Presented by HARMON TRAVEL.

This Day In Sports…April 1, 1985, 40 years ago today:

Author George Plimpton pulls a fast one on the readers of Sports Illustrated. Plimpton wrote an article about Sidd Finch, a New York Mets pitching prospect who could reportedly throw a baseball a phenomenal 168 miles per hour. The article appeared in SI’s April Fool’s Day issue. Plimpton concocted a situation where three Mets batters were summoned to a “large canvas enclosure” where they thought an irrigation project was in progress. Turned out, according to Plimpton, the Mets were keeping Finch a secret and wanted to see how he would do against live batters.

Finch purportedly appeared, wearing a hiking boot on his right foot. The mysterious 28-year-old hurler burned all three batters and bruised the catcher’s hand. But everything was hush-hush. “The Mets front office is reluctant to talk about Finch,” wrote Plimpton. “The fact is, they know very little about him. He has had no baseball career.” That’s because Hayden “Sidd” Finch didn’t exist. I can tell you, more readers believed it than didn’t when they first saw it. They didn’t think to check the date on the magazine’s cover.

That same night in Lexington, KY, it seemed like an April Fool’s joke, but it was very real. Villanova stunned defending national champion and top-ranked Georgetown, 66-64, to win the NCAA title for the first time. It was the last game played before the NCAA instituted a shot clock for the following season, and to say that coach Rollie Massimino’s Wildcats were deliberate would be an understatement. They took only 28 shots all game, but they made 22 of them. Villanova’s 78.6 percent accuracy remains a Final Four record. “April Fool’s!” Massimino bellowed into the CBS cameras after the game.

Villanova did not exactly go into the NCAA Tournament on a roll. The Wildcats finished the regular season on a 5-5 skid of sorts before being ushered out of the Big East Tournament with a 15-point loss to St. John’s. But Villanova took down Dayton, Michigan, Michigan, North Carolina and Memphis to make the title game, and as a No. 8 seed, they are the lowest seed ever to win it all. 

The Wildcats have captured two other national championships in school history. One was in 2016 when Kris Jenkins hit the first buzzer-beating three-pointer in an NCAA championship game to beat North Carolina 77-74. The other was two years later and wasn’t nearly as dramatic, with Villanova downing Michigan 79-62.

(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.) 

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