A Big Hand For The Cards

On Friday there were upwards of 6,000 basketball-crazed fans in Market Square for the practices—they wouldn't have cared if a ninth-place finisher from the Mojave Desert Fix-A-Transcript Conference had qualified. Wiley Brown saw the mob and vowed, "They're going to see some of it today."

Brown meant dunks. As in Doctors of Dunk. As in Dunkenstein, or simply Stein (which is what Griffith's teammates call him). And the Cardinals did throw down some outrageous, screaming whammers in their warmup session. But Crum's major accomplishment this year has been to instill the lesson that you dunk for show, you stay disciplined for dough, and Louisville did just that to defeat Iowa in the semifinals, 80-72.

The game moved to 22-17 in favor of Louisville almost before anyone realized that Griffith and the Hawkeyes' marvelous Ronnie Lester were not just dueling one-on-one. Playing on his surgery-repaired knee, Lester scored Iowa's first 10 points while Griffith had 10 of Louisville's first 12. After the Card guard got eight more (now he led the Hawks by himself, 18-17), Lester made a steal and broke for the Iowa basket.

As he rose through the air, Lester was bumped hard by Burkman, and he crumpled to the floor, trying to protect his right knee as he landed. The fall was nothing; it was the bump that did the damage. The knee was bruised so badly that Lester was unable to continue. As he limped slowly off the court, the entire Louisville team approached and made apologies. "Sorry, man. I hope you get back," Smith said.

But Lester would not. As Iowa's best shooters, Kevin Boyle and Vince Brookins, continued to miss (20 of 26 shots for the game), Louisville expanded its lead. Pounding Iowa on the offensive boards, the Cardinals went ahead 34-29 at the half and 66-55 with 7:03 to go.

By this time an anguished Lester had left the Iowa locker room to watch a TV monitor in a janitor's closet. Griffith, meanwhile, had scored 32 points from so many implausible angles that Wiley Brown said, "I didn't know where they were coming from."

One came on a post-up, float-to-the-corner fallaway jumper with Boyle draped all over Griffith. Another was initiated at the top of the circle—at least that's where Boyle and Steve Krafcisin thought Griffith was. He faked both men up in the air to the right, whirled back left and lifted off free to drill another one-hander from, Krafcisin said, "the moon." Earlier in the week Griffith had been asked how he would guard himself. "I'd keep me away from the ball," he said, "because when I get it...." Unfortunately, because Griffith often brings the ball upcourt, keeping it from him would be a good trick.

Griffith finished with 34 points (14 of 21 from the field; the team shot 59.6%), six assists and five rebounds. Oh yes, he made three steals and blocked two shots and, upon leaving the game, ran the length of the court to slap hands with everyone on the Iowa bench.

"The man was flying over us all day. We tried four different guys on him and there was nothing any of them could do," said Iowa Coach Lute Olson.

UCLA's Brown was faced with a similar task in the other semifinal, in which the Bruins locked initials with Joe Barry Carroll of Purdue. As UCLA's 67-62 victory over JBC unfolded, however, Carroll was hardly in evidence.