Worst Team to Win a Championship

Charlestown Chiefs....bunch a thugs.

 

Villanova's NCAA title team was pretty mediocre too.

In the title game Georgetown provided a textbook example of "playing into the opponent's hands."

 

co sign on 1987 Skins/ 2000 Ravens for NFL, 1990 Colorado for CFB, 1981 NC State/1985 Louisville/1986 Villanova/1988 Kansas for NCAABB, 1988 Dodgers/ 1985 Royals/ 1987 Minnesota /2007 Rockies for MLB's modern era and 1979 Sonics for NBA. Hockey experts have anyone special besides the 2011-12 LA Kings?

 

Another excellent point.

 

Trivia Question: Who was the only NCAA Champion in the last 50 years not to have a single future first round draft pick on their entire roster?

Hint: the answer is not any of the teams that have been discussed in this thread.

 

Indiana '87?

 

The 87 Twins were certainly fortunate along the way, but they were not a bad team. They lacked pitching depth, but had great power for that era -- three guys hit 30 homers, IIRC.

Puckett was a monster, Viola and Blyleven were damn good and Berenguer and Reardon were great out of the pen.

They also won two more games in the regular season than the 2006 Cardinals -- despite dumping their final five games after they clinched.

So it's the 2006 Cards.

 

84 BYU CFB, 07 LSU CFB, 11 UConn CBB. What about this year's Kings? Couldn't play dead during the regular season, snuck into the playoffs and went on a historic run to win the cup.
90 CU, I don't get. They had the toughest schedule in the country, went unbeaten in league and beat Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl.
The Buffs tied Tenn (ended season No. 8); and beat Texas (No. 12), Washington (No. 5), Oklahoma (No. 17), Nebraska (No. 24/17) and Notre Dame (who finished No. 6). Everyone cries about the clipping call, but the Buffs lost their starting QB in the first half. I thought they were a pretty damn good team, not one of the worst champs ever. Illinois finished No. 24.
CU played seven top 25 teams, Ga. Tech four. Both good teams.

 

I was going to say that was the same year Vince Coleman got eaten by the tarp in the NLCS but that hapened in '85.

I was living in the Cities in '87 and the two things I'll never forget about the postseason are:

The welcome home rally they had at the Dome after the Twins clinched the ALCS in Detroit. They damn near filled the place on just a few hours' notice.

Not being able to find a scalper outside the Dome the night of Game 7. I mean, NOBODY was selling tickets. I've never seen that a major sporting event before or since.

 

1944 World Series From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



The 1944 World Series was an all-St. Louis World Series, matching up the St. Louis Cardinals and St. Louis Browns at Sportsman's Park. It marked only the third time in World Series history in which both teams had the same home field.
1944 saw perhaps the nadir of 20th-century baseball, as the long-moribund St. Louis Browns won their only American League pennant. The pool of talent was depleted by the draft to the point that in 1945 (but not 1944), as the military scraped deeper and deeper into the ranks of the possibly eligible, the Browns actually used a one-armed player, Pete Gray. Some of the players were 4-Fs, physical rejects whose defects precluded duty in the trenches but not limping around the bases of ballparks.[1] Others divided their time between factory work in defense industries and baseball, some being able to play ball only on weekends. Some players got lucky and avoided the draft despite being physically able to serve.

Stan Musial of the Cardinals was one. Musial, enlisting in early 1945 but never called, was able to stay with his team throughout the war. The Browns, on the other hand, were not so fortunate, and their 1944 team was a patched together fabric of those ineligible for military service, virtual misfits, alcoholics and retreads who somehow managed to win games.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_World_Series

 

Bullseye.

Always found that an interesting trivia tidbit, because that team never comes up in these type discussions because they played well the entire season without any rough stretches and were a No. 1 seed. But, in terms of NBA type talent, they were as limited as any champ we've seen.

A somewhat ironic observation I've made is what creates the "cindarella" mystique certain champs have ain't necessarily talent level, as much as a rough stretch during the regular season when they underachieved. 83 NC State, 85 Villanova, and 88 Kansas all had plenty of talent and were highly rated preseason, but each had gone through a really rough spell earlier in season: for example, Kansas because of the suspensions and injuries, and Villanova because the Big East was INSANELY deep and loaded that year (by far the conference's strongest season in its entire history), resulting in them racking up a bunch of conference losses they wouldn't have sustained anywhere else.

If those teams had simply performed in the regular season the way they'd been expected to pre-season they wouldn't have nearly the cindarella mystique today.

 

For Pete's sake, both Whittenberg AND Lowe were McDonald's All Americans in high school.

So you have Thurl Baily, who was the 7th pick of the 83 NBA draft, and had a solid 12 year NBA career... and a back court with 2 McDonald's All Americans, and we're questioning their talent?? What on earth??