Month: June 2024

Record: 27-3, 14-0 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in national semifinal
Final AP Ranking: 2
All-ACC Players: Art Heyman (ACC POY), Jeff Mullins (1st)
All-Americans: Art Heyman (National POY)

1963 marked the arrival of Vic Bubas and Duke on the national scene. Bubas had been steadily building up the program since his arrival in 1959:

• 1959-60: 17-11, 7-7, ranked 18th
• 1960-61: 22-6, 10-4, Art Heyman‘s debut, ranked 10th
• 1961-62: 20-5, 11-3, Jeff Mullins‘ debut, ranked 10th

Going into 1962-63, Heyman and Mullins were both back from the prior year’s team. The Blue Devils were ranked second in the preseason poll. It seemed like their year to do something special.

Duke dropped to number eight in the polls after late December losses to Lefty Driesell-coached Davidson and Rick Barry-led Miami. They didn’t lose again until the Final Four. Following a win over Bill Bradley and Princeton, the Blue Devils proceeded to rip through the ACC regular season, becoming only the second team (North Carolina 1957) to be undefeated in ACC play. To give you an idea of the distance between Duke and the rest of the league, the second place team was Wake Forest. Duke beat the Deacs four times by an average of 20 points.

The Devils breezed through the ACC Tournament without a close game. With only 25 teams in the NCAA Tournament at the time, Duke received a first-round bye and advanced to the regional semifinal against #9 NYU. After a hard-fought win over the Violets, Duke faced St. Joseph’s in the regional final. Behind 24 from Mullins and 20 from Fred Schmidt, the Blue Devils survived an off night from Heyman and pulled away in the second half for a 73-59 win and their first Final Four.

That was the end of their run. In the Final Four, Duke ran into a buzzsaw in the form of Loyola (Ill.). The Ramblers took it to the Blue Devils, pulling away late for a 94-75 victory. Loyola went on to dethrone the two-time defending national champion Cincinnati Bearcats to win the title. Duke won the third place game against Oregon State handily, Heyman setting the pace with 22 in his last college game.

Duke shot 51.1% from the field for the year, shattering the previous ACC record of 47.3% by Duke 1961. It would remain the high until the 1966 North Carolina Tar Heels became the second ACC team to shoot better than 50% for a season at 51.7%. These were the only two teams to shoot 50% or better until the 1970s, when it became commonplace.

Record: 31-4, 13-3 (2nd place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in Sweet 16
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: Carlos Boozer (1st), Jason Williams (1st), Mike Dunleavy (1st)
All-Americans: Jason Williams (1st), Mike Dunleavy (2nd)

This was the last year of Duke’s five-year run of greatness from 1998-2002. They were definitely the best team in the country in 1999 and 2001 and arguably the best team in the country in 1998, 2000, and 2002.

Coming into the 2001-2002 season, the Blue Devils were the defending national champions. Shane Battier and Nate James had departed, but Duke had plenty, and I do mean plenty, of talent. How about Jason Williams, Carlos Boozer, Mike Dunleavy, Dahntay Jones, Chris Duhon, and Daniel Ewing?

On paper, this team was just as good as the 2001 team. They are the only team in the history of the kenpom ratings going back to 1999 to finish the season as both the best offense and defense in the country. Like many of the Duke teams of this era, they were great at pretty much everything except rebounding. And free-throw shooting, I guess. What they were exceptional at was putting the ball in the basket. Williams, Dunleavy, and Boozer averaged 57 points among them, and it wasn’t volume scoring, it was highly efficient. Boozer in particular made two out of every three field goal attempts, good for the third-best single season FG% in league history (behind Brendan Haywood 2000 and Zion Williamson 2019).

On defense, they were extremely disruptive on the perimeter. Williams, Dunleavy, and Duhon were deflection machines and Duke led the ACC in steals by a wide margin. Their three-point defense was exceptional. They were a little bit vulnerable on the interior; Boozer wasn’t a shot-blocker, and Nick Horvath and Casey Sanders didn’t play enough to make a big impact.

They rolled through the regular season and ACC Tournament with a 29-3 record. Their average margin of victory of 19.7 is the fourth-best in league history behind 1999 Duke, 1973 NC State, and 2001 Duke. The fascinating storyline was that Maryland was having just as good a year. The Terps, not Duke, won the ACC regular season. The two giants battled to a draw in their two regular season matchups, with each team winning handily on its home court. We were denied a rubber match in the ACC Tournament when NC State upset Maryland in the semifinals, only to get hammered by Duke in the final.

Everything went according to plan until their Sweet 16 game with Indiana. Several things conspired to lose this game for Duke. One, they got killed on the glass as Indiana had 20 offensive rebounds. Two, they went 10-for-19 from the line. Three, they committed 26 fouls and sent Indiana to the line for 31 free throw attempts. Four, Dunleavy and Williams did not shoot well, combining to go 11-for-35. And five, Indiana was really good for a five seed. You’ll recall they advanced all the way to the championship game before losing to Maryland. And with all that, it was a one-point game.

Rebounding and free throw shooting were known vulnerabilities for this team, and Indiana was able to exploit them. In most of their games, Duke was able to make so many shots that it didn’t matter, but with the poor shooting night from Dunleavy and Williams, it was too much to overcome. What most people remember about this game is the very end. Duke was down 74-70 when Williams drained a three-pointer with four seconds left and was fouled… and missed the free throw.

I’m not all that big on intangibles, but I can’t help but think that the difference between this team and the 2001 team is the leadership and toughness of Shane Battier. This team may have been as good as the 2001 team on paper, but Battier wouldn’t have let them lose that Indiana game.

Record: 34-4, 13-3 (2nd place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in national semifinal
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: Antawn Jamison (ACC POY), Vince Carter (1st), Ed Cota (2nd), Shammond Williams (2nd)
All-Americans: Antawn Jamison (National POY), Vince Carter (2nd)

Rarely in the history of college basketball has a new coach inherited such an embarrassment of riches as Bill Guthridge did in his first season as the head man.  The Tar Heels returned everyone save Serge Zwikker from the 1997 Final Four team, including second team All-American Antawn Jamison and superhuman athletic freak Vince Carter, who had grown by leaps and bounds as a sophomore and had Tar Heel fans practically drooling at what he might do as a junior.  Add in a couple of solid veterans in Shammond Williams and Ademola Okulaja, another year of experience for talented point guard Ed Cota, transfer Makhtar N’Diaye to provide interior size, and a strong (on paper) recruiting class led by seven-footer Brendan Haywood, and it’s a mystery the Tar Heels were only ranked fourth in the preseason poll.  Who did they think was going to be better?

Wait, I can answer that: Arizona, Kansas, and Duke.  Arizona was the defending national champion, so that one is understandable.  Kansas was returning Paul Pierce and Raef LaFrentz from a 34-2 team, so that explains that one.  And Duke had Avery, Brand, and Battier coming in.

In any case, the Tar Heels were loaded.  I hate to say that all Coach Gut had to do was roll the balls out, because there’s always more to it than that, but mostly he just had to not screw things up.

They came out on fire, demolishing seventh-ranked UCLA by 41 in the fourth game of the season and winning their first 17 games before an overtime loss at Maryland, which was really starting to find its legs as a program under Gary Williams.  In the first Duke showdown, Carolina dominated the top-ranked Blue Devils 97-73 and grabbed that ranking for themselves.

There was one head-scratcher, a 14-point home loss to NC State in late February.  That was the only other blemish as the Tar Heels took a 27-2 record into the regular season finale at Cameron.  This time, UNC blew a 17-point second half lead as Duke rode the energy of the home crowd to a 77-75 win.

The rubber match came eight days later in the ACC Tournament final.  Carolina had survived an overtime thriller against Maryland in the semifinal.  This one was tight for a while, but a 13-0 run midway through the second half sealed it for the Tar Heels.

In the NCAA Tournament, they survived a surprisingly tough second round matchup with UNC-Charlotte, then defeated Michigan State and UConn to earn a trip to the Final Four.  That’s where it all went wrong.  The Tar Heels played a terrible semifinal game, shooting 39% from the field and going 3-for-23 from three and 2-for-7 from the line in a 65-59 loss to a good but inferior Utah team.  Carolina was the best team in the country that year, but the best team doesn’t always win.

One oddity of the way Bill Guthridge coached this team was the six-man starting rotation.  He distributed starts evenly among six players, leaving one of them out each game seemingly at random.  Here are the number of starts by player:

• Jamison, 32 (out of 38 total games)
• Williams, 32
• Carter, 32
• Cota, 31
• Okulaja, 32
• N’Diaye, 30
• Haywood, 1

Isn’t that odd?  N’Diaye, in particular, always seemed like an strange fit for the Carolina program as a transfer.  Even as a freshman, Brendan Haywood was probably a better player.  In the Utah game, N’Diaye fouled out in 14 minutes with zero points.  I wonder if that Utah game would have turned out differently had Haywood received those 14 minutes instead.  With N’Diaye’s foul trouble, the Tar Heels went small for a lot of the game, and they had trouble containing Utah’s big men Michael Doleac and Britton Johnsen.

This team was really good at a lot of things.  They shot 13.4% better than their opponents from the field, 51.8% to 38.4%, and while I have no easy way of checking, that difference must be close to a record.  They made 124 more free throws than their opponents attempted.  They were an exceptional offensive rebounding team.  They had rim protectors.  They took care of the ball.  They didn’t foul (except for N’Diaye).  They weren’t a prolific 3-point shooting team, but they were efficient with the ones they took.

But they were caught with a shaky big man situation. Haywood wasn’t quite ready, and N’Diaye just wasn’t that good. Tar Heel fans might remember that they were supposed to have Vasco Evtimov, but he was forced to sit out the 1997-98 season and part of the next because he had played for a kind of semi-pro team in France. He wasn’t paid, but some other players were, and the NCAA decided that gave him an unfair advantage. But was he good enough to make a difference? Maybe not.

Record: 35-4, 15-3 (2nd place)
ACC Tournament: Lost in semifinal
NCAA Tournament: Won
Final AP Ranking: 4
All-ACC Players: Jahlil Okafor (ACC POY), Quinn Cook (2nd), Tyus Jones (3rd)
All-Americans: Jahlil Okafor (1st)

Of all the ACC national championship teams, this is the one that I remember the least. I guess that’s because three of their starters were guys who played only one year – Jahlil Okafor, Justise Winslow, and Tyus Jones. And is it wrong that I still get confused between Tyus Jones and Tre Jones?

But my memory aside, this was a really complete team. Senior Quinn Cook and juniors Rasheed Sulaimon and Amile Jefferson provided some experience to go along with all that youth. Okafor was unstoppable inside. They were a great three-point shooting team with four guys (Cook, Winslow, Tyus Jones, and Matt Jones) who shot 37%+ while averaging at least one made three per game. They were a great rebounding team behind Okafor, Winslow, and Jefferson. They didn’t foul. They took care of the ball. They were outstanding at defending the three.

They raced out to a 14-0 start including a decisive road win over #2 Wisconsin. They stumbled at NC State (a game that I attended, by the way) and at home against Miami. From that point on, they lost two more games, both to a Notre Dame team that was one of the best teams in the country in its own right. With wins away from home against Michigan State, Wisconsin, Louisville, Virginia, and North Carolina, they were an easy choice for a #1 seed in the South region.

They weren’t challenged until the regional final against second-seeded Gonzaga. The Zags were down two with five minutes left, but Duke outscored them 13-1 the rest of the way. Both of Duke’s Final Four games were rematches against Big Ten teams the Blue Devils had beaten in the regular season. Duke dominated Michigan State, just as they had in the regular season. That set the stage for a rematch with #3 Wisconsin led by national player of the year Frank Kaminsky. The Badgers were riding high after taking out 38-0 Kentucky in their semifinal. An interesting aside about this Wisconsin team is that they are the best offensive team in the history of kenpom, with an Adjusted Offensive Efficiency of 129 (129 points per 100 possessions, adjusted for strength of schedule).

It was a back-and-forth battle between two great teams. The Badgers took a nine-point lead early in the second half. And then Grayson Allen took over the game. An Allen three, an Allen steal, and an Allen and-one later, and the Blue Devils were within three. It was back-and-forth for the next several minutes, with Allen and Tyus Jones carrying the load for the Blue Devils. At 59-58, Duke got a break when the officials failed to spot Winslow stepping out of bounds, and he dished to Okafor for the lay-in. After another controversial call when the ball was awarded to Duke after appearing to go off Winslow’s finger, Jones sealed it with a three, and Coach K had his fifth national title.

Allen’s heroics in the championship game were quite unexpected. He had not been a regular part of the rotation. Tyus Jones and Quinn Cook were the starting guards, and Matt Jones was the third guard. But Allen started to get a little more time in February after Sulaimon was kicked off the team. He had a mini-breakout on February 21 against Clemson with 10 points in 18 minutes and a much bigger breakout on March 4 against Wake Forest with a game-high 27 points, but both of those were mop-up duty situations where Allen piled up his points mostly after the game was decided. He still wasn’t playing in key moments against good teams, and that continued through the regionals. He played three minutes and scored zero points in the regional final against Gonzaga.

But Coach K decided that Allen’s time had come in the Final Four, and he made the most of it. In the semifinal against Michigan State, Duke played a smaller lineup for much of the game against the undersized Spartans, which meant more Allen and less Amile Jefferson. Allen responded with nine points in 17 minutes. In the final, it was more a case of Matt Jones being ineffective, so K went with Allen down the stretch. It would be interesting to look at the history of unexpected individual performances in an NCAA championship game. I would have to think that Allen’s is right up there.

Of the four freshmen, only Allen returned. Jones, Winslow, and Okafor were all first-round draft picks in the NBA, where Jones is having a good career, Okafor was a surprising bust, and Winslow couldn’t stay healthy and is currently out of the league.

Record: 32-7, 11-3 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Lost in final
NCAA Tournament: Won
Final AP Ranking: 6
All-ACC Players: Christian Laettner (1st), Bobby Hurley (3rd), Thomas Hill (3rd)
All-Americans: Christian Laettner (2nd)

Isn’t it interesting how our memories can take the messy events of the past and subconsciously construct tidy but inaccurate narratives around them? My memory’s narrative of Laettner/Hurley-era Duke was basically this: UNLV embarrassed a young Duke team in 1990, and that team spent the next two years exacting revenge by dominating everyone.

Well, it wasn’t exactly like that, certainly not in 1991. First of all, the 1991 team that got “revenge” on UNLV wasn’t at all the same team as the 1990 team that got humiliated. Laettner and Hurley were still there, but Phil Henderson, Robert Brickey, and Alaa Abdelnaby were not. In their places, Billy McCaffrey, Thomas Hill, and Brian Davis played more prominent roles, and Grant Hill was a freshman starter.

What’s more, the 1991 team wasn’t as dominant as I thought they were. They lost six regular season games, which is kind of a lot for an all-time great team. They spent the year ranked in the 5-10 range, consistently behind Indiana, Arkansas, and of course UNLV. They were embarrassed by Carolina in the ACC Tournament final. They didn’t get a #1 seed in the NCAAs. So their NCAA Tournament success, which in retrospect seems like destiny, did not feel that way at all at the time.

They got a little bit lucky in the regionals. Ohio State was a weak 1 seed that lost in the Sweet 16. Nebraska was a weak 3 seed that lost in the first round. As a result, Duke was able to get to the Final Four without playing higher than a 4 seed.

Which brings us to the rematch with UNLV. I do not hesitate to say that 1991 UNLV was one of the greatest teams in the history of college basketball. I bet many of you can name the starting five: Anderson Hunt, Greg Anthony, Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon, and George Ackles (the Ringo Starr of the group). Unlike Duke, they were exactly the same team, just a year older and a year better than a team that had won the national championship the year before. Tons of experience with four senior starters and one junior. Going back to the previous season, they had won 45 games in a row. Obviously they played in a weak conference, but with that said, 32 of their 34 wins were by double digits. They averaged 98 points per game. In case anyone might have thought they were a paper tiger, they took an early February trip to #2 Arkansas and beat the Razorbacks 112-105. They were probably the most dominant team in college basketball since 1976 Indiana. There was really no reason to think that Duke was going to win the game.

Grant Hill grabbed the opening tip, went straight to the basket, and scored. Duke scored on its first six possessions – 9 points by Laettner and 4 by Hill. It was clear from the outset that this was going to be a totally different game. Duke’s frontcourt of Laettner, Hill, and Brian Davis outplayed UNLV’s Johnson and Augmon. But UNLV’s backcourt of Anthony and Hunt were terrific and kept the Rebels in it. One of the pivotal moments was Anthony fouling out (on a charge on Brian Davis, of course) with four minutes left. UNLV scored on the ensuing possession to take a five-point lead, but that was their last bucket. They had a defensive lapse without Anthony, leaving Hurley wide open for a three which cut the lead to two. On the ensuing Duke possession, G Hill penetrated and dished to Brian Davis who got the old-fashioned three-point play to give Duke the lead. Johnson was fouled and made one of two, with that hesitation motion he had, to tie it at 77 with 49 seconds left. The shot clock was 45 seconds at the time, so Duke was able to use most of the time on its last possession. Laettner was fouled on a rebound – it wasn’t much of a foul, really – and (of course) sank both free throws. UNLV, again without Anthony, had a disjointed final possession which culminated with an awkward shot by Hunt which never had a chance.

After they pulled the upset, they weren’t done. Similar to 1974 NC State, they faced the danger of the anticlimactic final after the semifinal that seemed like the final. Roy Williams had led the Jayhawks to the final in his third season at Kansas. In their previous three games, they had taken out #3 Indiana, #2 Arkansas, and #4 North Carolina. But behind great performances off the bench by McCaffrey and Davis, Laettner‘s usual brilliance, and Hurley‘s floor leadership, Duke won its first ever national championship.

This wasn’t a perfect team. They were young, playing mostly freshmen and sophomores. They weren’t big, with Laettner as the only legitimate big man. For a really good team, they had an unusually poor turnover margin. And these weaknesses showed up in the Final Four. Both UNLV and Kansas killed Duke on the boards and had fewer turnovers. But when the ball goes in the basket, it has a way of making up for everything else. What this group had in spades was skilled offensive players, athleticism on the wings, and that intangible Laettner/Coach K/Hurley grit, tenacity, toughness, and belief.

Record: 28-4, 12-2 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in national final
Final AP Ranking: 4
All-ACC Players: Larry Miller (ACC POY), Charlie Scott (1st), Rusty Clark (2nd)
All-Americans: Larry Miller (1st)

These late 1960s Carolina teams are all starting to run together… let’s see, this is the one that had Larry Miller and Charlie Scott, but not Bob Lewis. They lost Lewis from the 1967 team, but they added Scott. And they still had Dick Grubar, Bill Bunting, and Rusty Clark. They didn’t get a lot from their bench, but they didn’t need it.

After losing the third game of the season at #8 Vanderbilt, the Tar Heels won 20 straight before losing 87-86 at home to South Carolina. Then they dropped the last game of the regular season at Duke by the exact same score, this time in triple overtime.

They survived an overtime rematch with South Carolina in the semifinals of the ACC Tournament, then dominated NC State in an anticlimactic 87-50 final that still holds the record for largest margin of victory in an ACC Tournament final.

Their reward for such a great season was a round of 16 matchup with third-ranked St. Bonaventure and the great Bob Lanier. It seems strange that the #3 and #4 teams in the country would be playing in the round of 16, but at that time, the tournament bracket was based on predefined conference pairings rather than seeding, so these things happened. In any case, Rusty Clark held his own against Lanier and the Tar Heels had no problem with the Bonnies.

Their next game against Lefty Driesell and Davidson was much tougher, but the Tar Heels came back to win 70-66 behind 22 points and 17 boards from Clark. In the semifinal, they had a relatively easy time of it, pulling away in the second half to beat Ohio State. In the final, to put it bluntly, they got their tails kicked by a UCLA team that was just way better than everybody else and had probably the greatest college basketball player of all time in Lew Alcindor and was basically playing at home.

One of the things I like to do with old teams is to try and get a sense of how they played and what made them good from the limited statistics that are available. There is a wealth of statistical information on modern teams, but for teams from this era, you have field goals and attempts, free throws and attempts, total rebounds, and fouls, and that’s about it. No assists, no turnovers, no steals, no blocks, no breakdown of offensive vs. defensive rebounds. While there is a lot we don’t know, there are some things you can infer.

This team’s average margin of victory was 11.4 points. Interestingly, though, they didn’t shoot a much higher percentage than their opponents. Carolina shot 45.5% from the field and 68.1% from the line; their opponents were 44.4% from the field and 69.5% from the line. It is unusual for such a good team to not outshoot their opponents by more than that. Shooting percentages by themselves explain very little of that 11.4 point margin of victory.

So where does it come from? Well, if you’re not making a higher percentage of shots, but you’re scoring more points, you must be taking more shots, right? And they did. The Tar Heels averaged 6.6 more shot attempts and 6.5 more free throw attempts than their opponents. If you do the math, 6.6 shot attempts at 45.5% and 6.5 free throw attempts at 68.1% comes about to about 10.4 points. So nearly all of their point differential is explained by getting more shots than their opponents.

How does a team get more shots? Rebounding and turnover margin. Turnover margin is easy to understand; when a team turns the ball over, they don’t get to put up a shot. If your turnover margin is positive, that means you are taking away opponents’ shots more often than you’re giving up your own.

Rebounding is similar. When you get a defensive rebound, you are preventing the opponent from getting another shot; when you get an offensive rebound, you are potentially getting another shot for yourself.

So to summarize, there are four distinct skills involved in getting more shot attempts than your opponent:

1. Forcing turnovers
2. Taking care of the ball, i.e. avoiding your own turnovers
3. Defensive rebounding
4. Offensive rebounding

There is a tendency to think about rebounding in a general way and not to distinguish between the skills of offensive and defensive rebounding, but they really are distinct. There are plenty of teams who are good at one and bad at the other.

So we know that the 1968 Tar Heels used some combination of those four skills to generate so many additional shot attempts. Do we have enough data to get any more specific than that? Well, there is nothing at all on turnovers, but we do have total rebounds. Carolina’s rebounding margin was 4.4. What can we infer from that? Can we at least conclude they were a good rebounding team?

We can, but we have to consider more than just the rebounding margin. One problem with rebounding margin as a stat is it lacks crucial context about how many of the rebounding opportunities were offensive (off your own missed shot) vs. defensive (off the opponent’s missed shot). To see why this is important, think about a team that has a very low field goal percentage, say 42%, and allows opponents to shoot a very high percentage, say 55%. It will be almost impossible for a team like this to have a good rebounding margin, for three reasons:

• There aren’t many defensive rebounding opportunities, because the opponent makes so many shots
• The other team has lots of defensive rebounding opportunities, because we miss so many shots
• Most rebounds are grabbed by the defense

So even if this is a good rebounding team, rebound margin alone won’t tell you that, because the opponent is getting so many more defensive rebound opportunities than you are. For this reason, a team with a higher FG% than its opponents will tend to have a good rebounding margin due to more defensive rebound opportunities; and a team with a lower FG% than its opponents will tend to have a poor rebounding margin due to fewer defensive rebound opportunities.

In this case, the Tar Heels’ FG% is about the same as their opponents, but they still have a good rebounding margin. This tells you, all other things being equal, that they were a good rebounding team. What we don’t know is how that skill breaks down between offensive and defensive rebounding. There is simply no data to tell us that with any certainty.

What about turnovers? We have no direct statistics on turnovers, so you have to approach it indirectly by trying to determine how much of the overall disparity in shot attempts is attributable to rebounding, and assuming that the rest is attributable to turnover margin.

In this case, the Tar Heels put up 6.6 more shots and 6.5 more free throws per game than their opponents. Intuitively, I don’t think a +4.4 rebounding margin is sufficient to account for that. That means there must be a favorable turnover margin as well.

Then there’s a common sense way to approach it. Since this team has little to no advantage with FG/FT percentage, what made this team so good? If turnover margin is not an answer, then we’re saying, in effect, that the only thing this team was good at was rebounding, which doesn’t make sense. The best rebounding team in the world, if they’re average at everything else, is not going to be a Top 5 team.

I infer from this that the 1968 Tar Heels must have had a very good turnover margin. How much of that is attributable to forcing opponent turnovers vs. avoiding their own, it is impossible to say.

Record: 28-3, 14-0 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Lost in semifinals
NCAA Tournament: Lost in Sweet 16
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: Michael Jordan (ACC POY), Sam Perkins (1st)
All-Americans: Michael Jordan (National POY), Sam Perkins (1st)

Considering regular season performance alone, this is one of the five best teams in the history of the ACC. Let’s start with the roster. The starting lineup consists of the greatest player of all time (MJ), another first team All-American (Sam Perkins), two future first team All-Americans (Brad Daugherty and Kenny Smith), and a four-year starter from the national championship team (Matt Doherty). The bench features a couple of future All-ACC players (Steve Hale and Joe Wolf).

They dominated everybody. On their way to a 21-0 start, the closest they came to losing were a three-point win against Virginia and a five-point win at Duke. They beat #8 St. John’s by 13 on the road. They beat #12 NC State by 21 on the road. They beat #5 Maryland by 12 on the road. They beat #12 Wake Forest by 8 on the road. They beat #17 Wake Forest by 37 at home. They beat #10 LSU by 11. The one blemish on the regular season was a one-point loss to an Arkansas team that had Joe Kleine and Alvin Robertson and finished the year ranked eighth in the country.

So what happened? You can almost understand the ACC Tournament loss to Duke. They had that special Dawkins/Alarie/Bilas/Henderson/Amaker group that was just starting to realize how good they were. Chalk it up to an inspired performance by a team and a coach that were on a path to greatness.

But Indiana? How did this team lose to Indiana? Well, let’s be fair. Looking back, Indiana was better than I thought. They weren’t ranked, but they were a 4 seed. They had beaten Illinois, Purdue, and Michigan. But the roster… OK, Steve Alford was good, but he was a freshman. After that, it was Uwe Blab, Stew Robinson, Marty Simmons, and Mike Giomi. Not exactly Jordan, Perkins, Smith, and Daugherty.

Tar Heel partisans still lament the wrist fracture suffered by Kenny Smith in January. He played the rest of the season with a protective cast or wrap on his hand. According to Roy Williams, “When Kenny Smith went down it changed everything. He could dribble the ball, but he was not Kenny Smith.”

I don’t buy it. The Tar Heels continued beating the tar out of everybody after the injury. The injury was to his non-shooting hand. If you go back and watch the Indiana game, he looks fine. He played 32 minutes, he moved well, he passed, he shot. Smith was a freshman that year and wasn’t heavily relied upon for scoring to begin with.

Watching the game, what you notice is how intent Carolina was on getting the ball inside. They passed up countless wide open 16-footers. Every possession seemed to play out the same way. They would pass the ball around the perimeter until they could get it inside to Perkins. Indiana would double team. Perkins would pass back out to an open man who wouldn’t shoot. Repeat. Even Jordan passed up plenty of shots to get the ball inside.

Dean Smith’s offensive philosophy rejected the idea that you take what the defense gives you. He said no, forget about what the defense wants, we’re going to get the shots we want. It makes sense, of course; basketball is a game of imposing your will on the other team. If you take what the defense gives you, you’re letting them dictate the style of play. Generally speaking, you can’t argue with Dean’s results.

But once in a while, there was a game where that stubbornness hurt him. Where he was so intent on getting the shots he wanted that the Tar Heels would pass up too many open perimeter shots and fixate on getting the ball inside. And I think this was one of those games. Bob Knight was the kind of coach who knew how to take advantage of that.

Jordan got in early foul trouble and missed a lot of the first half. Daugherty was outplayed by Uwe Blab and was a non-factor. What should’ve happened in the second half is, they should have given the ball to Jordan and said “take over”. But that wasn’t Dean’s way. He kept running his offense. Give credit to Indiana. They shot 65% for the game. It was akin to Villanova over Georgetown 1985. They had to play a perfect game and they did.

Record: 26-10, 8-6 (3rd place tie)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Won
Final AP Ranking: 16
All-ACC Players: Sidney Lowe (1st), Thurl Bailey (1st)
All-Americans: None

I probably can’t tell you anything about this team that you don’t already know, but there are two points I would like to make.

First, this “Cinderella” team was better than you think. Yes, they lost 10 games, and maybe they needed to win the ACC Tournament to get into the NCAAs, though I’m not certain of that. But if you look at their season, they were ranked in the Top 20 until Whittenburg got hurt. They had a neutral court win over a ranked West Virginia team, and two competitive road losses at Louisville and at Missouri, both ranked. And they were whupping #2 Virginia – until Whit got hurt. And then they fell apart. Counting the Virginia game where he got hurt, they lost five of their next seven. The injury happened just as they were going into the most difficult part of their schedule – #2 Virginia, #3 Carolina, at Wake, #6 Memphis, at Maryland. Maybe they would have lost those games anyway, but it seems that the injury put them on the ropes, and they got decked, and before they could get up, they got decked again.

After that, they had a easier four-game stretch: Georgia Tech, Furman, The Citadel, Clemson. It gave them a chance to breathe, to regain some confidence, and to figure out who they really were with Ernie Myers playing instead of Whit. They lost a one-point game to Notre Dame, walloped UNC Wilmington, and then came one of the turning points: a home win over Carolina. Two games later, Whittenburg was back.

Incorporating a college basketball player who was out for a long time is such tricky business. I wrote about this with 2011 Duke and Kyrie Irving. Basketball is such a flow sport. Success depends on knowing your teammates’ strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies, and being able to anticipate. There are only five on the floor at a time. They get to know each other really well. When you play a lot of games with a particular group, they develop a kind of intimacy, if I can use that term. Then suddenly the returning player shows up, and things are different. Playing time changes. Egos are affected. Teammates have to adjust to the new player’s tendencies, and vice versa. There is limited time to do this in practice in the middle of a season. In the worst case, it can cause the team to spiral downward. Subtraction by addition. In the best case, other players on the team expand their games and gain confidence because they don’t have the missing player to rely on anymore, and when he does return, he’s rejoining a different, and better, team than the one he played on before. The players who lose playing time handle it gracefully, and the team sees the return as an opportunity, not a threat.

The latter scenario seems to be what happened with NC State. Their defense got better, because it had to; they learned that Ernie Myers was a good player, because he had to play; Lowe and Bailey grew as leaders, because of the adversity they faced; and Valvano kept them believing. In the long run, the Whittenburg injury probably made them better. It took them a couple of games to work out the kinks after he came back, but they exploded on Wake Forest in that 130-89 beatdown in the last game of the regular season, and it was on.

I don’t know what would’ve happened had Whittenburg not gotten hurt. My guess is, they would’ve won enough to hang around the Top 20. I think that’s about who they were, like a #15 in the country kind of team. But the injury made them better. After he came back, I think they were legitimately one of the ten best teams in the country. Some of these games were still upsets, don’t get me wrong, but this was a better team than 1985 Villanova, 1988 Kansas, or 2014 UConn.

The second thing I want to say about this team is that Jim Valvano was a damn good coach. Look at how he managed the Whittenburg situation – masterful. They came out of it better than they went into it. Look at the in-game tactics and adjustments – the junk defenses, the strategic fouling, taking advantage of matchups. Assistant Tom Abatemarco always said Valvano was the best game coach he ever saw – better than Carnesecca, better than Pitino. I always thought that was just talk, but now I think I believe it.

He was the anti-Dean Smith. Smith was the measured analytical genius, obsessive about details and preparation, data-driven before that was a thing, a meticulous planner who left nothing to chance with the entire program. Every action, every word, every decision was calculated, purposeful, guarded. He believed that if he did all the little things right, the big things would take care of themselves. He was probably the most thorough coach of all time. Valvano was the impassioned, artistic, semi-tortured genius, wore his heart on his sleeve, master improviser, master motivator, extemporizer, amateur psychologist, always questioning himself, never comfortable, erratic, unpredictable, brilliant. He was too inconstant to build a program like North Carolina’s. The program, like the man, was destined for the highest highs and the lowest lows. And to never, ever, be boring.

If I had a program to build, and I wanted to maximize the overall excellence of that program, I think Dean Smith is the greatest coach of all time for that. But if I had one game to win, I’m taking Valvano.