airport.
McAndrews, who orchestrated much of what the team did defensively, suffered multiple fractures and head injuries and was finished for the season.
But the Hawkeyes kept grinding away.
"Everybody just kind of did what we had to do," Hansen said.
"For us to reinvent our roles … and manage without our All-American and just qualify for the NCAA Tournament was an achievement in itself," Boyle said.
They were in fourth place and on the NCAA bubble — no one used that term in those days — entering a home game against Illinois on the final day of the regular season.
"There was a great deal of question as to whether we were even going to get into the tournament," Gannon said. "I think we had to beat the Illini in the last game of the year to even have a chance to get in. The field was smaller in those days and we’d been without Ronnie for a long time."
But Lester returned to the lineup again on senior day and scored a team-high 15 points in a 75-71 victory over Illinois.
The Hawkeyes entered what was then a 48-team NCAA Tournament with a 19-8 record and were not on anyone’s radar as a Final Four possibility, especially since it didn’t appear Lester was the same player he had been before.
"I was probably 75 percent when I came back to play so it took me a little while," Lester admitted. "I knew I couldn’t just walk out there after being out for three months and be the same player I was before."
Story continues in the next post...
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