PERFECT RECALL

In 1976 Indiana won the NCAA title to complete the seventh undefeated season in Division I men's college hoops history. That no team since has matched the Hoosiers' feat reflects

- BY L. Jon Wertheim

The volatile Knight (in plaid jacket), here huddling his troops against Marquette, insisted on an all-for-one team approach.

CONSIDER IT either a referendum on the school's vitality and popularity... or on its meager state funding and therefore dorm space. But, Lord almighty, does Indiana University come dense with off-campus housing. So much so that, charming as it is, Bloomington, Ind., can present less as a Midwest college town than as a collection of apartments, townhouses and villas, with a major state university tacked on.

Having realized years ago that there was—and is—a fortune to be made as a developer catering to students, Scott May is among the largest real estate holders in town, the baron of thousands of rentable apartment units. Which is ironic because there was a time when May's dalliance with Bloomington apartment living imperiled one of the signature events in IU history: the 1975-76 Hoosiers' perfect 32-0 basketball season, the last time a Division I men's college team went baseline to baseline without losing a game.

But in the fall of 1975—an even 50 years ago—May and fellow Indiana senior Quinn Buckner made the unilateral decision to leave the dorms and move off campus. Unilateral in the sense that they did not first confer with their team's head coach. When Bob Knight found out about this relocation plan, he was, in keeping with his default emotion, livid.

Knight blasted the players for their selfishness, for the bad habits that, surely, would befall 21-year-olds leaving the college environment to live on their own. As Buckner once recalled to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED: “He told us we weren't sleeping right and eating right. And you know what? He was right. We moved back into the dorm.”