the ridiculousness of lew alcindor

i may have gone to usc, but i grew up in what used to be a ucla household.  my mom's dad graduated from ucla in 1950 and the family rooted exclusively for the bruins until i picked usc in the spring of 2002.  as such i have a soft spot for usc's crosstown rival that most trojans do not.¹

during my formative years, when i actually cared about college basketball and could not figure out football to save my life,² i was fully immersed in the great history of john wooden's ucla teams.  obviously the exploits of wooden and players like bill walton fascinated me, but of all the stories i'd heard, the following anecdote about lew alcindor (kareem abdul-jabbar is totally a worse name for an athlete) was the most interesting when i was a kid.

from chuck klosterman's personal list of the 50 greatest college basketball players of all time:
"The fact that UCLA won the national title during all three seasons Alcindor played is merely the third-most interesting detail of his college career; the fact that the NCAA outlawed dunking due to his dominance is probably second. But to me, the thing that will always be most unfathomable about Alcindor was his very first game, played when he was an ineligible freshman: UCLA was coming off back-to-back national championships. As an exhibition, the Bruin varsity — ranked no. 1 in the nation — opened the season by scrimmaging the freshmen team. Alcindor had 31 points, 21 boards, and eight blocks. The freshmen hammered the varsity by 15 points; the no. 1 team in the country could not beat a player who could not yet play. As an ineligible 18-year-old, Alcindor was (at worst) the fourth or fifth-best basketball player in the world."

isn't that amazing?  back in those days freshmen couldn't play varsity sports, but kareem was better than the best team in the country.  he lifted the frosh team over the two-time defending national champions.  ucla's varsity would not repeat their championship in the '65-'66 season, but with kareem starting from the fall of '66 to the spring of '69 they won the next three titles and lost only two games.

¹ i'd like ucla to win every game where they're not playing usc so usc looks better when they win. plus that'd make the rivalry meaningful. notre dame, on the other hand, should always lose.  
² any 7 year-old who can understand what those down and distance numbers mean either plays football or is a savant.  i remember staring at "2nd & 7," "1st & 10," and "3 & 22" with absolute confusion.