The 25 Biggest 'Oops' Moments in College Basketball History
The history of college basketball is filled with incredible comebacks, impossible shots and unforgettable performances, with many of the most memorable coming in the NCAA Tournament.
Perhaps just as memorable, however, are all the blunders and bloopers that leave everyone—from players and coaches to analysts and fans—scratching their heads, wondering "what in the world just happened?"
That includes everything from players making bone-headed mistakes in games to coaches engaging in all manner of shenanigans off the court, from Chris Webber's phantom time-out to, well, pretty much Bobby Knight's entire career.
With that in mind, here's a look, in no particular order, at 25 moments that left their perpetrators shrugging their shoulders and saying, "My bad!" if not worse.
25. Pitt's Jerome Lane Sends It In, Shatters Backboard
1 of 25We kick off this list with one of the more entertaining moments on this list, though it did leave something of a mess on the court afterward.
It was a fateful winter day in late January 1988 when Pittsburgh's Jerome Lane, then a junior forward for the Panthers, became a part of college basketball history.
No, not because he was an eminently productive player who twice led the Big East and once led the nation in rebounding, though those accomplishments certainly support Lane's merits as a player.
Rather, it was on this day that, in a game against Providence, Lane shattered a glass backboard on a monstrous one-handed dunk.
Credit for the assist goes to then-Panthers point guard and current Arizona Wildcats head coach Sean Miller.
However, historical props go to Bill Raftery, the color commentator who immortalized the moment with four enthusiastic words—"Send it in, Jerome!"
24. Al McGuire Gets a Bit Too Excited, Dances with the 'Cuse
2 of 25If you thought Raftery went a bit over the top after Lane's play, just have a look at legendary Marquette coach and then-CBS color commentator Al McGuire "dancing" with the 1996 Syracuse Orange team that made an unlikely run to the Final Four.
After interviewing coach Jim Boeheim and his players following their 60-57 victory over Kansas in the Elite Eight, McGuire decided to join the 'Cuse players in a celebratory dance as they spontaneously performed their unofficial theme song, "Cuse In the House."
McGuire, as you'll notice, found himself a bit out of step with the dance maneuvers of the Orangemen, though that didn't stop him from breaking out into a funky spastic fit.
Certainly not McGuire's finest moment, but not his worst, either, as this list will later show.
23. Iowa State's Larry Eustachy Indulges at Frat Party
3 of 25
Embarrassing as McGuire's rhythmic gaffe was, at least it was expected that it would be caught on camera.
Larry Eustachy, on the other hand, had no intentions of being photographed when, on the evening of Jan. 22, 2003, he was photographed at a fraternity party at the University of Missouri engaging in, well, behavior unbecoming of a Division I basketball coach.
Eustachy's Iowa State Cyclones had lost to Mizzou earlier in the day, and the coach had presumably had a few too many drinks with which to drown his sorrows following the defeat.
Either way, Eustachy was pictured holding a beer and kissing several co-eds at the aforementioned party, though the evidence did not surface until three months later, when The Des Moines Register carried it to the corn-growing masses.
The Register later reported that Eustachy had engaged in a similar escapade after a loss at Kansas State.
Furthermore, the student paper at Mizzou alleged that Eustachy had propositioned several women amidst his drunken stupor and had to have someone call a cab for him to get home.
It surprised almost no one, then, when Eustachy resigned in early May after apologizing for his illicit behavior and voluntarily admitting himself to treatment for his alcoholism.
22. Gonzaga's Adam Morrison Weeps in Defeat
4 of 25Eustachy's goodbye from Iowa State was a tearful one, though perhaps not quite as rough on the heartstrings as Adam Morrison's emotional farewell to the college game.
The star forward for Gonzaga went down in a weeping heap after the Bulldogs' shocking loss to the UCLA Bruins in the Sweet 16 in 2006.
The Bruins rallied from a 17-point second-half deficit in that game, sending the 'Zags home disappointed and Morrison, in particular, down to the hardwood, where he was comforted by UCLA guard Arron Afflalo.
Perhaps he was shedding tears for the failure that would become his NBA career.
Bah-zing!
21. Bobby Knight Tosses Chair onto Court
5 of 25Aside from that moment of emotional vulnerability, Adam Morrison's collegiate career was mostly one of stellar performance and clutch play on camera.
Bobby Knight, on the other hand, spent a significant portion of his coaching career at Indiana and Texas Tech making an ass of himself in front of millions of viewers.
Knight's most memorable televised mishap came within the first five minutes of a game between his Indiana Hoosiers and Gene Keady's Purdue Boilermakers in February of 1985 at Assembly Hall on the IU campus in Bloomington.
A combination of poor play by his Hoosiers and a series of fouls called on his team got Knight fuming like few had ever seen in public before referee Fred Jaspers sent Knight "off the deep end" with a technical foul.
In a fit of rage that would leave the Incredible Hulk shaking in his boots, Knight then grabbed his chair and flung it across the basketball court, where it skipped directly toward a section of spectators in wheelchairs.
Needless to say, Knight did not oversee his team's performance the rest of the game, as he was escorted from the bench with just over 15 minutes left in the first half.
20. Pitt's Nasir Robinson Fouls Butler's Matt Howard to Give Away Game
6 of 25
That Hoosiers team went on to win the NCAA Tournament the very next year, so at least The General's transgressions didn't cost him his job or his team a title in the long run.
Pitt's Nasir Robinson, on the other hand, was not so lucky to make his mistake when it didn't really matter that much in a purely basketball sense.
The junior forward etched his name into March Madness lore when, in a second-round matchup with Butler in the 2011 NCAA Tournament, he fouled Bulldogs forward Matt Howard with less than a second to go in the game and the score tied at 70-70.
Howard made the first free throw, thereby sealing No. 1-seed Pitt's defeat while catapulting Brad Stevens' Bulldogs in their improbable run to a second consecutive tournament final...
18. Butler Stinks It Up in 2011 NCAA Tournament Final
7 of 25
...Wherein Butler proceeded to put on one of the more embarrassing performances ever put forth by a team in a championship contest...ever.
It was one thing for the Bulldogs to lose to Connecticut, a team that came into the 2010-2011 season well off the national title radar but benefited from the stellar play of All-American point guard Kemba Walker.
Butler's greatest folly here can be summed up in one number: 18.8
That was the Bulldogs' field goal percentage on April 4, 2011, when they lost to UConn, 53-41, in a game that, in essence, concluded one of the most exciting NCAA Tournaments ever with the worst possible capstone.
What's most remarkable about Butler's blunderous evening is the fact that Shelvin Mack and company actually had a three-point lead going into halftime, which, as one might expect, they quickly squandered as the Huskies outscored them in the second half by a 34-19 margin.
17. Marquette Coach Earns Second Tech to Seal Defeat in 1976 Tourney
8 of 25
Al McGuire was as much loved for his enthusiasm, passion and fiery nature by fans and supporters as he was bemoaned for those very same characteristics by referees and the NCAA.
McGuire's hot-headedness came back to bite him when his Marquette Eagles ran into an undefeated Indiana Hoosiers team in the Elite Eight in the 1976 NCAA Tournament.
The Marquette coach earned his first tech with just under 13 minutes left in the game after tearing into referee Jack Ditty and laying waste to the scorer's table. The Hoosiers converted the free throw and clamped down on defense to expand their seven-point cushion into a commanding lead.
The Eagles weren't done, however, as they took up McGuire's passion and fought back to within three points when McGuire really blew it for his team.
With 25 seconds remaining in the game, McGuire picked up his second T of the night, which sparked IU to eight points the closing seconds to put Marquette away on the way to the national championship.
16. Kansas Jayhawks Clipped by No. 14 Seed Bucknell
9 of 25
The Kansas Jayhawks didn't need their coach to screw over their title hopes in the 2005 NCAA Tournament.
They let the Bucknell Bison do it.
The 14th-seeded team out of the Patriot League snuck by the third-seeded Jayhawks, 64-63, in the opening round of the tourney thanks to eight three-pointers—seven more than KU made that day.
Bucknell wasn't the first 14-seed to win a game in the NCAAs, but the fact that they did so against a Bill Self-coached team that began that season as the No. 1 team in the country serves as something of an embarrassment to Jayhawk nation.
15. Billy Packer Eats Humble Pie as George Mason Reaches Final Four
10 of 25
One would think that Bucknell's win, as just one in a long line of mid-majors beating out their big conference counterparts, would have at least made a dent in the opinion of noted small-school hater and former CBS broadcaster Billy Packer.
Packer proved otherwise when, on Selection Sunday in 2006, he berated the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee for including so many teams from minor conferences like the Missouri Valley Conference and the Colonial Athletic Association while leaving out BCS-conference bubble teams like Cincinnati and Florida State.
Three weeks later, Packer was served a hefty helping of humble pie when 11th-seeded George Mason showed up at the Final Four, just a week after Bradley and Wichita State were knocked out in the Sweet 16.
14. Top-Ranked Virginia Loses to Chaminade
11 of 25If Packer had done his homework, he would've known full well that bigger upsets had been perpetrated over the course of college basketball history.
Turn the clock back nearly three decades and take a trip across to the Pacific Ocean to the Hawaiian capital of Honolulu, where Ralph Sampson and the top-ranked Virginia Cavaliers stopped off for what should have been a quick scrimmage against Chaminade, a tiny NAIA Catholic school with a student body of 800 and without a gym of its own.
The phrase, of course, being should have been.
After doing away with powerhouse programs like Duke, Georgetown and Houston on the way to an 8-0 start to the season, the Cavs bumbled, stumbled and ultimately fumbled away a foregone conclusion in a 77-72 loss to the Silverswords, who had dropped their previous contest to Wayland Baptist.
Say what you will about the guts and determination Chaminade showed that fateful day, it's tough to deny that Virginia flat-out dropped the ball in what is still one of the most shocking upsets in the history of the sport.
13. UNLV Players Caught with Richie "The Fixer" Perry
12 of 25
The UNLV Runnin' Rebels were one of the dominant teams in all of college basketball during the late 1980s and early 1990s, though the success of Jerry Tarkanian's squads did not come without its foibles.
The Rebels landed in hot water when the NCAA concluded an investigation into the programs ties to noted booster and sports gambling hoodlum Richie "The Fixer" Perry, resulting in UNLV being banned from participating in the 1992 NCAA Tournament.
Of course, the NCAA had originally planned to keep the Rebs out of March Madness in 1991, but, in typical two-faced fashion, decided to let "Tark the Shark" and his team partake in a defense of their 1990 national championship.
The real gaffe came months after UNLV's loss to Duke in the tourney, when the Las Vegas Review-Journal published a photograph depicting three of Tark's players hanging out in a hot tub with Perry, which brought quite a bit of embarrassment to the program and resulted in Tarkanian's firing.
13. Kentucky Gives Up Open Inbounds Pass to Duke's Christian Laettner
13 of 25The 1992 NCAA Tournament was no less thrilling without UNLV in the field, thanks in large part to the classic Elite Eight contest between Duke and Kentucky.
That game will forever be remembered for Christian Laettner's shot at the buzzer to give the Blue Devils a 104-103 overtime win and a fifth consecutive trip to the Final Four.
What's often forgotten about that play, though, is the fact that Kentucky coach Rick Pitino neglected to have one of his guys stay in the back court and guard the inbounds pass, thereby making Grant Hill's three-quarter court heave to Laettner that much easier and, in turn, the game-winning shot that much more probable.
12. UK Caught Sending Money to Recruits
14 of 25
That play, of course, signified a marked improvement over where Kentucky had been just a few years earlier—in the NCAA's doghouse.
The Wildcats spent the latter half of the 1980s on probation following an investigation by the NCAA that revealed an extensive array of infractions, including payments made to recruits by coaches and staff during the tenure of Eddie Sutton.
The whole scheme was blown wide when employees for Emery Worldwide, a cargo airline that was once one of the world leaders in shipping, found an envelope addressed to the father of star recruit Chris Mills from then-assistant coach Dwane Casey.
What was in that envelope, you ask?
Why, just $1,000 in cold, hard cash.
One might imagine that this didn't sit too well with the NCAA, which threatened UK with the "death penalty"—no basketball for two years—if the program didn't clean up its act, which it did quite promptly when school president David Roselle forced out Sutton and athletic director Cliff Hagan.
But not before Big Blue's basketball reputation incurred a sizable blemish.
11. Phi Slamma Jamma Loses National Championship on NC State Putback
15 of 25The Houston Cougars were one of the most feared teams in all of college basketball in the early 1980s, with the tandem of Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler throwing down dunk after thunderous dunk to earn their squad the nickname "Phi Slamma Jamma."
As tremendous as those Cougars were, they never managed to win a national championship, which one might very well attribute to a single momentary failure in one fateful game.
The moment? Lorenzo Charles' put-back dunk off an air ball from Dereck Whittenburg.
The game? The 1983 NCAA Tournament Final in Albuquerque, N.M., against North Carolina State..
The irony? The Cougars, known for their rebounding and dunking, gave up the game-winner on a dunk following an offensive rebound by NC State.
The 54-52 victory made the Wolfpack the first team to win the title with 10 losses on their docket and made coach Jim Valvano a legend in the coaching ranks.
10. UCLA Surrenders Championship Streak to NC State
16 of 25
Charles' dunk wasn't the first occasion in NC State's basketball history that the Wolfpack upended a powerhouse program in the NCAA Tournament.
NC State, led by the tenacious David Thompson, faced off with Bill Walton and the UCLA Bruins in the 1974 NCAA Tournament semifinal.
The Bruins, mind you, were looking to extend their ridiculous streak of consecutive national titles under John Wooden to eight, thereby making the Wolfpack a significant underdog in the proceedings.
And it appeared as though Walton and Co. were on their way to the tournament final, as they played their way to two separate 11-point leads in the second half, both of which Thompson's team managed to wipe away.
Which spelled doom for the Bruins, who also blew a seven-point lead in the second overtime period and subsequently allowed NC State to sneak away with an 80-77 victory.
As such, UCLA gets the nefarious nod here for snatching defeat away from the jaws of victory not once, not twice, but three times!
9. Georgetown's Fred Brown Passes to UNC's James Worthy
17 of 25The 1982 NCAA Championship game between North Carolina and Georgetown will always be remembered for two moments in particular.
Most will look fondly upon Michael Jordan's 17-foot jumper to give the Tar Heels a 63-62 lead as the shining moment of that tightly-contested match.
Those of us seeking out mistakes will instead look to the play that immediately followed it, in which Georgetown's Fred Brown faked a pass one way before inexplicably handing the ball off to James Worthy the other way.
Worthy, by the way, played for UNC.
That gaffe sealed the deal, and Brown's fate in the annals of college basketball history.
8. Jim Harrick Puts Two Programs in Hot Water After UCLA Scandal
18 of 25
At least Brown's poor pass didn't have any repercussions beyond costing Georgetown a shot at the national title and forever rendering him a goat in the pages of college basketball lore.
At least it didn't put the program in poor standing with the NCAA.
Jim Harrick, on the other hand, seemingly could do no right by the rule book in his time as a college head coach.
Harrick first came to national prominence at UCLA, leading the Bruins to the 1995 NCAA Tournament title—the school's 11th overall and first since John Wooden's retirement.
He later attracted NCAA scrutiny when he was accused of falsifying receipts from a $1,000 dinner for recruits and current players at Monty's Steakhouse prior to the 1996-97 season.
The NCAA later exonerated Harrick of any wrongdoing, though the fact that Harrick had lied to the university's own investigators led to his firing from UCLA soon after.
After a year-long hiatus from coaching, Harrick landed at the University of Rhode Island, where he twice led the Rams to the NCAA Tournament but not before leaving behind a legacy of violations, which included Harrick changing his players' grades and arranging for boosters to provide illegal benefits to his players.
That information did not surface until 2002—three years after Harrick departed for the University of Georgia and subsequently screwed over the Bulldogs program by funneling extra expense benefits for his players through his son, Jim Harrick Jr., and engaging in even shadier academic activity than he had while at URI.
The blundersome blame, then, lies with URI and UGA, which both overlooked Harrick's past transgressions and paid the price when their respective programs came under heavy fire from the NCAA.
7. Cleveland State's Kevin Mackey Arrested Outside Crack House
19 of 25
Embarrassing as Harrick's flippance with regard to the NCAA's rules and regulations was, he did nothing that necessarily ran afoul of actual laws, which cannot quite be said for Kevin Mackey.
The former coach at Cleveland State was caught red-handed (or white-nosed, rather) in July 1990, when police arrested him as he exited a crack house with a prostitute on his arm.
Adding insult to injury, the entire sting was caught on camera by local television reporters.
As one might expect, Cleveland State fired Mackey a few days later, soon after which he was ordered to 60 days of rehab as punishment for charges of cocaine abuse and driving under the influence.
6. Villanova's Gary McLain Admits Drug Use
20 of 25
There's no telling if Mackey was ever "wired" during games, though he certainly wouldn't have been the only person in college basketball who dabbled in cocaine during the 1980s.
Take, for instance, the case of Villanova's Gary McLain, who, in March of 1987, revealed in a cover story for Sports Illustrated that he was hopped up on coke during the Wildcats' victory over Memphis State in the Final Four that preceded their upset of Big East rival Georgetown in the 1985 NCAA Championship game.
What's worse, he also confessed to being hyped up during 'Nova's ceremonial visit to the White House after winning the title!
McLain, the 1985 Final Four MVP, went on to explain that he wasn't the only Wildcat to partake in such illicit activities and that head coach Rollie Massimino was aware of what had been going on within the program.
5. Kentucky Skips NCAA Tournament in Back-to-Back Seasons
21 of 25
Throughout its long history, the Kentucky Wildcats program has asserted itself as one of the greatest and most controversial in all of college basketball.
UK's transgressions extend as far back as the mid-1950s, beginning with a point-shaving scandal that cost the Wildcats a full season of competition in 1953.
Legendary coach Adolph Rupp didn't do his team any favors the following season, when he decided to hold the 'Cats, then undefeated at 25-0 and ranked as the No. 1 team in the nation, out of the tournament after it was discovered that several of the team's players had graduated the year before and, thus, were not eligible to play in the NCAAs.
In essence, then, Rupp doubly screwed the team that year, first by playing guys who weren't eligible and then by voluntarily keeping his team out of the postseason despite the likelihood that they would've come away with another national title.
4. Michigan's Chris Webber Calls for Non-Existent Timeout
22 of 25Michigan had little problem reaching the NCAA Tournament final in 1992 and 1993, though neither time did the Wolverines emerge victorious.
Between the two appearances, however, most college basketball fans will recall the second trip, which ended in a gut-wrenching defeat to North Carolina.
The loss was precipitated by one infamous moment of absent-mindedness by Chris Webber, the most precocious and braggadocious of Michigan's famed "Fab Five," who, in the closing seconds of the game and with the ball in hand, rushed to call a timeout while surrounded by defenders clad in Tar Heel blue.
The problem being that the Wolverines were already out of time-outs—a fact that head coach Steve Fisher had made abundantly clear to his players during the team's final timeout.
That mistake resulted in a technical free throw and the ball for UNC, ostensibly sealing an embarrassing defeat for a Michigan team that boasted one of the greatest collections of talent ever assembled on a single collegiate squad.
And tremendous as Webber was as a player for the Maize and Blue during his two seasons in Ann Arbor, he will always be remembered, first and foremost, for "The Timeout."
3. Bill Frieder Fired from Michigan, Misses out on National Championship
23 of 25
Michigan had won the national title a few years prior, in 1989, though not without a note of stupidity attached.
Head coach Bill Frieder led the Wolverines to a 24-7 regular season record before announcing just prior to the NCAA Tournament that he would be leaving Michigan for Arizona State at the conclusion of the season.
This incensed athletic director Bo Schembechler, the former football coaching giant known for his fierce loyalty to the university, who famously proclaimed upon relieving Frieder of his duties, "A Michigan man will coach Michigan, not an Arizona State man."
Schembechler appointed assistant coach Steve Fisher as the interim head coach and the Wolverines went on to win the tourney behind the extraordinary efforts of Rumeal Robinson and Glen Rice.
As for Frieder, he spent eight seasons in Tempe, during which he led the Sun Devils to the Big Dance only twice.
Think he'd take that one back if he could?
2. UK Gets Upended by Texas Western
24 of 25
Adolph Rupp made his fair share of mistakes during his time as the head coach at the University of Kentucky, though none carried quite as much historical significance as his exclusion of African-American players from the Wildcats program.
That mistake in racial judgment came back to bite him in 1966, when "Rupp's Runts" ran into Don Haskins' Texas Western team, which was the first ever to start five black players in the NCAA Championship Game.
The Miners went on to win that game, 72-65, and shatter all manner of racial barriers in the world of college basketball as they defeated a heavily-favored Wildcats team with an all-white starting lineup.
1. Baylor Bears Embarrassed by Not-so-Bliss-Ful Scandal
25 of 25
No single incident has ever brought more shame to a program or the sport of college basketball as a whole than the scandal that hit Baylor University in 2003.
This particular amalgamation of circumstances, which will be described in brief below, centered on the murder of Patrick Dennehy by teammate Carlton Dodson following an argument while firing guns near the school's campus in Waco, Texas.
The two had originally purchased and begun practicing with the firearms as a means of protecting themselves after receiving threats from other teammates, one of them allegedly being junior college transfer Harvey Thomas.
All the while, Baylor basketball coach Dave Bliss had been engaged in some highly questionable activities, to say the least, from ignoring drug and alcohol abuse by his players to paying for the tuition of some players, like Dennehy, for whom he did not have scholarships available.
The murder investigation spurred on an investigation by the NCAA, which accused Bliss and his staff of a wide array of recruiting violations and various other cases of coaching malfeasance, all of which Bliss initially denied.
In attempting to conceal any wrongdoing, Bliss went so far as to explain the payment of Dennehy's tuition by claiming that Dennehy put himself through college by selling drugs—a story that became all the more embarrassing for Dennehy's family when his murder was uncovered.
The NCAA came down hard on Bliss and the Baylor program in the end, putting the Bears on probation until June 2010, banning them from non-conference play during the 2005-06 season and limiting their recruiting activities while also slamming Bliss with a 10-year "show-cause" penalty.
Although, none of that will soon wipe clean the ugly stain left behind in Waco and on the college game as a whole by the entirety of this fiasco.
.jpg?w=480)
.jpg?w=600 "Report: Falcons, Jags Make DT Trade")
.jpg?w=600 "WWE Hall of Fame Recap 👏")
