Mike Dabney and Dick Vitale
- Thread starter HeavenUniv.
- Start date
There is a wide disparity in talent between the final four team and the Rutgers team of the past two seasons.They played without a shot clock or the 3 pointer and still scored over 70 points a game.
it was an amazing season..... no shot clock, no three point shot
yet, in the regular 26 games season:
20 games they scored over 90, including 14 games in a row early on
9 of those games scored over 100
and only one game did they score under 80,
that against Princeton, of course, who really held the ball, looking for the backdoor..
once they got to the post season, NYC elimination and beyond, when the competition is a bit tougher, they still scored over 90 four times out of seven
Many RU fans today I doubt have any idea how great that 1975-76 team was. Seller's, Bailey, Jordan & Copeland all played in the NBA and I believe Dabney was a very last cut at a time when the NBA only carried 11 or 12 guys instead of today's NBA which I think has 15 on the roster and there are so many more teams in the NBA today.
I have always thought that if Bailey was a junior that year, we might have made the final and given Indiana all they could handle....
It is accurate to say they scored “over“ 70 points a game. However, it is more precise to say that they scored 93.3 points per game.
I think that six or seven out of 10 times they would have beat Michigan even with Bailey as a freshman. (The 16 point margin notwithstanding .) I also think Indiana would have been a tossup – – the only team they just could not match up with was UCLA.
We got off to a terrible start, blown layups
Etc. it snowballed from there
I do remember that Michigan was a two point favorite despite our unbeaten record
If my memory is accurate, Bailey blossomed into a dominant player about mid season in his sophomore year (76/77). Not coincidentally, that was also the first season after the ”no dunking rule” was eliminated.
I have mentioned this before, but for any newbies here,
even though there were no official stats kept on dunking, I believe that James Bailey is the all time dunker in college
even though he only was able to dunk for 3 of the 4 years
he totaled 283 for his college career
it would have been pretty certain that Lew Alcindor would have been right there, but dunking was disallowed during his college time, specifically banned because of the threat that he would just dominate that way
Yes, we averaged over 90 points a game that season, with Kleinbaum getting us over the 100 mark a bunch of times.. I was in 8th grade, but still got to 22 of the 33 games..
Slow start vs Michigan is what cost us, not like some skeptics said “ Ricky Green was too fast for Eddie” “Well, then why did Eddie have the better NBA career? ”is always my response
With Bailey as a senior on that team we would have won that game by double figures
That Princeton game at Jadwin where they slowed it down, it was Dabney with the big steal to break open the game. He was also the hero in the rematch in the NCAAs with the big rebound of the Malloy miss.
Slow start vs Michigan is what cost us, not like some skeptics said “ Ricky Green was too fast for Eddie” “Well, then why did Eddie have the better NBA career? ”is always my response
With Bailey as a senior on that team we would have won that game by double figures
That Princeton game at Jadwin where they slowed it down, it was Dabney with the big steal to break open the game. He was also the hero in the rematch in the NCAAs with the big rebound of the Malloy miss.
I was surprised that Dabney wasn't a good pro. Maybe he was actually built better for today's NBA. Larger guard/smaller wing who could handle, shoot, and run the floor like no-one else.
The record album about the season was called "Run Rutgers Run" because of him.
The record album about the season was called "Run Rutgers Run" because of him.
Dickie V and Dabney are very close to this day. Wife and I have met Dickie V locally a few times in FL. He sits at a local restaurant on weekend am and raises $ for the Jimmy V Foundation. He also holds an annual fund raiser that generates big revenues for JVF with lots of sports celebrities present.
I asked him about RU getting Sellers and Dabney. He was losing both recruiting battles as ND was getting Sellers and Marquette getting Dabney. When he got Sellers to flip to RU, Dickie V immediately called Dabney and asked what he would do if he learned that Phil Sellers had just committed to RU. Dabney replied that he would also commit to RU in that case. Dickie V then handed the phone to Sellers, who talked with Dabney about being teammates at RU. Done deal as Dabney then called Al McGuire and said he was RU bound.
I believe that Dickie V would have reloaded with Sellers and Dabney skilled players every year at RU. Just my opinion.
Last edited:
Similar threads
