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Message: [QUOTE="BBallF, post: 3488907, member: 10435"] Walton could not play as a freshman. The rule allowed freshmen in Division 1 to play for the 1972-1973 season (Division 3 allowed it in 1968-1969). Walton was a freshman in the 1970-1971 season and graduated in 1974, after North Carolina State with David Thompson upset UCLA in the national semis. The Wolfpack went on to win the NC and break the UCLA streak of 7 in a row. The Bruins came back the next year, Wooden's last, to win it again. Incidentally, no one ever said that the UCLA teams were "bad" for college basketball even though they won 10 NCs in 12 years. In fact it was the opposite. The UCLA-Houston game in the Astrodome is long considered to be "The Game of the Century" that made college basketball a national game ( it was blacked out in Houston even though the Dome was sold out and Houstonians drove as much as a hundred miles to watch the game ). It was the first college basketball game broadcast nationally during primetime. Interestingly, The Game was January 20, 1968. Some 27 years later in the same month, on the 16th to be exact, the women's version of The Game took place in Storrs when UCONN beat Tennessee. The UCLA "dynasty" lasted from 1964-1975. UCONN started its own in 1995 and it is still going, The New York Times and other "dissers" notwithstanding. With our recruits and returnees, we should be "bad" for women's basketball for the foreseeable future. [/QUOTE]