Congratulations, UCLA, There Is No Third-Place Game

Basketball fans will reminisce about the semifinal game of the 2021 NCAA Men’s Division 1 Tournament between the UCLA Bruins and the Gonzaga Bulldogs for decades. The fiercely-contested game that featured multiple lead changes and clutch shots appeared destined for a second overtime period before freshman — and soon-to-be millionaire — Jalen Suggs sank a 40-foot heave as time expired. So UCLA goes home after a tough loss, but that hasn’t always been the case for losers of semifinal contests. Up until 1981, the semifinal losers would remain in the Final Four city and return to the arena two nights later to play another game, this time to determine the tournament’s third-place finisher. Mercifully, there is no third-place (or consolation) game nowadays for a distraught team like UCLA to endure. Congratulations, UCLA, there is no third-place game. You performed admirably, and you get to go home now.

THE LAST DIVISION 1 THIRD-PLACE GAME

The last NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball Tournament third-place game took place in 1981. The University of Virginia, led by sophomore Ralph Sampson and who’d lost its semifinal game against the University of North Carolina, was matched up with the loser of the other semifinal game, Louisiana State University, who’d been eliminated by the eventual champion, Indiana University. Virginia won the game 78 to 74. Even the most ardent basketball junkie who watched that tournament won’t remember the game, the winner, or the score without looking it up (raises hand).

The 1981 game almost didn’t happen. Earlier that day, there was the attempted assassination of then-President Ronald Reagan. Only after assessing the President’s condition was it decided that the championship and third-place games would go on that evening. No one would be surprised to learn that there was little interest in playing the third-place game. There hasn’t been one played in Division 1 since, and there has been no real outcry to restore it. The players don’t want to play it; the fans aren’t interested in watching it.

WHAT IF THERE WAS A CONSOLATION GAME THIS YEAR?

This year’s pairing would have featured the two losing teams from the semifinal games: UCLA and the University of Houston. Basketball historians will know where this is going. The sports television networks would have had a field day telling us how this was “a rematch of the 1968 Game of the Century” featuring Lew Alcindor and Elvin Hayes, played in the cavernous Astrodome in Houston, Texas. It was the first college basketball regular-season game televised nationally in prime time, and over 52,000 fans watched the game in person, though there’s likely some debate as to how many could actually see the action. UCLA was ranked #1 at the time and had won 47 consecutive games over a two-and-a-half-year period. Houston was ranked #2; both teams came into the game undefeated. It was a significant event for college basketball, and we would have been bombarded with game footage as a precursor to a meaningless game.

The two teams would meet again two months later in the national semifinals; UCLA won by 32 points.

This would have been the angle. Unfortunately, none of this year’s “participants” were alive when that game was played, nor were many of their parents. UCLA’s current head coach, Mick Cronin, was born three years later; Houston’s current coach, Kelvin Sampson, was in middle school. None of that would have mattered to those hyping up the contest that neither team would have had any interest in playing.

UCLA, having been eliminated in the fashion they did, would have had to hang out in Indianapolis for two more nights (there’s no way to make that sound non-derogatory towards Indy) to play another game on the same court where they lost on a buzzer-beating 40-footer, this time against a Houston team that lost a game to Baylor they were never really competitive in. It would have been brutal to have either team, but especially UCLA, come back and play in a meaningless contest right before the championship game. With little interest in playing or watching a game that no one would remember anyway, why do it, especially in a football stadium in front of a few folks surrounded by cut-out figures?

But of course, there are still a few among us clamoring for the return of the consolation game.

WHY A THIRD-PLACE GAME WOULD FLOP NOW

The primary reason why a third-place game would never work in the 21st century is that we now have something that wasn’t prevalent back when those games were being played. It’s called load management. It’s usually disguised as something else, especially in the NBA, but don’t doubt for a second that top players would pull out of a third-place game the same way they decline to play in football bowl games with no championship on the line.

Proponents of a third-place game say it would allow fans to watch top players compete one more time, but there’s no guarantee we’d even see them. Nowadays, players with the opportunity to play professionally would have little to gain and much to lose by playing in a consolation game that no one really wants to play in. In a time where many of the projected early draft selections routinely skip the combines, the odds of seeing them perform in a third-place game are minuscule.

Just for fun, let’s see which schools would have been paired in the consolation game for the last five tournaments:

2015: Michigan State vs. Kentucky

2016: Oklahoma vs. Syracuse

2017: Oregon vs. South Carolina

2018: Kansas vs. Loyola-Chicago

2019: Michigan State vs. Auburn

Surely, alums and basketball diehards would have watched some of these games, but few would remember the outcomes. In fact, how many of us (who didn’t attend either school) remember the name of the guy who hit the buzzer beater to give Villanova the title over North Carolina in 2016?

And that was the championship game.

And surely, there are those in the “it’s another opportunity to build a student’s character” camp as well. This is part of the same group that thinks it’s OK for a college team to travel around the country losing non-competitive pre-conference games for the benefit of the athletic department’s coffers. But as we’ve seen on several occasions, the students aren’t the only ones on campus who might benefit from more opportunities to build character.

THE INDIANAPOLIS BUBBLE

It’s easy for us watching the action from home to forget, but the other factor is that while teams were being eliminated, the remaining teams were living under strict guidelines in an Indianapolis “bubble” setting as a result of the pandemic. So presumably, even if there were still third-place games happening, it might have been scrapped this year, anyway. Then again, the National Invitational Tournament revived the consolation game in 2021 after a 17-year absence. We’ll never know how playing in that setting adversely affected some of the players’ performance. But as we found out with the NBA bubble in Orlando, everyone handles these situations differently.

A team like UCLA, who had to arrive early and win a “play-in” game just to qualify for the Round of 64 and somehow advanced to the semifinals anyway, would have had no interest in staying in the bubble to participate in a consolation game that only offers mild consolation to the team that wins the game. They’re human.

LEAVE THESE KIDS ALONE

So “hard pass” on bringing the third-place game back. Bill Walton played in the 1973 consolation game but clearly wanted no parts of it and was not bashful about making it public. Imagine what we would have heard (especially from THAT guy) had there been the social media outlets we have now. There used to be third-place games involving each regional semifinal loser until 1975. With all the money that flows around involving these tournaments, it’s surprising there hasn’t been more talk of bringing that back for television. But there are reasons why there hasn’t been a third-place contest in the Men’s Division 1 NCAA Tournament in 40 years. Leave these kids alone. The vast majority of the tournament participants have no future playing basketball professionally; all of them have term papers and final exams awaiting them once their season’s over.

Let them study.

Photo by Ryan De Hamer on Unsplash