Answers (Day 12)

1. Kenny Washington had a modest season scoring average of 5.2 points per game entering the 1964 Final Four before erupting for a total of 39 points in victories over Kansas State and Duke to help UCLA secure its first of 10 national championships under coach John Wooden. He had 26 of those points in the final against Duke to finish the season with a 6.1-point average. The next year, Washington was averaging 8.9 points per game entering the Final Four before scoring a total of 27 points in victories over Wichita State and Michigan as the Bruins successfully defended their title.

2. West Virginia's Jerry West, after managing just 10 points in an 89-84 upset loss against Manhattan in his playoff debut in 1958, scored at least 25 points in his last eight tournament games over the next two years. West's game-high 28 points in the 1959 national final were in vain because California's Darrall Imhoff, who would become West's teammate with the Los Angeles Lakers for four seasons in the mid-1960s, tipped in a basket with 17 seconds remaining to give the Bears a 71-70 victory. West is the only player to rank among the top five in scoring average in both the NCAA Tournament (30.6 points per game) and NBA playoffs (29.1 ppg).

3. Marvin Huffman, the 1940 Final Four Most Outstanding Player, was the sixth-leading scorer (4.3 points per game) for national champion Indiana. Forty-seven years later, the same school won another title behind Final Four Most Outstanding Player Keith Smart, who was the Hoosiers' fifth-leading scorer that season (11.2 ppg).

4. La Salle's Tom Gola is the only individual to be named the NCAA Final Four Most Outstanding Player and the NIT Most Valuable Player in his career. Gola led the Explorers to the 1954 NCAA crown. Two years earlier as a freshman when La Salle won the NIT, he shared the MVP award with teammate Norm Grekin.

5. Illinois Congressman Henry Hyde, chairman of the Judiciary Committee involved in the impeachment of fellow Georgetown alumnus President Clinton, was a forward-center for the Hoyas' 1943 NCAA Tournament runner-up that compiled a 22-5 record. The 6-3 Hyde scored two points in a 53-49 victory over a Chicago hometown team, DePaul, and fellow freshman George Mikan in the Eastern Regional final (playoff semifinals) before going scoreless in a championship game loss to Wyoming.

6. Four players were a member of an NCAA title team one year and an NBA champion the next season as a rookie - Bill Russell (San Francisco '56, Boston Celtics '57); Henry Bibby (UCLA '72, New York Knicks '73); Magic Johnson (Michigan State '79, Los Angeles Lakers '80), and Billy Thompson (Louisville '86, Lakers '87). Johnson is the only one of this quartet to be named Final Four Most Outstanding Player and NBA Finals Most Valuable Player in back-to-back seasons. He set an NBA Finals single-game record for most points by a rookie when he scored 42 against the Philadelphia 76ers on May 16, 1980.

7. Freshman guard Jalen Rose led 1992 national runner-up Michigan in scoring (17.6-point average) and assists (four per game).

8. North Carolina freshman forward Mike O'Koren scored 31 points in an 84-83 victory over UNLV in the 1977 national semifinals. He averaged 13.5 points per game in the Tar Heels' next four tournament games (all defeats).

9. Georgia Tech freshman guard Kenny Anderson averaged 27 points per game in his first four tournament outings before he was restricted to 16 in a 90-81 defeat against UNLV in the 1990 national semifinals.

10. The only team to win a national title although its season-leading scorer was held more than 14 points below his average in the championship game was UCLA in 1971, when Sidney Wicks had just seven points in a 68-62 victory over Villanova to finish the year with a 21.3-point average. Four Final Four Most Outstanding Players - Kentucky's Jack Givens (1978), Marquette's Butch Lee (1977), UCLA's Richard Washington (1975) and UCLA's Wicks (1970) - were scoreless in their NCAA Tournament debut in a previous season. Incredibly, Givens and Lee were blanked in the same game in their freshman season when Kentucky mauled Marquette (76-54) in the 1975 Mideast Regional. Washington was scoreless as a freshman in the 1974 West Regional when the Bruins outlasted Dayton (111-100 in triple overtime). Wicks, after one season in junior college (Santa Monica), was blanked as a sophomore in the 1969 West Regional when UCLA defeated New Mexico State (53-38).