THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: The time 'Big John' and the Hoyas came to Pullman

For the record, John Thompson also sent me a birthday card once.

But that's not what I thought of when I heard the former Georgetown basketball coach passed away on Monday at age 78.

I thought of the time Big John brought his Georgetown Hoyas to Pullman in March 1984, for the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament.

The Hoyas were a big deal back then — two years earlier, as a freshman, Patrick Ewing led Georgetown to the national championship game, where some guy named Mike Jordan hit a jumper late in the game to lift North Carolina to the title.

Two years later, Ewing was still in college for this, his junior season — something that would never happen these days. (He even came back for his senior year, when the Hoyas reached a third title game in four seasons before losing to a team whose name escapes me).

The 1980s were the heyday of the Big East — must-see TV, even for West Coast diehards. Besides the Hoyas, there was Syracuse, coached by Jim Boeheim — who's STILL the coach. St. John's was good back then, and its coach, Lou Carnesecca, was known for his sweaters.

ANYWAY, GEORGETOWN was coming off a Big East tourney title, and its reward was getting sent all the way out West from its home in Washington, D.C.

The NCAA tourney was a little different animal in 1984, the year before the tourney expanded to 64 teams, and everybody played in the first round.

In ’84, the tourney consisted of just 53 teams (there were five play-in games), and the top four seeds in each of the four regions earned first-round byes.

In Pullman that year, SMU beat Miami (Ohio) and advanced to play Georgetown in the second round. (On the other side of the bracket in Pullman, the Detlef Schrempf-led Washington Huskies beat Nevada, then beat a then up-and-coming Duke team that would reach the NCAA title game in 1986.

Hoya Paranoia was rampant by then, but this was our first look at it that wasn't via the TV. There were stories of Big John sequestering his team some 75 miles away from Pullman, in Spokane, to keep them away from the hoopla (though I can't imagine there being much hoopla in Pullman, Wash., back in 1984).

Georgetown would go on to win the national title that year, but the Hoyas' title dreams nearly ended in Pullman. The Hoyas needed a tip-in by Ewing off a missed free throw in the final minute to subdue SMU, 37-36.

It was the second time in three years — and third time in all — that Pullman hosted NCAA tourney games. The tourney hasn't been back to Pullman since — partly due to the growth in the tournament, but also because Spokane eventually built an arena in 1995 that was deemed NCAA-worthy.

That was the first NCAA tournament I ever attended, and it must have made an impression — I've been to more than 30 NCAA tourneys since.

TOM SEAVER never sent me a birthday card, but that's OK.

He was a big reason I rooted for the Miracle Mets in 1969.

There was a book about that season, "The Year The Mets Lost Last Place," the paperback version of which I read so much that the book ended up in chunks of pages that I tried to keep together in the right order when it was time to read the book again.

Anyway, I read somewhere that Tom Seaver had two dogs, and one of them was named Casey.

In 1971, our cousins gave us a wiener dog puppy from the litter of Oscar and Heidi.

So I named our new dog Casey.

Because no one besides Tom Terrific would have understood if I had tried to name her Slider.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @CdAPressSports.