Seventy-two to sixty-five.

It may be the most famous score in college basketball history, and neither number is the most significant related to the game itself.

Rather, try five. That's the number of blacks in the starting lineup for Texas Western on March 19, 1966 during the Miners' victory over Kentucky for the NCAA men's basketball championship. It was the first time that a college started an all-black lineup in an NCAA final, and it spelled the beginning of the end of segregation in the sport and to a certain degree for American college campuses as a whole.

The Texas Western team, coached by Don Haskins on a campus where blacks made up less than 1 percent of the student body, went ahead midway through the first half and stayed there the rest of the way at Cole Field House at the University of Maryland. Bobby Joe Hill, a junior from Detroit, scored 20 points to lead the victory for Texas Western, which later came to be known as Texas-El Paso.

The history-making win was the subject of Glory Road, a 2006 movie adaptation of the book co-authored by Haskins.

A few other highlights from this week in sports history:

March 19, 1931: Nevada legalizes gambling.

March 19, 1950: Babe Didrikson-Zaharias wins the second of her three U.S. Open golf championships.

March 19, 1950: The Rochester Royals close out their regular season with their 15th straight win to set a still-standing NBA record for victories at the end of a season.

March 19, 1969: The Phoenix Suns lose the coin flip, calling "heads," and miss out on the chance to select Lew Alcindor in the upcoming NBA draft. They end up with Neal Walk.

March 19, 1975: Pennsylvania becomes the first state to allow girls to participate in sports alongside boys.

March 19, 1991: The Kansas City Royals waive Bo Jackson.

March 19, 1991: Brett Hull becomes the third NHL player to score 80 goals in a season.

March 19, 1991: NFL owners announce the 1993 Super Bowl will be moved out of Phoenix because Arizona does not recognize Martin Luther King Day.

March 19, 1995: Michael Jordan ends a 17-month retirement and scores 19 points in 43 minutes as the Chicago Bulls lose to the Indiana Pacers in overtime.

March 20, 1934: Babe Didrikson throws a hitless inning for the Philadelphia A's in an exhibition against the Brooklyn Dodgers. The following day, she coaxes the third batter she faces to hit into a triple play.

March 20, 1973: Roberto Clemente is voted into baseball's Hall of Fame 11 weeks after his death in a plane crash.

March 20, 1968: Wilt Chamberlain closes out the NBA regular season with 702 assists to become the first center to lead the league.

March 21, 1953: The Boston Celtics and Syracuse Nationals combine for 106 fouls as 12 players foul out of their four-OT NBA game. Bob Cousy of the Celtics scores 25 points in overtime to finish with 50 in the game - 30 on free throws.

March 21, 1978: The San Diego Padres sack manager Alvin Dark during spring training.

March 21, 1982: Jerry Pate celebrates winning the TPC at Sawgrass by leaping into the greenside pond at No. 18.

March 21, 1994: Wayne Gretzky scores career goal No. 801 to tie Gordie Howe.

March 22, 1933: Franklin D. Roosevelt signs into law a bill permitting 3.2 percent beer to be sold in the United States.

March 22, 1934: Day 1 of the first Masters golf tournament, won by Horton Smith, in Augusta., Ga.

March 22, 1989: NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle announces his retirement.

March 22, 1994: NFL owners approve the addition of the two-point conversion.

March 23, 1929: The first telephone is installed in the White House. Kelvin Sampson is delighted to hear that it is a party line.

March 23, 1952: Bill Mosienko scores three goals in 21 seconds as the Chicago Blackhawks rally from four goals down in the third period to beat the New York Rangers, 7-6.

March 23, 1957: North Carolina goes three OTs to defeat Kansas 54-53 in the NCAA basketball final.

March 23, 1993: Four Knicks (Greg Anthony, John Starks, Doc Rivers and Anthony Mason) and two Suns (Kevin Johnson and Danny Ainge) are ejected as New York and Phoenix brawl at halftime.

March 24, 1883: The first telephone call takes place between New York and Chicago as Kelvin Sampson attempts to line up recruits who would lead to his dismissal at Indiana 125 years later.

March 24, 1936: The Detroit Red Wings beat the Montreal Maroons, 1-0, in a Stanley Cup playoff game that lasts 16:30 into the sixth overtime period.

March 25, 1896: The modern Olympics begin in Athens, Greece.

March 25, 1982: Wayne Gretzky becomes the first NHL player to score 200 points in a season.

March 25, 1997: The Hartford Whalers announce they will move to North Carolina before the next NHL season.

 

Catching up with the best of the worst from the past week in sports:

 

(10) Storrs, Conn.: How boring is your podunk when visitors who are supposed to be in town to seal the deal on a $125,000 payday prefer to drive for an hour to see Bristol, Conn., instead? That's what happened in October 2005 when high school basketball star Maya Moore and her mother traveled to UConn in anticipation of signing scholarship papers - out-of-state tuition plus room and board runs $30K and change per year - the following year. The Moores wanted to visit ESPN's headquarters ("On your left are the mug shots of anchors who've been disciplined for sexual harassment . . . On your right is Boomer practicing obnoxious sound effects for NFL-highlight voiceovers . . .") while they were in town, and the possibility that a Huskies athletic department employee arranged the tour may result in UConn being charged with a secondary violation by the NCAA.

(9) Butch Harmon: Let's face it, everyone knows golfer John Daly has vices (gambling, for one) and shows poor judgment in selecting future ex-wives. And when he speaks of "Jack" in reverential tones, the odds are Daly's thinking of Daniels rather than Nicklaus. But Harmon, a respected golf pro from one of the most distinguished American families in the sport, drove into the rough by airing out his wayward student last week, saying "the most important thing in his life is getting drunk." Daly is most definitely in need of help, but it's not up to the coach who's worked with the golfer all of three times to do it. Rip on him all you want if he bounces a check to you, but stay away from the fray otherwise; it's a pretty good bet that Eliot Spitzer had only worked himself up to Client No. 462 with the call-girl ring the last time Daly took anyone's good advice.

(8) WNBA: Who's the dunce who suggested there's no such thing as bad publicity? Bo Overton abruptly quit as coach and GM of the Chicago Sky amidst some unseemly speculation on an online chat board, and the episode was the first time in months that various media outlets so much as mentioned anything about the women's pro hoops league. It speaks volumes about how dreadfully boring the distaff version of the sport can be unless Geno and Pat are hurling daggers at each other.

(7) "Expand the bracket" advocates: Bobby Knight was half right Sunday in explaining how to improve the NCAA basketball tournament: Automatic bids to conference tournament winners should be ditched. But Knight and any number of others would like to expand the size of the tournament field in large part to resolve the annual issue of "bubble teams." The flaw there is that you're always going to have bubble teams no matter how many teams you invite - unless it's all 341. With a 65-team bracket you end up debating the merits of five 19-12 or 18-13 schools battling for two at-large berths. Expand the field to 80 and now you're quibbling over a pile of 17-14 and 16-15 schools. Make it a 96-school field and now you're trying to figure out which 15-15 or (yikes!) 15-16 teams should make it.

(6) Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co: Mixed feelings used to be epitomized by watching your mother-in-law go over the cliff in your new Cadillac. Now, it's summed up by having to take Tony Stewart's side not because the fiery driver is right but because the other guy is out of line. Stewart ripped Goodyear's tires at length after numerous drivers had trouble making the rubber meet the road in Atlanta - other than being chauffeured by Leon Spinks, is there a worse driving experience than having your tires melt while you're taking a corner at 140 miles an hour? - and Goodyear officials countered by criticizing Stewart for not giving them meaningful feedback during a tire test three months ago in Las Vegas. Hey, guys, ever hear that "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?" Goodyear had its chance to speak up in December, whether in the form of a phone call to Stewart's team or by replacing the "$1.99 buffet" marquee messages on The Strip with barbs aimed at the driver. Raising the issue now is a transparent attempt to divert attention from the fact they're supplying unreliable rubber.

(5) Dick Vitale: No surprise that he brought up the rear in terms of quality insight on ESPN's two-hour Sunday night tournament analysis, but the Mouth That Bored put in a shameless and gratuitous plug to get colleague Bobby Knight rehired at Indiana. It was inappropriate by any measure - wrong topic on the wrong show, etc. - and put Knight in a very awkward position, briefly leaving him speechless. I actually felt sorry for Knight, which I didn't think was possible.

(4) Dwyane Wade haters: The Miami Heat guard had a procedure done and will be limited to non-contact exercise for the next month. Considering that's the same way his teammates have played defense for 60 games, Mr. Wade is entitled to shut it down for the rest of the season in order to look out for No. 1. The people chiding Wade for taking care of his injured knee rather than playing out the string in a miserable season haven't been noticing he's one of the most selfless players in pro sports.

(3) NASCAR: If I want an ongoing drama, I can tune in to "The Young and the Restless" on the boob tube - anyone else have fond memories of the days when Nikki Newman was a Genoa City stripper? North America's No. 4 team sport (sorry, NHL . . . ) is starting to bore me to tears with its post-race inspection scandals and driver histrionics. Hey, good ol' boys, anything less than Cale Yarborough landing haymakers just doesn't rate as water-cooler fodder.

(2) Yankees-Rays feuding: When Billy Crystal is still around takes swings during BP and in an exhibition game, you know it's just too early to get worked up about collisions at the plate and hard slides at second base. Give it a rest until Memorial Day weekend, fellas.

(1) The Oregon Urology Institute: Just when you thought you'd heard of every half-vas promotion imaginable, along comes the all-time bracket-buster. The OUI is running a basketball-themed vasectomy promotion, urging men to "lower your seed for the tournament." The idea is to schedule a vasectomy for the day before early-round NCAA games to give men another reason to stay home and watch college basketball on TV during their two- to four-day recoveries. As far as come-ons go, this one has all the appeal of hearing the lounge crooner on your trans-North Atlantic cruise sing "There's got to be a morning after . . . "

 

It was a tough call deciding what to write about this week, but after careful consideration I decided you probably didn't want to read about how I fired the newspaper company I was working for on March 14, 2007.

Rather, there was a more relevant moment of March Madness upon which I'll dwell for a moment, because March 15, 1997 proved to be a big day in college basketball. When North Carolina defeated Colorado, 73-56, in Winston-Salem, N.C., it marked career victory No. 877 for Dean Smith and at the time made him the winningest coach in men's Division I basketball history.

The victory in the NCAA second-round tournament moved Smith past Kentucky's Adolph Rupp.

Smith, who started at Carolina in 1961 shortly after a playing career at Kansas under Phog Allen, abruptly retired the following October with totals of 879 wins, 11 trips to the Final Four (second to John Wooden's 12) and two national championships.

Smith's first national championship came with the 1982 squad that included Michael Jordan and James Worthy. The 1993 championship squad included Eric Montross and George Lynch.

He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983, the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame as part of the inaugural class in 2006 and the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2007.

A few other highlights from this week in sports history:

March 12, 1903: The New York Highlanders join baseball's American League. Exactly a decade later, they change their nickname to the Yankees.

March 12, 1956: Dick Farley of the Syracuse Nationals fouls out after playing just five minutes, the fastest disqualification in NBA history. The record stood until Bubba Wells of the Dallas Mavericks fouled out in three minutes against the Chicago Bulls on Dec. 29, 1997.

March 12, 1966: Bobby Hull sets an NHL record with his 51st goal of the season.

March 13, 1961: Floyd Patterson KOs Ingemar Johansson in the sixth round of their heavyweight title fight.

March 13, 1962: Wilt Chamberlain completes the NBA season with a scoring average of 50.4 points per game.

March 13, 1987: The Toronto Maple Leafs surrender five goals to the Washington Capitals in a span of 3:03.

March 13, 1999: The Dallas Mavricks' A.C. Green plays in his 1,000th consecutive game.

March 14, 1962: Gordie Howe reaches 500 career NHL goals. Thirty-five years later he signs a contract with the Syracuse Crunch of the AHL at the age of 68.

March 14, 1972: The NBA's Cincinnati Royals announce they are moving to Kansas City.

March 15, 1869: The Cincinnati Red Stockings become the first professional baseball team.

March 15, 1912: Cy Young retires from baseball after rolling up 511 wins but no Cy Young Awards.

March 15, 1958: Rochester Royals basketball star Maurice Stokes collapses during a game due to the effects of encephalitis and slips into a coma.

March 15, 1978: The Oakland A's trade Vida Blue to the San Francisco Giants for seven players and $390,000.

March 15, 1988: The NFL's St. Louis Cardinals move to Phoenix.

March 15, 1997: Joe Mullen becomes the first American to score 500 goals in the NHL.

March 16, 1938: Temple defeats Colorado in the first NIT championship game.

March 16, 1964: Paul Hornung and Alex Karras are reinstated to the NFL after one-year suspensions.

March 16, 1994: Tonya Harding pleads guilty for her role in the attack on skating rival Nancy Kerrigan.

March 17, 1963: Bob Cousy plays his final NBA game.

March 17, 1998: Te U.S. women top Cananda for the first Olympic women's hockey gold medal.

March 18, 1945: Rocket Richard becomes the first NHL player to score 50 goals in a season.

March 18, 1953: The National League approves the Boston Braves' request to move to Milwaukee.

March 18, 1981: The Buffalo Sabres score nine goals in one period against the Totonto Maple Leafs.

March 18, 1985: Baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth reinstates Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, who had been banned from baseball activities because of their casino-related promotional appearances.

 

Pop quiz, boys and girls: Name the current world heavyweight boxing champion.

Yeah, I couldn't do it either. I brain-cramped on it and ended up having to look up the answer: Oleg Maskaev, Ruslan Chagaev and Wladimir Klitschko each owns a belt from one or more of the major sanctioning bodies.

It's further proof that we are very far removed from the golden era of the sport's glamour division, and this week serves as a reminder that more than 35 years have passed since one of the most anticipated and memorable battles ever. Ali-Frazier I took place March 8, 1971.

Frazier had become the undisputed heavyweight champ (doesn't that have a nice ring to it?) a year earlier by taking out Jimmy Ellis in the fifth round to set up one of the many bouts touted as the "Fight of the Century" and one of the few to live up to the billing. Joe Frazier, 27, and Muhammad Ali, 29, entered the ring undefeated; Ali had been stripped of his title because of his refusal to be inducted into the U.S. Army.

Ali scored well in the early rounds, showing minimal rust after being absent from the ring for most of the three previous years, but Frazier began taking over in the middle rounds. He floored Ali with a hard left in the 15tht, sending the former champ to the canvas and assuring a unanimous decision at Madison Square Garden.

Frazier's reign ended with a vicious beating at the hands of George Forman in January 1973. Ali won the first rematch by unanimous decision at the Garden a year after that, then won the rubber match with Frazier — The Thrilla in Manila — by TKO in the 14th round in October 1975.

A few other highlights from this week in sports history:

March 5, 1966: Marvin Miller is elected as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association.

March 5, 1985: Mike Bossy of the New York Islanders becomes the first NHL player to score 50 goals in eight consecutive seasons.

March 5: Forget about the Mark McGwire issue the past two years and the Roger Clemens/Barry Bonds dilemma that will be coming up in five years or so. Ask the baseball writers to explain themselves for electing Earl Weaver (1996) and Tommy Lasorda (1997) to the Hall of Fame on this day.

March 6, 1964: American Tom O'Hara lowers his own world record in the indoor mile to 3:56.4.

March 6, 1967: Muhammad Ali is instructed by Selective Service to make himself available for induction into the U.S. Army.

March 6, 1972: Jack Nicklaus passes Arnold Palmer on the PGA's career earnings list.

March 6, 1973: Larry Hisle, baseball's first designated hitter, slugs two home runs and drives in seven runs as the Minnesota Twins beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in an exhibition game.

March 6, 1985: Mike Tyson makes his professional boxing debut with a first-round TKO of Hector Mercedes in Albany, N.Y.

March 6, 1982: The San Antonio Spurs beat the Milwaukee Bucks in three overtimes, 171-166, in what was at the time the highest scoring game in league history.

March 7, 1876: Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone. Kelvin Sampson starts formulating a new strategy for wooing basketball recruits.

March 7, 1982: The NCAA men's basketball tournament field is unveiled on television for the first time. Billy Packer rips the committee for overlooking Southwestern Northeastern A&M State but refuses to say who he would have kicked out of the brackets to make room for SNAMS.

March 7, 1987: Mike Tyson makes his first title defense, scoring a decision of James "Bonecrusher" Smith in Las Vegas,

March 7, 1988: Pitcher Jim Abbott wins the Sullivan Award as the nation's top amateur athlete.

March 8, 1941: Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Hugh Mulcahy (45-89 career record) is the first major-league player drafted into service in the World War II era.

March 8, 1983: President Reagan refers to the Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire," a phrase that would later take on a new life in the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry.

March 8, 1986: Martina Navratilova becomes the first tennis players to reach $10 million in career earnings.

March 8, 1994: The Chicago Bulls' Scottie Pippen and Pete Myers become the first NBA teammates to convert four-point plays in the same game.

March 8, 1999: Baseball great Joe DiMaggio dies.

March 10, 1896: Bob Fitzsimmons KOs the larger Jim Corbett and proclaims, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."

March 10, 1963: Wilt Chamberlain scores 70 points in the San Francisco Warriors' 163-148 loss to the Syracuse Nationals.

March 10, 1991: Eddie Sutton becomes the first man to coach four schools (Creighton, Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma State) into the NCAA basketball tournament.

March 11, 1986: Mike Bossy of the Islanders scores 50 goals for the ninth straight season.

March 11, 1991: Monica Seles ends Steffi Graf's run of 186 weeks at No. 1 in the women's tennis rankings.

Catching up with the best of the worst from the past week in sports:

 

(10) Boston Red Sox: Sure, he isn't going to cost them anything, but can the BoSox brass seriously expect Bartolo Colon to give them as many as two quality starts between now and Curt Schilling's return. Colon didn't lose his fastball; a gopher ate it: 15 HRs among the 132 hits he allowed in just 99 innings last season. And forget his 6-8 record and 6.34 ERA with the Angels a year ago. He was 1-6 with a 7.09 ERA after mid-June. At 34, he's not even close to the pitcher he was during a 21-8 season in 2005. There had to be a better Rent-A-Wreck out there for Red Sox Nation to pursue.

(9) Maria Sharapova: It turns out that one of the greats of tennis is a bad influence on children. The winner of three Grand Slam titles is known as a bit of a grunter (on the court), and that influence has rubbed off on 9-year-old Lauryn Edwards, who has been banned by the Mt. Carmel Tennis Club in Sunbury, Australia, because she's too noisy when she plays. The youngster idolizes the Russian star and has even been dubbed "Lauryn Sharapova" by an old coach.

(8) American Basketball Association: This rag-tag "league" began its 2007-08 season with "commitments" from 57 franchises to play. Most never launched their season or folded faster than an off-Broadway musical starring Rosanne Barr singing opera. Now, they're taking about putting franchises in China, Mongolia and a slew of other Asian outposts. It's one thing to have to scrape up money for a bus ticket home when your team goes belly-up during a swing through Corning and Syracuse. It's a whole different matter putting together enough pesos to get home from Singapore, where the penalty for traveling is a public flogging.

(7) Larry Bowa: Joe Torre's right-hand man doesn't like the new rule requiring first- and third-base coaches to wear protective helmets on the field, saying he'd go so far as to write a check to cover a season's worth of fines in advance. My advice to MLB: Don't bother cashing the check because nothing bad will happen to Bowa; anyone that thick-headed can't possibly get hurt, let alone killed, by a line drive.

(6) Associated Press Sports Editors: Please indulge a former sportswriter's rant. Ever wonder why the same big-city columnists win the top sportswriting prizes every year. It's because the APSE sets them up to succeed. More than 400 American newspapers belong to the organization and they compete for awards in four divisions each year based on circulation size. But it turns out only 34 papers are large enough to be in the top category while 202 publications fight it out in the smallest group. The APSE board recently rejected a proposal to tweak the rules to smooth out the distribution. Thank God the newspaper industry is dying faster than David Caruso's career.

(5) Skip Bayless: The man used to be a top-notch columnist and was ahead of his time when he tried to syndicate his daily thoughts to subscribers by faxing them to fans willing to lay out the dough in the early 1980s. But watching him now on ESPN2 is painful because of his outrageously contrarian views. If the guy sitting across from him contends that the time is 1:17 p.m. and the temperature in the studio is somewhere between 68 and 72 degrees, Bayless feels compelled to argue that the time is actually 6:33 a.m. and that it's 23 degrees and snowing in the studio. It's oafish behavior at its best/worst (pick one, Skip).

(4) Bobby Knight: Speaking of Bristol pistols, what's this? The man is too (pick one: bored, drained, arrogant) to finish out the season coaching basketball at Texas Tech but now he's going to talk about the sport on ESPN? As a coach, Knight was plenty quick to mock and criticize the media. As an "analyst," will he have the stones to call out a coach for an obvious blunder? Doubtful. He already weaseled out of answering Indiana-related questions during his ESPN Radio debut last week.

(3) Syracuse Orange basketball: I was more than willing to give Jim Boeheim's boys a free pass and accept that winning a couple of games in the NIT would make for a successful season in light of the season-ending knee injuries to Andy Rautins over the summer and Eric Devendorf early this winter, plus the defection (emphasis on "defect") of Josh Wright in a hissy fit over freshman Jonny Flynn's playing time. But Saturday's Chernobyl act at home against Pitt was a collapse on the level of the '64 Phillies and '67 Arabs. The Panthers outscored the Orange by 18-2 over the final 3