50 years ago, University of Puget Sound won basketball national championship
50 years ago on this day, March 19, the University of Puget Sound men’s basketball team became the country’s best.
The Loggers won the 1976 NCAA Division-II national championship in Evansville, Indiana, beating Tennessee-Chattanooga, 83-74. In the championship game, Brant Gibler led the Loggers in scoring with 22 points, and Curt Peterson scored 20 points.
The 1975-76 Loggers set a school record with 27 wins, including 13 straight wins to the season. Of Puget Sound’s seven losses that season, six came against Division-I programs. All five starters on the title team came from Washington high schools. Curt Peterson, a 7-footer with a soft touch, was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.
The Loggers were coached by Don Zech, who took over the Puget Sound program in 1969 after coaching the freshman team at the University of Washington. Zech coached the Loggers for 21 years, stepping down in 1990. He died in 2016 at age 83.
After UPS lost in the West Regional finals in 1975, Zech began telling people around campus that the Loggers were going to win it all, said former athletic director Doug McArthur.
“I didn’t hear that too much, but other players did,” UPS forward Rick Walker told The News Tribune in 2016, after Zech’s death. “We knew Don was an excellent coach, and we did what he asked us to do. Through that, we got results.”
Greeted by jeers of “Puny Sound” in the final four in Evansville, the Loggers upended defending national champion Old Dominion in the semifinals, 83-78, before beating Tennessee-Chattanooga for the national title.
Not only did UPS become the first West Coast team to win an NCAA Division II title, it became the first university from Washington to win an NCAA basketball title at any level.
Zech went on to become the all-time winningest coach in UPS history with 405 wins in 21 seasons. In 11 of those seasons, his teams won 20 or more games. Ten of his players went on to play in the NBA.
He was inducted into the UPS Hall of Fame in 1991.
The entire 1975-76 team was inducted into the University of Puget Sound Athletic Hall of Fame in 2003. Zech, Schuldt, Peterson, Walker, and Evans were inducted individually.
Forward Rick Walker (1,946 points) remains No. 1 on the all-time career scoring list at UPS, guard Tim Evans (1,929) is No. 2 and center Curt Peterson (1,620) is fourth on the list,
Puget Sound now plays in Division III. For many, the memories of the ‘76 team live on.
“The greatest thing to ever happen at the University of Puget Sound,” said McArthur, the former AD, in a postgame interview after the Loggers won the title.
