By Paul Fultz
When UofL beat Duke to win the 1986 NCAA men’s basketball championship, everyone knew Louisville was ready for a major celebration. But many were still overwhelmed by the sheer number of fans who poured onto campus.
“It was bedlam,” said Greg Harris, a UofL freshman at the time. “Campus was smaller then and there was a convenience store across the street which, of course, had just one clerk. People eventually just started carrying 12 packs of beer out of the place because the line was so long.”
While it was a bad day for convenience store clerks, March 31, 1986 was a great day for Cards fans. Behind 25 points and 11 rebounds from freshman sensation Pervis Ellison, UofL beat Duke 72-69 in Dallas to win its second NCAA men’s basketball championship.
The Blue Devils were favored going into the matchup, but UofL triumphed thanks to an all-around effort led by Ellison at center, senior guard Jeff Hall’s defense on All-American Johnny Dawkins, and Milt Wagner’s clutch free throw shooting. Wagner, a senior guard nicknamed “Ice,” calmly hit two free throws with two seconds left to clinch the game.
After the final horn sounded, UofL fans were ready to party. And The Louisville Cardinal, UofL’s independent student newspaper, was there to cover both the game and the celebration.
“It was pandemonium, it was magic, it was a joymaxxing . . . that I enjoyed vicariously because I had to get the paper out,” said T.L. Stanley, The Cardinal’s Editor-in-Chief at the time. “Of course I was at the Red Barn doing keg stands in spirit, but there on earth, I had work to do. I soaked up all the energy from the staffers who ran out, gathered reaction, came back breathless and smelly and typed as fast as their little fingers would go.”
Tim Sanford was a UofL junior at the time and also The Cardinal’s Assistant News Editor. He worked alongside Harris, who wrote for the paper’s Arts section. Although they weren’t part of the paper’s coverage of the game and its aftermath, both had a first hand view of the celebration.
“I’m a huge UofL fan, so being a part of the 1986 championship was an absolutely amazing experience for me,” Sanford said. “To be there on campus as a student during the celebration was just an absolute joy.”
In an article written by Stanley and News Editor M. Norman Jacobson, The Cardinal described the festivities on campus as “chaos like you’ve never seen it.”
4,000 people poured onto campus, the article said, and proceeded to scream, chant, drink beer, dance, play music and set off firecrackers and bottle rockets. Cars lined the streets around campus, and traffic was backed up for blocks as people cheered and honked their horns.
Although the crowd was large and boisterous, Sanford said, they were able to celebrate safely and without any major incidents.
“It was just wild,” he said. “But everybody was really respectful, there wasn’t any fighting. The cops were so cool. They said just don’t hurt each other, don’t break anything, and they would leave you alone. They were hands off and letting everybody enjoy themselves, which was nice to see.”
The championship capped off a great year for both the basketball team and the student journalists who covered it.
“It was a highlight of my senior year – the same spring that saw The Cardinal win an armload of awards from the Kentucky Press Association,” Stanley said. “There was so much icing on that cake. We were a fairly well-oiled machine by that time, and I was incredibly proud of how hard everyone worked on the post-NCAA win issue and all the others that year.”
For coach Denny Crum and the Cards, the victory put an exclamation mark on a very successful era; after winning their first NCAA championship in 1980, they also went to the Final Four in 1982 and 1983. UofL won a third national championship in 2013 under coach Rick Pitino, but the NCAA voided that championship in 2018.
Read The Louisville Cardinal‘s coverage of the championship game from its April 3, 1986 issue at
https://lcag.site/2026/03/26/cards-deck-duke-1986/
Read The Louisville Cardinal‘s coverage of the celebration after the game from its April 3, 1986 issue at
https://lcag.site/2026/03/26/chaos-like-youve-never-seen-it/
View The Louisville Cardinal’s entire April 3, 1986 issue at
https://lcag.site/2026/03/26/the-louisville-cardinal-april-3-1986/
Scans provided by University of Louisville Archives & Special Collections.
Visit their website at https://library.louisville.edu/archives/home
View more back issues of The Louisville Cardinal at
https://digital.library.louisville.edu/collections/ulua_cardinal
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