No. 21: Indiana’s perfect finish
NCAA Championship game, March 29, 1976 — Bob Knight’s first NCAA title capped a 32-0 season, the last any men’s team has completed a season without a loss. Six teams had logged unbeaten season in 20 seasons before the Hoosiers did so. Yet in the more than 30 years since, only two teams even entered the NCAA tournament without a loss, let alone won the title. The Hoosiers may be the last of their kind.
Wilson and I got to see Bobby Knight coach at Texas Tech when he came into Little Rock and beat my Razorbacks. He was walking back on the court after halftime and almost tripped while stepping on the court and he turned and said something to the security guard that was sitting there. He has chilled some over the years when he would have started yelling. We were on the 15 row and would have heard him if he had yelled. Knight also revealed that one of his parents was from Arkansas.
My NCAA Tournament Bracket is not going to win the million dollar prize this year. I am left with all my favorite teams out already. I will pull for Purdue since my secretary is a big Purdue fan and she has tickets to the Final Four in Houston this year!!!
Beloved Winston and His Brooklyn Breeding
In a prophetic speech concerning the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan predicted that “the march of freedom and democracy will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history.” Today is my last post of an excerpt from one of Reagan best speeches ever. He addressed the members of the British Parliament on June 8, 1982.
British people know what it is to fight for their freedom (WWII)
The British people know that, given strong leadership, time and a little bit of hope, the forces of good ultimately rally and triumph over evil. Here among you is the cradle of self-government, the Mother of Parliaments. Here is the enduring greatness of the British contribution to mankind, the great civilized ideas: individual liberty, representative government, and the rule of law under God.
I’ve often wondered about the shyness of some of us in the West about standing for these ideals that have done so much to ease the plight of man and the hardships of our imperfect world. This reluctance to use those vast resources at our command reminds me of the elderly lady whose home was bombed in the Blitz. As the rescuers moved about, they found a bottle of brandy she’d stored behind the staircase, which was all that was left standing. And since she was barely conscious, one of the workers pulled the cork to give her a taste of it. She came around immediately and said, “Here now — there now, put it back. That’s for emergencies.”Well, the emergency is upon us. Let us be shy no longer. Let us go to our strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible but probable.
During the dark days of the Second World War, when this island was incandescent with courage, Winston Churchill exclaimed about Britain’s adversaries, “What kind of a people do they think we are?” Well, Britain’s adversaries found out what extraordinary people the British are. But all the democracies paid a terrible price for allowing the dictators to underestimate us. We dare not make that mistake again. So, let us ask ourselves, “What kind of people do we think we are?” And let us answer, “Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.”
Sir Winston led his people to great victory in war and then lost an election just as the fruits of victory were about to be enjoyed. But he left office honorably, and, as it turned out, temporarily, knowing that the liberty of his people was more important than the fate of any single leader. History recalls his greatness in ways no dictator will ever know. And he left us a message of hope for the future, as timely now as when he first uttered it, as opposition leader in the Commons nearly 27 years ago, when he said, “When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have,” he said, “come safely through the worst.”Well, the task I’ve set forth will long outlive our own generation. But together, we too have come through the worst. Let us now begin a major effort to secure the best — a crusade for freedom that will engage the faith and fortitude of the next generation. For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.Thank you.


Feb. 12, 1974
Sen. Bob Dole and then-California Gov. Reagan at a Wichita political rally