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Another one of the NCAA classic rivalries was fought between two players rather than two teams Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon were both major forces for the respective schools throughout their NCAA careers before they finally collided in the NCAA championship in 1984.
Interestingly, both Ewing and Olajuwon grew up outside of the United States. Ewing excelled at soccer and croquette while growing up in Jamaica. It was not until he came to the US as a teenager that he would consider basketball as his calling. Olajuwon was born and raised in Nigeria where he did not begin playing basketball until he was 15 years old.
In 1980, Olajuwon was recruited by the University of Houston and it was only at this time that he immigrated to the US from Nigeria.
In the build up of their match up in 1984 final, then Junior Ewing left the Hoyas to a 34 in three season. The NCAA final was not unfamiliar to Ewing as he has had made up there in his freshman season where him and his Hoyas lost to a North Carolina team lead by James Worthy and Michael Jordan.
However, the finals were not uncommon to Olajuwon either, when earlier as a sophomore, the University of Houston had made it to the big game before losing to North Carolina State.
Despite being on the losing end, Olajuwon’s impressive performance in the final four was still enough to earn him most outstanding player honors. As of 2008, this was the last time of player of losing team received the award.
However, one year later, it was Ewing who would raise the trophy as most outstanding player as a national champion. In the 1984 finals versus Olajuwon’s Cougars, Ewing led his Hoyas to an 84-75 victory, that would mark the en d of Olajuwon’s NCAA career as he went on to be the number one pick for the Houston Rockets in that year’s lottery. That was the year that Michael Jordan got drafted third overall.
Staying one year longer, Ewing would make it to the NCAA finals once again where the Hoyas would lose to an unranked Villanova. However, this completed Ewing’s collegiate career that soon participated in three NCAA championship games in his four years in Georgetown.
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