LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The University of Louisville basketball team defeated Georgia Tech by four points just 20 days ago. The Cards should be favored to defeat the Yellow Jackets by more Wednesday night in Atlanta.
Yes, as head coach Chris Mack explained, the Yellow Jackets have two terrific guards. Yes, Tech has defeated North Carolina State (twice), North Carolina and Virginia Tech. Yes, every team is dangerous.
But, Georgia Tech is not Louisville. Not this season. Not last season. Not most seasons.
Credit Mack and his players, but credit program icons like Darrell Griffith and coach Denny Crum, too. They appeared at Mack’s pregame press conference Tuesday to discuss a documentary project that will feature their 1980 national championship team.
The working title is “Dr. Dunkenstein and the Doctors of Dunk,” and if you were around when those guys attacked backboards across America you understand why the Cardinals have an outsized profiled compared to Georgia Tech.
“When we came to town, it was a road show,” Griffith said. “Anthony (Holt, the film-maker) felt this story needed to be told ... As the years went on, we didn’t realize the impact we had on college basketball.”
Griffith, of course, is talking about the game’s culture. John Wooden’s ere ended at UCLA in 1975, Dean Smith of North Carolina, Bob Knight of Indiana and Crum were starting to command the stage.
What separated the Cardinals from those programs was Crum had the self confidence to let his guys express themselves. Control was not Crum’s obsession. Getting his guys to relax, focus and play their best basketball mattered more to Crum.
Louisville became more than a winning program. It became a brand.
Griffith, Derek Smith, Wiley Brown, Jerry Eaves, the McCray brothers, Roger Burkman, Tony Branch and Poncho Wright performed with unbridled joy. Basketball noticed and celebrated that.
All the great teams made jump shots, chased rebounds, set firm picks and defended with purpose. Louisville did all that — and played the game at a different altitude. They were happy to meet you at the rim. In fact, they preferred it.
Believe it or not, the dunk was legislated out of college basketball in 1967 in a clumsy attempt to make life difficult for Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) from dominating the game at UCLA, where Crum served as an assistant coach.
It didn’t work. UCLA won 88 of 90 games and the first three of the seven titles the Bruins won from 1967-75.
By 1976, when Griffith was a college freshman, the rules committee surrendered and lifted the ban. Griffith was ready. So were his teammates.
Griffith had learned to dunk by propelling himself off a garage door in a neighborhood driveway. It wasn’t long until he stopped needing assistance.
Griffith said he remembered that he and his Male High School teammates broke the rules in pregame warmups by dunking before the officials walked on the court. They positioned a student manager near the officials' locker room and told them to wave a white towel when the striped shirts were coming.
When Griffith got to U of L, he was taller, stronger and spreading fear with his 48-inch vertical jump. The Cards were so into the dunking role that the players occasionally wore white doctors’ jackets with their names across the back during warmups.
But Dr. Dunkenstein (Griffith) and the Doctors of Dunk became more than a footnote by winning the program's first NCAA title in 1980 in Indianapolis. That was followed by Final Four trips in 1982 and 1983 as well as another national championship in 1986. That was when Louisville started stirring the national juice that eventually made the program attractive to league like the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2015.
Film-maker Anthony Holt (left) has started work on a documentary about Louisville's Doctors of Dunk, who were coached by Denny Crum (center) and led by Darrell Griffith. WDRB Photo/Rick Bozich
This Louisville team does not fly as high as Griffith's teams, but the Cardinals have positioned themselves to win their first ACC regular season title in the program’s six seasons in the league.
After Duke defeated Florida State on Monday night, Louisville can win the league by winning its final seven games. In fact, even if the Cardinals lose once, they’ll eclipse Duke for the top seed in the ACC Tournament because of their win at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
In other words, Mack’s team is positioned to do things that this program has done before: win a conference title and proceed into March as a team to watch.
For the next three months, Holt will collect videos, pictures and newspaper clippings to include in the documentary. Maybe this Louisville team, the one that plays at Georgia Tech on Wednesday night, can find a way to enhance the story.
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