The Greatest Upset Never Seen: Virginia, Chaminade, and the Game That Changed College Basketball - Hardcover

by Jack Danilewicz (Author)

No one had really heard of Chaminade University--a tiny NAIA Catholic school in Honolulu with fewer than eight hundred undergraduates--until its basketball game against the University of Virginia on December 23, 1982. The Chaminade Silverswords defeated the Cavaliers, then the Division I, No. 1-ranked team in the nation, in what the Washington Post later called "the biggest upset in the history of college basketball." Virginia was the most heralded team in the country, led by seven-foot-four-inch, three-time College Basketball Player of the Year Ralph Sampson. They had just been paid $50,000--more than double Chaminade's annual basketball budget--to play an early season tournament in Tokyo and were making a "stopover" game in Hawaii on their way back to the mainland. The Silverswords, led by forward Tony Randolph, came back in the second half and won the game 77-72.

Author Biography

Jack Danilewicz began his writing career as a correspondent for the Daily Southtown in Chicago. His articles have appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Honolulu Magazine, the Omaha World-Herald, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, and other newspapers.