Читать книгу Indiana University Olympians. From Leroy Samse to Lilly King онлайн

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“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.