Less than a year out of college, I should have been barely qualified to cover the women’s bowling league, but here I was at the 1982 Final Four in New Orleans.

Such was life at the now defunct Shreveport Journal (a distant cousin to today’s Shreveport-Bossier Journal). We were a small-sized newspaper but damned sure we didn’t act like it. (Another Journal writer was in Virginia covering Louisiana Tech in the Women’s Final Four.)

In fact, the Final Four wasn’t even my first big assignment; I had already covered Dallas Cowboys training camp in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

I was last in seniority and have no idea how I got the Final Four assignment, but it probably had something to do with the fact that I had a cousin in New Orleans who I could stay with for free. (NOBODY could squeeze financial blood out of a turnip like the dearly-departed Shreveport Journal.)

Forty years later, the ’82 Final Four may well be the event I covered and still remember the most.

Let’s start with the end and we will circle back. If you want to know where I was when North Carolina freshman Michael Jordan hit the famous shot with 16 seconds left, picture this – he basically shot it in a direct line at me. I was on baseline (front row) to the right as you looked at the TV screen. I knew it was in from the instant it left his hand.

It was a great angle to witness a part of history, but here’s what’s not so great about it – when Georgetown’s Fred Brown threw an errant pass to Carolina’s James Worthy that cost the Hoyas a chance to win the game, I had no idea what had happened. To me, it looked like Worthy made a nice play on the ball; in reality, Brown wanted the ball out of his hands and mistakenly threw it to the first person he saw which was Worthy, who was badly out of position.

One of the biggest gaffes in the history in sports and I had no idea what had happened, because of the same seat location that was ideal to track MJ’s memorable jumpshot.

For years, I have tried to find myself in every video or picture from that game and have never been able to do it. You rarely see a shot from behind Jordan, so I’ll just have to settle for being one of those blurry heads in the bottom right of the picture.

I had been to a basketball game at the Superdome before, and I knew its awkward configuration, but I remember walking out for the Friday practice session and being amazed at how many people were there. It’s kind of like the practice rounds at The Masters in terms of being something you should see.

The main storyline for the ’82 Final Four was whether UNC coach Dean Smith could finally win a championship, but a second one developed quickly. This was the start of what became “Hoya Paranoia” as Georgetown coach John Thompson began his adversarial relationship with the media. I remember Thompson, who kept his team in Biloxi during the Final Four, bringing freshman Patrick Ewing to the interview room but wouldn’t allow anyone to ask questions of him.

In the championship game, Ewing was whistled for four goaltending calls – giving Carolina their first eight points of the game – to send a message to the Tar Heels. Georgetown lost by one; would you like any of those messages back?

The other two teams at the Final Four were Louisville and Houston, who had another young player with “Akeem” written on the back of his jersey. Think about that – freshmen Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon were at the same Final Four.

When it was over, I remember being in the North Carolina locker room – another thing that’s not done anymore – and there were a bunch of reporters around Jordan. Off to the side was his warmup top. I could easily grab it, tuck it away and who would ever know? After all, they didn’t have any more games to play.

Pretty sure I would be out of jail by now had I been caught, so there’s that. Then again, I would have missed covering the next women’s bowling league play date.