Editor’s note: This is an article from the Winter 1998 issue of UCLA Magazine.
It was a sloppy game at first, but UCLA managed to pull away 43-33 by the half. The team’s superior balance showed in its scoring stats: 6'1" freshman phenom Denise Curry had 10 points, center-star Heidi Nestor and Anita Ortega each had nine and already-legendary Ann Meyers had eight.
Meanwhile, the University of Maryland’s vaunted 5'6" senior point guard, Tara Heiss, guarded by Meyers, was held scoreless in the half. As forward Debbie Stewart later told Sports Illustrated, “It seemed UCLA knew our offense better than we did.” In the second half, Heiss finally started scoring. So did 6'3" center Kris Kirchner, who two nights before in the semifinals had tallied 30 points but now could only manage 18 against Nestor. It was too little too late. NBC announcer Jim Simpson summed it up: “Maryland never got its game going. It’s been UCLA all the way.”
As UCLA clinched its first-ever Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) National Basketball Championship, the 9,531 fans packed into Pauley Pavilion went wild. The Bruin women began cutting down the nets and the band played “Happy Birthday” in honor of Meyers, who was turning 23 the next day. The UCLA band then launched into a rafters-rattling rendition of Queen’s current hit, “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions.” Frenzied fans seemingly lifted the arena off its foundation.
It may have been that very night the insistent rock tune was inaugurated as the unofficial global anthem of sporting events. For March 25, 1978, was much more than a milestone victory for UCLA or even for the triumphant women cagers, who had long labored under the daunting shadow of 10 men’s championship banners. The women’s banner, raised at the beginning of the next season — blue letters on gold to set it apart from the men’s gold on blue — would presently cast its own great shadow on every female hoopster who stepped onto any court and, in a very real sense, on any woman who henceforth walked onto the field of play in any sport in America.
Over the next couple of decades, the road to full acceptance for the women’s game would seem at times paved with speed bumps, but no matter: The ultimate victory had been set in motion in Pauley Pavilion that night.
Before 1978, collegiate women’s basketball held a national championship that was barely reported and rarely followed. The entire tournament was an exhausting affair, with 16 teams competing over a single weekend. “We played basketball day, night — forever,” recalls Judith Holland, at the time both president of the AIAW, the governing body of women’s sports, and the women’s athletic director at UCLA.
For years the tournament had been dominated by small colleges like Immaculata, a Pennsylvania Catholic school whose entire student enrollment of 500 would fit into a UCLA lecture hall. Immaculata had won three consecutive titles and its rival, Delta State of Cleveland, Mississippi, won the next three in a row.
But in 1978, the championship was scheduled to be played at Pauley, a legendary hoops hotbed, not some backwater gym. Holland pushed her colleagues to change the tournament format to a Final Four in the style of men’s basketball.
Women’s basketball was starting to attract attention because of the presence of Ann Meyers, the first woman to receive a full UCLA athletic scholarship. Meyers had entered the university in fall 1974, the same season her brother David led the men’s basketball team to its last title under John Wooden. In her sophomore year, People magazine gave her a two-page spread, suggesting that Meyers was the best female hoopster in the world. By her senior year, she was named All-American four times. Sports Illustrated dubbed her “the best UCLA basketball player with a girl’s name since Gail Goodrich.”
Hardworking, focused and generous, Meyers was popular with fellow players and the press. All the attention she got didn’t faze her teammates. When asked by SI what it was like to labor under Meyers’ shadow, center Heidi Nestor said, “Annie is such a completely unselfish player that she casts no shadow.” She was the perfect poster girl for a sport still struggling to capture a devoted following.
But like the Denver Broncos’ John Elway, Meyers seemingly couldn’t win the big one. She failed to move the Bruins past the AIAW regional tournament, where they consistently fell to Cal State Fullerton. Nor could she lead the team to a title at the second-chance National Invitational Tournament, where the Flying Queens of Wayland Baptist, Texas, outscored them each year. Her junior season, Fullerton beat her again in the AIAW West Regional, 91-87. The ’78 tournament, played on Meyers’ home court, was her last chance to lead her team to the Promised Land.
It was a story too good for network TV to pass up. NBC decided to televise a portion of the final game as part of its weekend magazine show, Sports World. The championship at Pauley was the first AIAW event of any kind to receive intense media coverage: Women’s basketball took a high-top stride toward national approval that night, with a Big Crowd and Big Media. There was even a legendary Big Man in the audience, Wilt Chamberlain, who sprawled conspicuously across two rows of bleachers. Meyers had raised the hoop for the sport, but there was still a crucial game to be played out on the hardwood that night.
The final buzzer of the 1976-’77 West Regional against Fullerton had signaled the end of Ellen Mosher’s abbreviated career as coach. (Earlier in the season, the Bruins had beaten the Titans 74-48.) Determined to win the elusive national championship, Holland, in a stroke of “if you can’t beat ’em, hire ’em” genius, recruited her longtime nemesis, Billie Moore of Fullerton.
“I knew Billie was right for us,” says Holland. “She had the maturity we needed.”
Moore had impressive credentials: a 146-17 record at Fullerton topped by the 1970 national title, plus a silver medal as coach of the first U.S. Olympic women’s basketball team in 1976. But hiring Moore was far from a slam-dunk. She had a reputation for being tough on players, and it was well-known that Meyers was not a fan. Moore had coached the UCLA star at the Montreal Olympics and Meyers’ sister, Patty, had played on Moore’s Fullerton championship team. Patty feuded openly with the coach and left with hard feelings. “I had a tough time adjusting to Billie,” admits Meyers.
Moore, however, quickly established herself as a leader and teacher, not a dictator. “I already had a feeling for the players’ strengths and weaknesses from having coached against them,” she says. “And they were extremely coachable. I didn’t have to crack the whip.”
Meyers and her teammates quickly adapted. “Billie treated each player as an individual in order to get the best out of them — which is exactly how Coach Wooden worked,” Meyers observes.
Moore had one of the most talented rosters in the nation. There was Meyers who, though only 5'9" could play any position and was equally dangerous as a scorer, defender and playmaker. And there was ball-hawking, streak-shooting junior guard Anita Ortega, who earned the nickname “Juice” because her moves recalled USC’s already legendary football hero. Freshman Denise Curry established herself as one of the best players in the nation with a 20.3 scoring average. And sophomore Dianne Frierson, whom Moore switched to point from her natural off-guard position, kept defenses honest with her long set shots. There was also Heidi Nestor, who hadn’t been a starter until 6'3" Cyd Crampton broke both legs in an off-season car accident, but then proved a surprising offensive threat, as well as a defensive stopper.
In addition, Moore had top reserves in sophomore Denise Corlett, an all-around athlete who also won national titles in badminton and volleyball, and junior guard Beth Moore. Rounding out the bench were sophomore forward Tam Breckenridge and two freshmen, forward Debbie Willie and guard Janet Hopkins.
Moore instituted a nonstop run-and-gun offense, unusual at the time in women’s basketball. “I let any of the starters except Heidi bring the ball up the floor,” she acknowledges. The Bruins soon established themselves as the most dangerous scoring machine in women’s hoops, topping 100 points 13 times during the season — good news for fans who earned free Big Macs for every 100-plus game. Moreover, the women played together smoothly as a unit. “We weren’t best buddies off the court, but on the court, we worked so well,” recalls Curry. “It was a team in the truest sense of the word.”
The team started the season with four wins, but then hit bumpy terrain on their first-ever East Coast road trip during the Christmas break. The women struggled through an 84-78 loss to Delta State in Madison Square Garden, with Meyers committing four quick fouls and Curry managing only 10 points, the closest she would come in her UCLA career to missing double digits. The Bruins managed to come back against Rutgers, 104-77 at the Garden, but lost again at Maryland, 92-88.
The women finished their Eastern swing with a win against Kentucky and another devastating loss to North Carolina State, the low point of the season. The highly touted Bruins, projected as Final Four finishers, were suddenly 6-3. “I remember sitting in the showers and just crying,” says Meyers. “I blamed myself — here it was, my senior year, and we were expected to do well.” As it turned out, the grueling road trip cemented the team bond, ultimately boosting the players’ confidence, even as it brought into relief their weaknesses. “Although we lost to three top-10 teams on that trip, our players came away feeling ‘Hey, these are the best teams in the country. We’ve got to shoot a little better, play a little harder, but next time around we can beat them,’” says Michael Sondheimer, the longtime associate director of UCLA women’s athletics who was then a first-year team publicist. “That trip won UCLA the national championship.”
The loss to N.C. State proved the Bruins’ last, as the team breezed through the rest of the regular season, winning games by an average of nearly 36 points per game, capturing the Southern California Intercollegiate Conference title. The team beat Moore-less Fullerton twice, by 46 and 27, a double drubbing that still sticks in the memory of current UCLA head coach Kathy Olivier, a freshman player on the vanquished Fullerton team.
Then, suddenly, it was March, time for the dreaded bugaboo of the West Regionals, the occasion of so many past disappointments and defeats. This time they were being held at Stanford University, but with a new local rival lying in wait — Cal State Long Beach.
The Bruins-Cal State L.B. game is still considered one of the most remarkable contests that UCLA has ever fought. Its hero was Anita Ortega. With five seconds on the clock, Long Beach in possession and the Bruins down 74-72 on their way to another heartbreaking postseason defeat, the Juice stole the ball and raced for a regulation-ending layup. The game went into overtime. In the extra period, Meyers and Nestor scored field goals and Curry made a free throw. But Long Beach fought back to make it a one-point game. Then, with six seconds on the clock, Cal State’s hot-shooting Lynn Stith got open for a can’t-miss 12-footer. She missed.
“That was The Game,” exalts Sondheimer. “After that, we were a team of destiny.”
The Bruins defeated Nevada Las Vegas to win the regional and then beat Brigham Young and Stephen F. Austin in the sectional tournament. That put UCLA in the Final Four on its home court — where the women hadn’t lost in the 30 games since Moore’s Fullerton team beat them in 1975.
Still, UCLA didn’t enter the Final Four as the favorite. That burden fell to Wayland Baptist, the Plainview, Texas, school that had given women players scholarships even before the AIAW allowed them. And then if Wayland faltered, there was still Maryland, which had already beaten UCLA and knocked number-one-ranked Tennessee out of the tournament.
Nor could underdog Montclair State, UCLA’s opponent in the semifinal, be counted out. The scrappy bunch from Jersey was the only Final Four team not on scholarship, but they had upset Maryland earlier in the season.
The Montclair players could barely afford to make the trip to California. “I remember selling everything that wasn’t nailed down,” says the team’s legendary senior forward Carol Blazejowski, the greatest scorer in the history of the women’s game.
“My folks borrowed money to come to L.A.”
The match between Montclair and UCLA was headlined as a mano-a-mano contest between “Blaze” and Meyers, the two best women players in the game. The hype drew 7,822 spectators to Pauley, though the large turnout was owing in part to the men’s basketball team, which had lost in its regionals, forcing fevered Bruin hoops fans to pin their championship hopes on the women instead.
The game delivered all that was promised. Blazejowski scored 40 and Meyers 19, along with 14 rebounds and eight assists. The Bruins hadn’t expected to extinguish the Blaze, even with Meyers defending her, but they held the rest of the team to just 37 points. Curry and Nestor, meanwhile, fed by the Meyers-led fast break, each scored 22. The Bruins prevailed, 85-77. In the other semi, Wayland Baptist led most of the game against the Maryland Terrapins. But Wayland’s deadeye center, 6'3" Jill Rankin, fouled out guarding Terrapin freshman center Kris Kirchner and the Flying Queens ended up losing, 90-85. Two nights later, the once-favored Wayland women dropped the third-place consolation game in overtime, 90-88, as Blazejowski put on another remarkable show with 41 points.
The final showdown was set between Maryland and UCLA. March 25th dawned bright and cloudless. “It was a clear, warm, perfect California day,” recalls Colleen Matsuhara, Moore’s assistant coach. “And when I came into the arena that night, I felt a ton of electricity in the air.”
Indeed, as the Bruins walked along the side of the court to the Pauley dressing room while Wayland and Montclair played the consolation game, the crowd caught sight of them and broke into a roar. “I knew then that I didn’t have to do anything special to motivate my players,” remarks Moore.
Meyers finished with nearly a quadruple double: 20 points, 10 rebounds, nine assists and eight steals. Coach Billie Moore pulled her out with little more than a minute left in the game so that one of the best women players in basketball history could enjoy a final farewell from the emotional crowd. But Meyers, ever-competitive, didn’t want to come off the court and barely noticed the standing ovation.
The following day, Easter Sunday, the Irish-Catholic Meyers clan celebrated a national title, daughter Ann’s birthday and the holy day. The more secular-minded Montclair State players headed to Santa Monica beach for a last-chance grab at some Southern California rays. But they forgot the sunscreen. “We used baby oil,” admits Blazejowski. She returned to the East Coast literally a-Blaze with sunstroke.
Blazejowski and Meyers split individual best-player honors, Blazejowski winning the Wade Trophy and Meyers the Broderick Award. Famously humble though she is, Meyers thought she deserved both. “Even today,” she notes, “the sportswriters and networks are on the East Coast.”
Moore, too, was an overnight celebrity. Sports Illustrated optimistically headlined its game story “No. 1 for the Wizardess of Westwood.” But the closest to another title Billie Moore would ever come was the next season when, sans Meyers and Nestor, the Bruins made it back to the Final Four but lost in the semifinals to eventual champion Old Dominion.
Moore and her team could not know it at the time, but their epochal game marked the beginning of a new era in all of women’s collegiate sports. The effects of Title IX, passed by Congress in 1972 mandating that men’s and women’s sports be on equal footing, would eventually revolutionize women’s athletics, increasing scholarships and opportunities to compete and creating a generation of super women athletes undreamed of two decades ago.
Truly the future of women’s basketball looked rosy in 1978, but it still took nearly 20 years for the game to grow to where it now supports not one, but two women’s professional leagues. “I’m not surprised it’s taken this long,” says Denise Curry. “It took forever just for universities to enforce Title IX. There are more opportunities, better coaching and more societal acceptance of women’s sports today, but there are still lots of unresolved gender-equity issues.”
“The opportunities for women to play now are unbelievable,” agrees Ann Meyers, “but women’s basketball has another 20 years to go for full acceptance.”
There’s a poignancy to the changes that have occurred. The small schools that once dominated the sport have faded into obscurity as large universities use their greater resources to take recruits and build dominant programs. Increasingly privileged college players take their scholarships, road trips and competitive opportunities for granted.
One final historical note: In 1981 the women-run AIAW was muscled out of existence by the rich and male-dominated NCAA. Today Curry is coach of Cal State Fullerton; Blazejowski is general manager of the New York Liberty and Meyers is lead color analyst for the WNBA. All three made it to their sport’s pantheon of heroes: the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. When Blazejowski was inducted, she honored her toughest opponent-turned-closest friend: Meyers accompanied her to the dais.
But does the new generation of women players remember the pioneers? Meyers isn’t so sure. “I only hope the young women will have respect for the players who came before them and did so much for the game,” she says.
Meyers and her 1978 national champion teammates, who reunited on the Pauley court at halftime during the USC-UCLA game on February 21, have never forgotten that championship season. But even for them, it has taken years to understand their place in history. “You don’t really appreciate it until you look back,” admits Curry. “I played overseas in the European championships. I played in the Olympics and won a gold medal. But nothing was better than that season, those games. Nothing.”