’98 had its fair share of iconic squads, and the Cougars men’s basketball team fails to be an exception.
The year 1998 was popping in the entertainment world. Rapper DMX released his iconic “Ruff Ryders Anthem” single that is used on most self-made high school football mixtapes. “Rush Hour” and “Halloweentown” both made their cinematic debut. And, most importantly, Micheal Jeffry Jordan sent home the Utah Jazz to complete his second three-peat with the Chicago Bulls.
It was a pretty special year for obvious reasons, but ’98 had an even deeper meaning for the Azusa Pacific men’s basketball team.
Prior to the 1998 season, the Cougars had never graced the NAIA Men’s Final Four. Failure to reach that feat wasn’t due to a lack of talent, as there were plenty of teams who had the regular season resume to match Final Four expectations – the most notable being the ’93 team that made history by earning the university’s first No. 1 ranking in the NAIA poll. Yet, talent could never get them over that hump.
This is what made the 1998 men’s basketball team so special; they not only had talent, but they also had the prowess to slay the Goliath that had terrorized the APU men’s basketball community for so long. Led by NAIA Hall of Fame coach Bill Odell, the Cougars made their first Final Four appearance in school history that year.
The ’98 roster ran 12 deep, employing Golden State’s ‘Strength in Numbers’ mantra before the Golden Era was ever thought of. The Cougars’ bench scored an average of 42 points a game and were masterful on the break, holding a school record for 471 steals in a single season.
“That may have been my deepest, most balanced team and it was really fun to coach,” said Odell. “They were all so competitive, and when they practiced they practiced hard because so many guys could play and they were fighting for minutes.”
In the regular season, just like many other APU teams had done before, the Cougars had great success and won their sixth straight Golden State Athletic Conference Championship. But the magic flowed during the big dance – the NAIA Tournament. The Cougars came into the tournament as one of the four number one seeds. Yet they didn’t care much about the seeding, they were only worried about proving they belonged.
“The No. 1 seed was great, but our guys didn’t walk around acting like they were the best,” said Odell. “They wanted to go out there and show it.”
The Cougar’s opened up tournament play like a team on a mission, defeating Huston-Tillotson 104-44 which set a record for the second-largest blowout in the 61-year history of the tournament.
The next stop on the tournament roadmap was Transylvania. The Cougars were playing for a chance to reach the Elite Eight for the first time in program history. While Azusa struggled early on, they were able to make key plays down the stretch to grab a 72-64 victory. With APU now sitting in the Elite Eight, the Cougars’ dream of bringing home a banner seemed more attainable than ever. The team standing in their way, however, was Incarnate Word.
The game went back and forth, with neither team being able to pull away. In the final minute, Incarnate Word cut the advantage to two points, seemingly grabbing the game’s momentum. Thankfully for the Cougars, however, T.J. Walker sealed the win with two free throws at the seven seconds mark, sending the Cougars to their first-ever Final Four appearance.
“I remember standing in the tunnel of the Mabee Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Jeremy DeVries comes running by screaming ‘We’re going to the Final Four!’,” said then-sports information director Gary Pine. “That’s when it really hit me. We weren’t flying home on Sunday, and that was what we had gotten used to. Now we got to stick around and stay…that’s always been an indelible mark.”
Pine was correct. The Cougars had finally got past the hump that had sent them tumbling for years. Then the Cougars ran into a brick wall. Their semifinal matchup was against the eventual champion Georgetown. The Cougars fell into an early 18-point deficit and were never able to recover.
The season was over and the run had ended, but the legacy lasted forever.
“I knew the history of what Azusa Pacific had and hadn’t accomplished,” Walker said. “Coach Odell is a legend and our goal was to play for a championship that year, for us and for coach.”
The 1998 run was a coming out party for APU’s men’s basketball program as it fathered a culture of winning that stretched far beyond the APU community.
The following year the Cougars, along with four schools from the GSAC, reached the Elite Eight of the NAIA tournament, and over the next 13 years, the Cougars made four more Final Four appearances and reached the NAIA title game twice before making a transition towards an NCAA Division II membership with the Pacific West Conference.
For the APU community, 1998 wasn’t just about the mainstream entertainment world. It was a year that marked the beginning of a new era – a culmination into a winning culture. Thanks to that ’98 squad the men’s basketball program was proven to be a true threat and that shift in legitimacy deserves to be credited when looking at the force the Cougars are today.