YouTube Gold: Duke vs. Notre Dame In The 1978 Final Four

The last step before Duke played for the 1978 national championship

We talked recently about Cooper Flagg possibly being the most celebrated recruit since Gene Banks got to Durham for the 1977-78 season as the #1 prospect in the land.

That Duke team went on a magical ride. Banks and Kenny Dennard were freshmen. Mike Gminksi was a sophomore. Jim Spanarkel was a junior and John Harrell was a cross-town transfer from NCCU. In that era, young teams didn’t stand a chance.

Duke was a really good team but got on a roll late in the season and blew through the ACC Tournament and then the Eastern Regional, concluding with a romp over Villanova that was really something special.

They played for the championship, losing to Kentucky, but before that game, they played Notre Dame in the semifinals.

The Blue Devils won narrowly, 90-86, and you’ll get to see a team that had unusual chemistry. Gminski was a very good big man, Banks and Dennard had a wonderful connection, Spanarkel was one of the more cerebral players to ever come out of Duke and Harrell was an elegantly understated point guard who just did really, really smart things.

Two small things: first, Notre Dame’s warmups were hideously ugly, even by the standards of the 1970’s and second, there are no commercials so you hear all the chatter from the crew which can get pretty interesting in a warts-and-all sort of way.

And one last thing: it may have changed since, but in 1978 and for a long time after, Bob Bender was the only player to play for two different teams in the Final Four.

Okay, one last last thing. In one of the funniest passages in John Feinstein’s book about Duke’s 1978 run called Forever’s Team, the much-loathed Bill Laimbeer was on Notre Dame’s team and among his earliest haters was Duke reserve Scott Goetsch. Feinstein painted a vivid picture of Goetsch rocking back and forth on the bench saying “Laimbeer sucks! Laimbeer sucks!”

And as soon as he got in the game he took a shot in Laimbeer’s face.

Goetsch learned in high school what the rest of the basketball world would find out soon enough: Laimbeer was a dirty player. The revenge was small but no doubt sweet for Goetsch.