Jack Gardner didn't need time to think about the question, even though it took him back through 58 years of Final Fours and whole bunch more tipoffs and final buzzers.
"1944," he quickly responded, then paused while he shuffled papers and continued."That was the first year I coached in the Final Four (as coach of Kansas State.) It was a great team. We went 22-and-6 and won the Big 7 Championship. It was exciting. I had never done anything so exciting. Everyone went out of their minds, even back then."
It was his first of four trips to the NCAA Final Four. It was the first of four times he would never quite make the top. It was the first, he recalled, his voice a little unsteady with 87 years of use, of four of his most exciting times in basketball.
"It's hard to explain what it's like to coach a Final Four team . . . All of the attention, all of the media, all of the pressure. You can't explain it to anyone," he said.
In 28 years of coaching, Gardner made it there four times - twice with Kansas and twice with Utah (1961 and 1966).
But 1944 was not his first experience with the Final Four nor did it end with his retirement from coaching in 1967.
Gardner became as much a part of the Final Four as the National Anthem. He attended the first one in 1939 and kept on going until last year when a foot injury hobbled him enough to keep him home. It is a record that is not likely to ever be matched.
This Saturday, on the day of his 88th birthday, he will begin again on another Final Four run. His son, Jim, felt a trip to San Antonio with Utah, and back to the Final Four, would be a good present for his father. Jack agreed. He said he missed not being there last year.
Asked to reflect back on his 58 Final Fours, Gardner struggled with individual games, saying they all tended to blend together, but instead focused mostly on the players. He called Bill Walton's great game in 1973 the "best individual performance I've ever seen."
Next came Jerry Chambers' play in 1966 when Utah lost in the Finals to Texas Western (now UTEP) and a young coach named Don Haskins. Of course, it could be said that Gardner might be a little biased. But, he was quick to point out, Chambers scored 70 points and grabbed 35 rebounds in two games and was named MVP despite being on the losing side. The only player to do better was Bill Bradley in 1965 with 87 points and 24 rebounds in two games . . . And Jack Gardner was there for that one, too.
In fact, Gardner was there for all of the great performances. Wilt Chamberlain's Kansas team losing in overtime to North Carolina in 1957; Bill Russell's back-to-back wins in 1955 and 1956; Walton's super night in 1973; and, of course, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson meeting in The House That Jack Built, the Huntsman Center, in the Finals in 1979.
He remembers, too, the hard times. One of the hardest was heading into the Final Four in 1966 without his star center, George Fisher, who broke his leg and wasn't there to support Chambers.
Getting a seat could also be a problem. For some games, his seats were closer to heaven than the court.
"I'd get mad and sometimes they'd give me a better seat. Sometimes the other coaches would feel sorry for me and give me one of their extra tickets. Sometimes I just had to sit up in the rafters."
As for the Utes' chances this year, drawing on his years of experience, Gardner called them "good."
"They are a good team. I wouldn't be surprised to see them go all the way. But, they're going to need a good game. You need to be a little better against the best teams in the country," he said.
"You're always going to have the pressure. It's always there. You need to enter the Finals with the idea you're going to win . . . and then do it."