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Is it really 20 years ago that Marquette University won its one and only NCAA championship?
Twenty years?
It can't be! Can it?
But hey, isn't that Bo Ellis, the silky-smooth All-American forward on that great team in 1977 sitting on the Marquette bench at the Bradley Center?
He's an assistant coach now, a rather dapper-looking one at that, but is he really in his 40s? Can't be. Still looks as if he could play a little.
And across from him, isn't that Hank Raymonds, the assistant of that great team?
Hank still has that program rolled up in his hand and his constant verbal jabs at the refs are just as piercing as they were in 1977 when he was still courtside.
And in the first row, to Hank's right and near center-court as always there's the old fox himself, Al McGuire, talking a mile a minute into a microphone describing the action on the court.
Has it really been 20 years since he last sat on a bench as a coach, sobbing as the final seconds of his career ticked away while his team made sure he left coaching a winner?
Yes, it has.
But sometimes it does seem like yesterday when the Warriors, yes, the Warriors, were one of the dominant teams in America, led by one of the more colorful characters the coaching profession has ever seen.
Seashells and balloons. Toy soldiers and Chinese fire drills.
"It was a great run," said McGuire, whose last team at Marquette had to win four games on the road at the end of the season to get into the tournament. "Jerome Whitehead played over his head in the tournament. Who's the white kid I used to call the cloud piercer? Jim Dudley? He had a great run. I know that was before Fed Ex but he was Fed Ex. He delivered. I can't believe I didn't see that ability.
"Butch (Lee) and Bo were inside and outside. Jimmy Boylan was the toughness and B.T. (Bernard Toone) was the comedy and a kid who could play. And the consistency was the kid (Bill) Neary."
Neary was a senior forward, a walk-on who didn't start in high school. But...