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Memories of Rupp's Runts and 1966

In March 1966, I was the sports editor of The Daily Illini, the campus newspaper at the University of Illinois.

Taking advantage of the perks that that allowed, I scored some press tickets to the NCAA regional tournament at the University of Iowa and some friends and I piled into a car for the four-hour drive from Champaign-Urbana to Iowa City.

This was a different era for the tournament. Only about 20 teams from around the country qualified, mostly based on winning their conference championships, and then 16 of them gathered in four first-round sites.