Fifty years later, the ‘tall and talented’ Loggers who won the university’s first national championship reflect on the moments and mindset that brought the banner home
Matt McCully ’78 was an end-of-the-bench guard who took the court only for the final minute or so of the University of Puget Sound Loggers’ 1976 NCAA Division II men’s basketball national championship game victory over the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. Yet, it was McCully who found himself on the shoulders of his teammates after the buzzer sounded on an 83–74 triumph that long-ago March evening at Roberts Stadium in Evansville, Indiana. “They didn’t have ladders back in those days, apparently,” McCully recalled with a laugh. “They hoisted me up and then I cut the net down.”
There was a practical aspect to McCully’s ascension: “I was the littlest guy on the team, 5-foot-9,” McCully said. But that wasn’t quite it, entirely. “He wasn’t just some random short guy on a tall team that we decided to lift up,” starting guard Rocky Botts ’78 said. “He was every bit as much a part of that as those who played more. His role was to be the de facto team leader. Everybody deferred to what Matt had to say.”
Many of the Loggers who played that championship season agreed that in addition to its talent, the team triumphed because of the bond it developed. “Never have I been on a team like that, where every single guy wanted every single guy to succeed,” Botts said. “We were and are, literally, the best of encouraging friends to this day. We share a unique history, bond, and depth of camaraderie that we all continue to nurture and cherish these many years later.”
McCully said he never felt less important than the starters. “Off the court, everybody just liked each other,” McCully said. “I give a lot of credit to the stars on the team. They never treated any of us as though we were less important.”
It was a different time, a different world. There’s a photo of the Loggers with their championship trophy, their leisure suits, and their bushy mustaches. Gerald Ford was president of the United States. College basketball had no three-point line, no shot clock, and no dunking. Competitive collegiate women’s sports were in their infancy; Title IX had just been implemented in 1975.
As the 50th anniversary approached of “the greatest thing to ever happen at the University of Puget Sound” — as then-Athletics Director Doug McArthur ’53 described it in a postgame interview with The Tacoma News Tribune, back on March 19, 1976 — the members of that 1975–76 NCAA Division II national championship men’s basketball team reflected on a bond that has endured for half a century.
‘EVERYBODY WAS SUPPOSED TO GO SOMEWHERE ELSE’
In the mid 1970s, Logger Athletics had lofty aspirations. Under the direction of Puget Sound Athletic Hall of Famer McArthur, who died in 2023 at age 94, baseball was Division I and basketball was looking into making such a move. The ’76 Loggers became national champions — the first basketball team from Washington to do so — because they were tall and talented, setting school records that still stand, with a 27–7 record and 13 successive wins to close the season.
Forward Rick Walker ’78 remains Puget Sound’s all-time leading scorer, with 1,946 points in 120 games, guard Tim Evans ’78 is second with 1,929 in 121 games, and 7-foot center Curt Peterson ’76 ranks fourth with 1,620 in 95 games.
The architect of the championship team was head coach Don Zech who, along with assistant Mike Acres, recruited from across the state and was unafraid to vie against bigger Division I schools. All five starters on the title team came from Washington high schools.
Walker was a 6-foot-5 shooter with a quick release, who led East Bremerton High to the AA state title and signed to play for Division I Boise State. As East Bremerton was savoring its triumph, Zech introduced himself and told Walker: “We feel we have a real good shot at winning the NCAA Division II championship, if we had the right players. You’re instrumental to seeing that happen.”
“That caught my interest a little bit,” Walker said. He decided he wouldn’t mind playing closer to home.
Botts was sure he was going to be a University of Washington Husky until a disappointing senior year in high school, after which he stopped hearing from the coaching staff. “Tim was going to go to Washington State. Rick to Boise State. Brant was supposed to go to Cornell. I was going to go to Washington, but the phone didn’t ring,” Botts said. “Everybody was supposed to go somewhere else. There just seemed to be a reason we were all there.”
No one regretted signing on once the team came together. “Coach Zech knew his personnel, and he did a good job — a really good job — of putting together the right combination, finding the chemistry,” Walker said. “But I think the players, for the most part, weren’t in it for their own personal gain.”
Did Walker think, before the season started, that the 1975–76 team could win a national championship? “Zech did,” Walker said.
“Zech said early on, after the first couple of games, that this team is going to win it all,” recalled Ed Bowman ’57, P’86, P’93, who was then the dean of admission at the university. He and McArthur called the games on radio and sometimes TV, when the games were tape-delayed and shown on Saturday evenings. “The way they were playing, certainly I believed it. He was a wonderful, wonderful coach.”
In filling out his roster, Zech wasn’t afraid to think outside the box. Forward Anthony Brown ’76, a key reserve who would go on to a long pro career in the Netherlands, didn’t play high school basketball in Compton, California. He came to Puget Sound because his older brother was a football player for the Loggers. Zech watched Brown playing intramural basketball. “He asked me, ‘How would you like to try out for the team next year?’”
Brown, smooth and versatile at 6-foot-7, became a player Zech would lean on heavily if a starter was in foul trouble or injured.
‘HE WAS RELENTLESS’
Zech, who died at age 83 in 2016, was head coach at Puget Sound for 21 years, stepping down in 1990. He won more games than anyone in school history, compiling a 405–196 record after leaving the University of Washington, where he was an assistant, in 1969. Zech was named the National Association of Basketball Coaches Coach of the Year in 1976 and was inducted into the Logger Athletics Hall of Fame in 1991.
His former players speak fondly of Zech today, but their feelings weren’t always so cozy. Zech was a demanding coach. “He didn’t suffer fools easily, that’s for sure,” Botts said. “He was relentless.”
“Coach Zech, let’s say for 60 percent of us, he was an acquired taste,” starting point guard Mark Wells ’76 said. “You had to do your job, and if you didn’t like the job you were chosen to do, you didn’t play very much. And yet, Coach Zech was basically a genius. He had a knack for knowing how to put the right people in the right places at the right time, and you had to get used to it.”
