The Early Years Of The Wooden Dynasty

No one knew how far it would go, but in 1964, the UCLA dynasty was born.

When we think of the mighty UCLA dynasty, we tend to think of the Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton teams. Alcindor, later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, is seen by some as the greatest player of all time. Walton is seen by many as the most skilled big man of all time.

Those teams won five national championships and keep in mind that freshmen were ineligible at the time.

But John Wooden got his dynasty going in 1964 with a 98-83 win in the championship over Vic Bubas’s Duke team.

Unlike the Alcindor/Wooden teams, those squads were small and quick. In 1964, UCLA started Gail Goodrich, Walt Hazzard, Keith Erickson, Jack Hirsch and Fred Slaughter.

At 6-5, Slaughter was the tallest player on the roster if you can believe that.

However, UCLA was extremely quick and pressed beautifully.

They won the championship the following year too and were pre-season #1 in 1966, the year that Texas Western had their remarkable title.

However, they didn't win that year. As it turned out, they weren’t even the best team on UCLA’s campus as the freshmen beat them in an exhibition, 75-60. The dynasty would resume when Alcindor was a sophomore: his teams won three straight titles and UCLA won another after he graduated. The Walton Gang would win two more and lose to NC State in 1974. Wooden would retire with one last title in 1975.