Sixteen is the most beautiful and sweet time, so American girls are called "sweet sixteen" when they are sixteen years old, and this title is traditionally used in the NCAA top 16.

Sweet-sixteen, Sweet-sixteen, just like its name, any team that can enter the National Top 16 will have a sweet experience, because being able to come here is really hard and hard.

A team will play more than ten warm-up matches, more than ten cross-league invitational matches and more than ten league championships, and will play nearly forty games in total.

This is a long journey for college students who still have academic tasks.

If you are lucky enough to enter the NCAA National Championship and have a particularly good grade, you will become a seed team and you can enjoy the treatment of a first-round bye in the 1980s.

Those with average grades can play in the first round and strive to enter the top 32; those with worse grades must play in the opening-round and work hard to enter the top 48.

After the national competition officially begins, all of them are single-game elimination systems, and the game is always "now-or-never". There is no chance to let you readjust and play again in the next game.

If you lose, go home and come back next year. The single-game elimination system is so cruel and it is also its charm.

Because of this, many seed teams who entered the top 32 bye directly in the first round, sometimes they could not escape the misfortune of being eliminated in one game, and they would be covered in one game and go home after a game.

The teams that can enter the top 16 are either strong seeds or have experienced at least two rounds of baptism, proving that their promotion is not accidental or luck.

So when a team enters the Sweet Sixteen, the outside world will really start to pay attention to this team, and people will discuss the situation of this year's NCAA game, the strength of the sixteen teams, and whose hope of winning the championship is the greatest.

Now, at the end of March 1984, the Sweet Sixteen has been released, and the 16 teams will go to four cities, east, west, south, and north to compete for tickets to Seattle Final-four.

Among these sixteen teams, the 1982 championship North Carolina Blue Devils, who will fight for the third championship trophy this year; and last year's runner-up, from the University of Houston, Texas, will strive to make up for the regrets of last year.

There is also the last winner of the winning record, Indiana University, who is also the 1981 championship, and they can't wait to relive their old dreams.

These teams are either old-fashioned teams in NCAA history, traditional giants, or recent upstarts, with outstanding results in recent years.

But in the Sweet Sixteen, the most eye-catching team is a powerful bulldog from the Northwest region - Gonzaga University.

After defeating Princeton in the first round, on March 19, 1983, the Gonzaga Bulldogs played against the Texas El Paso Miners at the Salt Palace Arena.

These two teams, one from Texas, the southernmost part of the United States and bordering Mexico, can be said to be the southernmost part of the United States.

Gonzaga University is from Spokane, Washington, the northernmost part of the country - a city bordering Canada, and should be said to be at the northernmost part of the United States.

The collision between the two teams, the northernmost and southernmost, made people think it would be exciting. Gan Guoyang called this game the "Civil War" before the game, which was always agreed by the players because in the end the war, the north defeated the south.

But as a result, this game can be said to be extremely boring, because both teams are defensive teams.

Among all the players of the Miners, the highest average score was only 13 points, which was almost half that of Gan Guoyang. In previous games, Gan Guoyang averaged 27 points per game.

The reason why they can achieve an excellent record of 26 wins and 4 losses in the routine match, and they have a 14-game winning streak in the opening season, without any losing streak throughout the season, relying on their steel-like defense.

The miners' defense is even more fierce than the Bulldogs. They often suppress their opponent's scores to around 50 points in routine matches, and there were several times when their opponents could not even get 50 points.

Therefore, the game between these two teams naturally became a defensive battle. In addition, neither side wanted to lose, and they played cautiously and did not take action easily without a chance.

In 1984, the NCAA was not introduced to the NCAA, and the team had enough time to rush on the court. Because of this, the final score of the game was extremely ugly 35:30, and the Bulldogs bit the miners with a 5-point advantage.

In the last game against Princeton, the Bulldogs scored 43 points in the first half, and this game only scored 35 points!

The fierce, slow and ugly process of the competition can be imagined.

Although I was very happy after winning the game, Gan Guoyang said that he never wanted to play with a team like the Miners again. After the game, he complained to his teammates, "I fucking think we are like playing football on the court!"

He scored 33 points on the court, but he only scored 12 points in this game.

Later, this ugly low score game also prompted the NCAA organizing committee to introduce the rules of offensive time limit in 1985, and the team's single attack time must not exceed 45 seconds.

The Bulldogs, which entered the quarterfinals of 16, were immediately treated completely differently from before. Major media began to rush to report on this team, especially now they are unbeaten throughout the season. If they can continue to make great strides, they may create another miracle of a complete victory in the season.

As the team's number one star and a yellow-skinned Chinese, Gan Guoyang naturally received key attention from the media.

From March 20, Gan Guoyang arrived in Los Angeles with the team on a plane, Gan Guoyang was hard-workingly illuminated by reporters' flashlights at the airport. Fortunately, the NCAA organizing committee had a special pick-up staff. NCAA has never liked college students to be harassed by too much media.

Moreover, Gan Guoyang has not yet been surrounded by thousands of reporters and fans, so he still got on the bus easily and prepared to go to his Los Angeles station.

"Huh~ If I become an NBA player in the future, will I have to face these physical and written workers whose eyes will shine every day?" Gan Guoyang has always liked to call journalists physical and written workers because they have to write articles and travel around mountains and rivers.

"No, you need to be an NBA star, star, like Dr. J. Then you will become a fragrant flesh bone, and there will be puppies following you all day long." The team's power forward Anderson said.

"I don't want to be a meat bone. I'm followed by people every day. I want to have my own life." Gan Guoyang has begun to imagine his life after becoming an NBA player.

"Then you can be a piece of stinky shit, so no one will follow you, but everyone will walk around you." Matthews joked that Gan Guoyang liked to call his opponent a stinky shit the most in the game.

"I think we were just a piece of stinky shit before. No one expected that we could enter the top 16, but as long as we could continue to move forward, even if it was stinky shit, those media reporters would come to lick us." Gan Guoyang said.

Indeed, before the Bulldogs entered the quarterfinals, although their record was to maintain a complete victory, they did not win much attention.

Some newspapers and TV stations just mentioned it when they were taking stock of the quarterfinals, "Oh, this is a team that hasn't lost yet, oh, there is a Chinese in their lineup."

That's all.

It's different now. Major newspapers and NCAA-related media have begun to spend a lot of time introducing this dark horse. Among the sixteen teams, only the Bulldogs entered the NCAA national competition for the first time.

The other fifteen teams all started to compete in national competitions in the 1940s and 1950s.

Reports are naturally good and bad. The good thing is to start paying attention to the team's outstanding strength demonstrated in the game and the ability to control the game reflected in the game.

Some professional football critics have discovered that the Gonzaga Bulldogs are very good at taking their opponents away at the beginning of the second half, and then slowly grinding the opponent to death with their own pace.

The bad aspects are all kinds of. Not optimistic about Gonzaga University is already the most polite and friendly negative review. After all, it is normal for a dark horse to be not favored; other negative reviews are mainly concentrated on Gan Guoyang.

For example, he used to be a UCLA player, but later "defected" and beat up his original school UCLA in Los Angeles this year.

Of course, this happened to Larry Bird, who had a crush on his first school, Indiana University. Until now, every time he met Indiana University graduates in the NBA, he had to abuse them.

For example, Gan Guoyang was defeated by Reggie Miller in front of the finals of the California Second Division Championship in Los Angeles, which also made some media question his key abilities.

But in fact, Gan Guoyang scored 11 points in the last five minutes in that game, leading the team from falling behind to overtaking, but the last goal was really powerless.

Some of them started with Gan Guoyang's skin color, and some racial discriminatory remarks were quietly revealed through words.

Racial discrimination in the United States was still serious in the 1980s, and racial issues have always been a sensitive topic in American society.

However, the racial conflicts in the United States are mainly concentrated between whites and blacks, and the black population has also made unremitting struggles for their racial status. At least by the 1980s, apartheid had been abolished, and some racially discriminatory remarks and behaviors could not appear in public places in a public place.

However, yellow people, as a minority of people in the United States and people of color, have not received corresponding respect and status. Among them, Chinese people are treated the most unfairly, while Chinese people also have the least resistance.

Compared to other yellow-skinned Asians, they are more united and know more about fighting for their own rights.

It was still 1984. If the pace of history had not gone too far because of the emergence of Gan Guoyang, eight years later, in 1992, also in Los Angeles, a middle-aged Korean woman shot and killed a black girl due to an quarrel with the population.

After that, the entire Los Angeles fell into riots, and a large number of black people began to rob and loot Korean stores.

But the Koreans did not retreat or wait for the police to help, but instead picked up the weapons in their hands and fought back, using violence to fight violence, and successfully protected the safety of their lives and property.

At this time in 1984, when the yellow race had not been fully respected, Gan Guoyang was about to face pressure and challenges from all aspects as a Chinese. He was lying in a hotel in Los Angeles, looking outside at the familiar scenery, but he still knew nothing.

"Gan, do you think I can become an NBA player in the future?" Anderson, who was lying next to Gan Guoyang, said. Anderson was living with Gan Guoyang tonight.

This is how Bellmann lets the players live in a mix to cultivate the relationship between teammates.

"Of course, as long as we win the NCAA championship, you will be noticed by the NBA team! You know Williams, Ricardo, and he said before that he would not get a college basketball scholarship, but we entered the high school league final, so he had the opportunity to come to Gonzaga." Gan Guoyang said it for granted.

In his eyes, every player at Gonzaga University is so outstanding and excellent. For example, Anderson, in Gan Guoyang's view, he is the best frontcourt rebounder in the NCAA, although his backcourt board protection is not very good.

"No, I'm not willing to, the NBA is a different level. I think, maybe you are the only one in our entire team, and John can play in the professional league. And you have the opportunity to become a superstar, like Jay Bal and Moses Malone. And I don't know, my father hopes that I can be a lawyer... Lawyer, my god, it's more difficult than letting me dunk on Jay Bal." Anderson said helplessly.

Today in the car, what Gan Guoyang said aroused his depression. He began to think about his future and future because he was also a senior, which would be his last season in the college basketball court.

"But we've already arrived here, isn't Anderson, the future is very important, but we have to pay attention to the present, the things we are about to face, and the game the day after tomorrow. Let those messy things go to hell!"

"That's right, sweet 16, my God, I didn't dare to think about it before. I used to think that it would be worth it to be able to go to the NCAA national competition. Even if I was eliminated in the first game, I think there was no regret in my four years in college. Unexpectedly, the 16th..." Anderson looked at the ceiling, his face full of incredible feelings.

"But this is not our finish line. There are also the Elite Eight, the Finals, the Finals, and the NCAA Championship Trophy! There is still a long way to wait for us, isn't Anderson?"

"Oh, Gan, you're always so optimistic, Elite Eight? Do you know who our next opponent is?" Anderson asked.

"I don't know." Gan Guoyang discovered at this time that after the team entered the quarterfinals, he did not pay attention to the schedule at all, nor did he know who his next opponent was.

"No wonder you are so optimistic. You don't even know who our next opponent is. The opponent is really strong. I think our next game is really dangerous. There is a schedule here, so you can take it and take a look." Anderson said and gave the schedule to Gan Guoyang.

Gan Guoyang took over the schedule and found the Gonzaga Bulldogs on it, then looked at the team they played against on March 22.

"Georgetown University!" Gan Guoyang saw this name, and a familiar name immediately flashed into his mind.
Chapter completed!