Happy Final Four Weekend.

It slipped up on me, but 31 years ago last night, Danny and the Miracles beat Oklahoma, 83-79, to in the NCAA Tournament. For pure fun, it’s the best basketball gave I’ve ever covered.

It was 50-50 at the half, if you can imagine.

Kansas was an 8-point underdog — same as Villanova when it beat Georgetown in 1985 — and a No. 6 seed.

The only bigger spread in the tournament’s Championship Game was Connecticut, a 77-74 winner over Duke in 1999 as a 9.5-points underdog. Both those teams, like Oklahoma in 1988, were 1 seeds.

Against the Sooners, Manning had 31 points and 18 rebounds; his two free throws with five seconds left iced it for the underdogs.

My seat was about level with the foul line where Manning shot the final free throws. I was writing the game story and Peter Finney a column for The Times-Picayune. About midway through the first half—Kansas would finish the half with 22 of 29 shooting and made 20 of their first 24 shots—Pete looked at me and said, with tiny Kemper Arena exploding, “This ain’t even working,” meaning we were getting paid but we probably really shouldn’t have been.

The Jayhawks had already lost twice to Oklahoma during the Big 8 season, but on this night, Kansas played OU’s game and beat them at it. I think I wrote that Truman defeated Dewey, that the frog jumped up and whipped the entire biology class.

Remember these names?: Kevin Pritchard, Chris Piper, Milt Newton and Jeff Gueldner? Those were the other Kansas starters, coached by Larry Brown. Billy Tubbs sent these five Sooners out: Mookie Blaylock, Stacey King, Harvey Grant, Dave Sieger, and Ricky Grace. They basically played just those five; 10 Jayhawks played in the first half, the most entertaining half of basketball I’ve ever seen.

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