This is less a story about the day a streak ended as much as it is the streak itself.
Still, it’s worth noting that 50 years ago, on Jan. 19, 1974, the UCLA men’s basketball team’s 88-game winning streak ended at Notre Dame.
“For 88 games, opponents had tried and failed to derail the precision-playing Bruins and couldn’t get the job done as UCLA tracked the longest winning streak in the history of the game,” correspondent Ray Marquette wrote in The Sporting News from South Bend, Ind.
“They tried, my, how the opponents tried, during the almost three years of unbeaten UCLA basketball. But somehow or other, the sternest bids were turned back and the Bruins kept on winning and winning and winning."
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So how did Notre Dame do it that winter day in the Midwest?
They followed a blueprint designed by … legendary UCLA coach John Wooden.
“We can be beaten,” Wooden had said in the past. “It will take some fine perimeter shooting, a minimum of mistakes, good defensive play and the ability to stay with us on the backboards.”
Check, check, check and checkmate.
Notre Dame 71, UCLA 70.
The irony of the loss: Notre Dame had defeated UCLA, 74-61, on Jan. 30, 1971, and the Bruins didn’t lose again for 1,084 days, until that fateful afternoon of Jan. 19, 1974. UCLA’s 88-game winning streak is a Division I team record that stands above all — and likely will forever.
A year earlier, UCLA had finished a 30-0 season with its sixth consecutive NCAA title. It’s hard to fathom now — in an era of a 68-team field, the transfer portal and only two back-to-back champions in the past 30 years — what UCLA was doing at that point.
The Bruins won 10 of 12 NCAA Tournaments from 1963-64 through 1974-75 and during the stretch that ended a half-century ago ran off 88 consecutive victories and back-to-back 30-0 seasons part of a run — it’s no stretch to assume — that will never (ever) be matched.
Behold:
1963-64 — Won NCAA Tournament National Final*
1964-65 — Won NCAA Tournament National Final
1965-66 — Missed NCAA Tournament**
1966-67 — Won NCAA Tournament National Final*
1967-68 — Won NCAA Tournament National Final
1968-69 — Won NCAA Tournament National Final
1969-70 — Won NCAA Tournament National Final
1970-71 — Won NCAA Tournament National Final*
1971-72 — Won NCAA Tournament National Final*
1972-73 — Won NCAA Tournament National Final
1973-74 — Lost NCAA Tournament National Semifinal
1974-75 — Won NCAA Tournament National Final
*Finished 30-0
**Regular-season champion Oregon State represented the AAWU (Pac-8 precursor) in the NCAA Tournament
MORE: How good was that 1972 UCLA championship team? Only perfect
In a scheduling quirk in '74, UCLA and Notre Dame would meet a week later — Jan. 26 in Los Angeles, a fact that both coaches noted in The Sporting News’ coverage of the Irish streak-snapping victory, with Notre Dame coach Digger Phelps nodding to the ongoing energy crisis and gas shortages of the early 1970s.
“I hope I get a call from the President, saying we’d have to cancel the trip,” quipped Digger. “Maybe we’ll use up all our fuel during the week.”
UCLA coach John Wooden was in no mood for jokes, first saying that he no longer could vote his team No. 1 in the coaches poll. But then quickly adding “grimly”: “I hope we can have a different result there (at Pauley Pavilion, UCLA’s home court). If they defeat us there, then they’re a better team. If we beat them easier than they beat us here, then I’d think we’d have a better chance if we’d play later on with a neutral court.”
Jan. 26, 1974: UCLA 94, Notre Dame 75.
That neutral site thing, though? The teams didn’t meet in the NCAA Tournament. Notre Dame went out in the Midwest Regional, and UCLA’s streak of titles would end in the national semifinals against N.C. State (though the Bruins won one more in 1975).
