The Golden Age of Basketball

() 16 years old is the most beautiful and sweet time, so American girls will be called "sweet 16 years old" when they reach the age of 16, and this tradition of appellation is also applied to the name of the top sixteen of NCAA.

sweet-sixteen, sweet sixteen, just like its name, any team that can enter the top sixteen of the country will have a sweet experience, because it is really hard to come here.

Starting from the warm-up match in November, a team will play more than ten warm-up matches, more than ten cross-league invitational games and more than ten league championships in March, adding up to nearly forty games.

This is a long journey for college players who still have academic tasks.

If you are lucky enough to enter the NCAA national competition, you will become a seeded team with particularly good results, and you can enjoy the first-round bye treatment in the 80s. <-round, working hard to get to the top 48.

After the official start of the national competition, all are single-elimination. The competition has always been "now-or-never", and there is no chance for you to readjust and play again in the next round.

If you lose, go home and come back next year. The single elimination system is so cruel, and it is also its charm.

Because of this, many first-round byes directly entered the top 32 seeded teams, and sometimes they could not escape the bad luck of being eliminated in one game, and packed up and went home after one game.

The teams that can enter the top [-] are either strong seeds or have experienced at least two rounds of baptism, which proves that their advancement is not accidental or luck.

So when a team enters the sweet sixteen, the outside world will really start to pay attention to this team, and people will discuss the situation of this year's ncaa competition, the strength of the sixteen teams, and who has the greatest hope of winning .

Now, at the end of March in 1984, the Sweet Sixteen has been released. Sixteen teams will go to four cities in the east, west, north, south, and compete for the final-four tickets in Seattle.

Among these sixteen teams, there is the 1982 championship North Carolina Blue Devils, who will fight for the third championship trophy this year; there is last year's runner-up, the University of Houston from Texas, who will strive to make up for it. Sorry about last year.

There is also the winner of the last unbeaten record, Indiana University, who was also the championship in 1981, and they can't wait to relive the old dream.

These teams are either veteran strong teams in NCAA history, traditional giants, or recently rising upstarts with outstanding records in recent years.

But in the Sweet Sixteen, the most eye-catching team is Gonzaga University, a tough bulldog from the Northwest Territories.

After defeating Princeton in the first round, on March 1983, 3, the Gonzaga Bulldogs played against the restless Miners at the Salt Palace.

Of these two teams, one is from Texas, the southernmost state of the United States, and it borders Mexico, which can be said to be the southernmost state of the United States.

Gonzaga University is from Spokane, Washington, the northernmost city - a city bordering Canada, it should be said that it is at the northernmost tip of the United States.

The collision between the northernmost and southernmost teams was expected to be exciting. Before the game, Gan Guoyang called this game the "Civil War", which was always approved by the players, because the final battle between the North and the North Victory over the South.

But in the end, this game can be said to be extremely boring, because both teams are defensive teams.

Among all the players of the Miners team, the one with the highest average score per game only scored 13 points, which is half of Gan Guoyang's - in the previous game, Gan Guoyang averaged 27 points per game.

The reason why they can achieve an excellent record of 26 wins and 4 losses in the regular season, and have a wave of 14 consecutive victories in the opening season, without any losing streak throughout the season, relies on their steel-like defense.

The miners' defense is more fierce than the bulldogs. They often suppress the opponent's score to around 50 points in the regular season, and there are several times when the opponent can't even get 50 points.

Therefore, the match between these two teams naturally became a defensive battle. In addition, neither side wanted to lose.

In 1984, the shot clock limit hadn't been introduced into the ncaa, and teams had plenty of time to linger on the court, and because of that, the final score of the game was an ugly 35:30, with the bulldogs killing it by 5 points miners.

In the last game against Princeton University, the Bulldogs scored 43 points at halftime, but this time, they only scored 35 points!

The fierceness, slowness and ugliness of the competition process can be imagined.

Although he was very happy after winning, Gan Guoyang said that he never wanted to play against a team like the Miners. After the game, he complained to his teammates, "I feel like we are playing football on the field!"

He scored 33 points in the game, and only scored 12 points in this game.

Later, this ugly low-scoring game also prompted the NCAA organizing committee to introduce the rule of shot time limit in 1985, and the team's single attack time should not exceed 45 seconds.

The Bulldogs, which entered the top [-], immediately received a completely different treatment from before. The major media began to rush to report on this team, especially since they are now unbeaten throughout the season. If they can continue to triumph If so, it is possible to create another miracle of winning the season.

As the team's number one star, Gan Guoyang is also a yellow-skinned Chinese, so he was naturally under the spotlight of the media.

Since Gan Guoyang arrived in Los Angeles by plane with the team on March 3th, at the airport, Gan Guoyang was photographed hard by reporters with flashing lights. Fortunately, the NCAA organizing committee has special pick-up personnel. The NCAA has always disliked college players receiving too much attention Media harassment.

Moreover, Gan Guoyang was not yet surrounded by thousands of reporters and fans, so he got on the bus easily and prepared to go to his Los Angeles residence.

"Huh~ If I become an NBA player in the future, will I have to face these manual laborers with shining eyes every day?" Gan Guoyang has always liked to call reporters manual laborers, because they not only have to write manuscripts, but also travel everywhere. run.

"No, you need to become an NBA star, star, like Dr. J. Then you will become a delicious meaty bone, and there will be puppies following you all day long." The team's power forward Anderson said .

"I don't want to be a meaty bone and be followed every day. I want to have my own life." Gan Guoyang has already begun to imagine his life after becoming an NBA player.

"Then you can become a stinky piece of shit, so that no one will follow you, but everyone will go around you." Matthews said jokingly, Gan Guoyang likes to call his opponent a stinky shit in the game .

"I think we were a piece of stinky shit before. No one thought that we would make it to the top [-], but as long as we can keep going, even if it's stinky shit, those media reporters will come to lick us." Gan Guoyang said.

Indeed, before the Bulldogs reached the round of [-], despite their undefeated record, they didn't garner much attention.

Some newspapers and TV stations just took it up when they took stock of the top 48, "Oh, this is a team that hasn't lost a game, oh, there is a Chinese in their lineup."

That's it.

It's different now, major newspapers and ncaa-related media have begun to spend a lot of time introducing this dark horse. Among the sixteen teams, only the Bulldogs entered the ncaa national competition for the first time.

The other fifteen teams all started playing national games in the 40s and 50s.

Reports are naturally good and bad, and the good part is that they start to pay attention to the superior strength of this team in the game and the ability to control the game in the game.

Some professional football commentators have discovered that the Gonzaga Bulldogs are very good at taking the opponent away in a wave at the beginning of the second half, and then slowly grinding the opponent to death with their own rhythm.

The bad aspects are various. Not optimistic about Gonzaga University is the most polite and friendly negative comment. After all, it is normal for dark horses to be underestimated; other negative comments are mainly concentrated on Gan Guoyang.

For example, he used to be a UCLA player, and later "defected". This year, he brought a bulldog to beat up his original school, UCLA, in Los Angeles.

Of course, this kind of thing happened to Larry Bird once, and he had a bad relationship with Indiana University, his first school. Until now, every time he meets Indiana University graduates in the NBA, he must abuse them.

For another example, Gan Guoyang was once defeated by Reggie Miller in the finals of the California Secondary League Championship in Los Angeles, and lost the championship. This also made some media question his key ability.

But in fact, Gan Guoyang scored 5 points alone in the last 11 minutes of that game, leading the team from behind to overtaking, but the last goal was really powerless.

What's more, starting with Gan Guoyang's complexion, some racially discriminatory remarks were quietly revealed through the text.

Racial discrimination in the United States was still serious in the 80s, and racial issues have always been a sensitive topic in American society.

However, racial conflicts in the United States are mainly concentrated between whites and blacks. The black population has also made unremitting struggles for their own racial status. At least until the 80s, racial segregation has been cancelled, and some racially discriminatory speech and behavior cannot Appear in public in a dignified manner.

However, the yellow race is also a minority in the United States, and the colored race has not received corresponding respect and status. Among them, the Chinese have received the most unfair treatment, while the Chinese have the least resistance.

In comparison, other yellow-skinned Asians are more united and know how to fight for their own rights.

It was still 1984 at this time. If the footsteps of history had not been too crooked because of the appearance of Gan Guoyang, eight years later, in 8, also in Los Angeles, a middle-aged Korean woman shot and killed a black girl because of a quarrel with the population.

Afterwards, the whole of Los Angeles fell into riots, and a large number of blacks began to take advantage of the fire to loot and loot Korean stores.

But the South Koreans did not flinch, nor did they wait helplessly for the police to help. Instead, they took up the weapons in their hands to rise up and resist, using violence to fight violence, and successfully protected their lives and property.

At this time in 1984, when people of the yellow race were not fully respected, Gan Guoyang was about to face pressure and challenges from various aspects as a Chinese, lying in a Los Angeles hotel, looking at him who was familiar with the scenery outside But still don't know anything.

"Gan, do you think I can become an NBA player in the future?" said Anderson, who was lying next to Gan Guoyang, and Anderson was staying with Gan Guoyang tonight.

Bellman is like this, let the players live in a mixed way to cultivate the feelings between teammates.

"Of course, as long as we win the ncaa championship, you will be noticed by the nba team! You know that Williams is Ricardo. He also said before that he would not get a college basketball scholarship, but We entered the finals of the high school league, so he has the opportunity to come to Gonzaga." Gan Guoyang said it as a matter of course.

In his eyes, every player at Gonzaga University is so outstanding and excellent, for example, Anderson, in Gan Guoyang's view, he is the best offensive rebounder in ncaa, although his backboard protection Not very well done.

"No, not reconciled, the NBA is a different level. I think our entire team, maybe only you and John can play in the professional league. And you have the opportunity to become a superstar, like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Moses Malone like that. And me, I don’t know, my dad wants me to be a lawyer... Lawyer, God, it’s harder than letting me dunk on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.” Anderson said helplessly.

In the car today, what Gan Guoyang said aroused the distress in his heart, and he began to think about his future and future, because he is also a senior student, and this will be his last season of college basketball.

"But we're already here, aren't we Anderson? The future is important, but we have to focus on the present, what we're about to face, and the game the day after tomorrow. Let those messy things go to hell!"

"That's right Gan, sweet top [-], my God, I didn't even dare to think about it before. I used to think it was worth it if we could go to the NCAA National Championships. Even if we were eliminated in the first game, I thought I I have no regrets in four years of university. Unexpectedly, the top [-]..." Anderson looked at the ceiling with a sense of disbelief on his face.

"But this is not our end. There are still the elite eight, final-four, finals, and the ncaa championship trophy! There is still a long way to go, isn't it Anderson?"

"Oh, Gan, you're always so optimistic, Elite Eight? Do you know who our next opponent is?" Anderson asked.

"I don't know." Gan Guoyang discovered at this time that after the team entered the top [-], he didn't pay attention to the schedule at all, and he didn't know who the next opponent was.

"No wonder you are so optimistic, you don't even know who our next opponent is. The opponent is really strong, and I think our next match is really dangerous. Here is the schedule, you can take a look." Anderson said Give Gan Guoyang the schedule.

Gan Guoyang took the schedule, found the Gonzaga Bulldogs on it, and then looked at the team they played against on March 3.

"Patrick Ewing."