[NU Sports] The NU Wildcat Super Bowl "Curse"

[John Labbe]

Just to be clear, Northwestern has never been in the NCAA basketball  
tournament at all.  Below you say "has subsequently never been" in the  
tournament.  We weren't in it in 1939, either.  The finals just  
happened to be played in Patten Gym.  This curse is a bit suspect,  
though, because although we've never been in the tournament, the final  
four was again held in Evanston in 1956, in McGaw Hall, which we  
haven't torn down.  And although we tore down the "old" Patten Gym, we  
did build a "new" Patten Gym, which ironically is now the "old" gym on  
campus.  The way T.R. Weaver used to tell the story (either you know  
him or you don't), they tore down Patten Gym the day after the first  
championship game to start building Tech.

You can find more Final Four status at the following (rather long) link:


http://www.ncaa.org/wps/portal/!ut/p/kcxml/ 
04_Sj9SPykssy0xPLMnMz0vM0Y_QjzKLN4j3CQXJgFjGpvqRqCKOcAFfj_zcVH1v_QD9gtzQ 
iHJHRUUAc0tpTA!!/delta/base64xml/L3dJdyEvUUd3QndNQSEvNElVRS82XzBfTFU!? 
CONTENT_URL=http://www.ncaa.org/library/records/ 
m_final_four_records_book/index.html


On Jan 26, 2006, at 2:44 PM, Jonathan Hodges wrote:

> And then there's the Patten Gym curse: The first ever NCAA final  
> four(men's BBall) tournament was held in old Patten Gym (in 1939,  
> Ibelieve).  Patten Gym was then torn down to build Tech (in 1942,  
> Ibelieve).  NU's men's basketball team has subsequently never been  
> tothe NCAA tournament.
> Jonathan