50 years ago, University of Puget Sound won basketball national championship
The Loggers were the country’s best in 1976.
50 years ago on this day, March 19, the University of Puget Sound men’s basketball team became the country’s best. The Loggers won the 1976 NCAA Division-II national championship in Evansville, Indiana, beating Tennessee-Chattanooga, 83-74. In the championship game, Brant Gibler led the Loggers in scoring with 22 points, and Curt Peterson scored 20 points.
The 1975-76 Loggers set a school record with 27 wins, including 13 straight wins to the season. Of Puget Sound’s seven losses that season, six came against Division-I programs. All five starters on the title team came from Washington high schools.
Curt Peterson, a 7-footer with a soft touch, was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player. The Loggers were coached by Don Zech, who took over the Puget Sound program in 1969 after coaching the freshman team at the University of Washington. Zech coached the Loggers for 21 years, stepping down in 1990.
He died in 2016 at age 83. After UPS lost in the West Regional finals in 1975, Zech began telling people around campus that the Loggers were going to win it all, said former athletic director Doug McArthur. “I didn’t hear that too much, but other players did,” UPS forward Rick Walker told The News Tribune in 2016, after Zech’s death.