College Basketball’s Biggest Upset Led to Creation of Maui Classic... Today’s EA SPORTS Maui Invitational
It was a game that wasn’t supposed to mean anything, a Hawaiian layover for top-ranked Virginia, led by 7-foot-4-inch perennial All-American Ralph Sampson, on its way home from defeating Houston and Utah in Japan. Little-known Chaminade University, a Catholic College in the middle of the Pacific with an undergraduate enrollment of 800 students and no gym, felt lucky to have scheduled the game with the nation’s best team, “purely to pay our bills,” said Chaminade Athletic Director Mike Vasconcellos. When the final score hit the wires at approximately 2:30 a.m. on the East Coast – Chaminade Upsets Top-Ranked Virginia 77-72 – the obscure school in the Pacific immediately became a household word and every coach’s source of hope when its team faces the impossible.
Hailed by many in the national media as “the biggest upset in the history of college basketball,” the December 23, 1982 match-up not only put Chaminade on the map nationwide, it also made local heroes out of Coach Merv Lopes and his 1982-83 squad – Mark Wells, Mark Rodrigues, Ed Smith, Tim Dunham, Scott Hanson, Jason Strickland, Earnest Pettway, Richard Haenisch, Jeff Buich, Jim Stewart, and Tony Randolph, a high school rival of Ralph Sampson’s who found a way to outplay the future NBA All-Star on this memorable night.
The Miracle on Ward Avenue also made a lasting difference in the lives of hundreds of past, present and future student-athletes. Shortly after the great upset, Virginia Head Coach Terry Holland congratulated Chaminade’s Athletic Director, Mike Vasconcellos, and suggested to Mike that he might consider hosting a tournament in the future. Two years later, the Maui Classic – today’s EA SPORTS Maui Invitational Hosted by Chaminade University, operated by KemperSports Marketing – was born, and college basketball had its premier pre-season tournament in paradise!
