Record: 37-3, 12-2 (1st place tie)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in national final
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: Johnny Dawkins (1st), Mark Alarie (1st)
All-Americans: Johnny Dawkins (1st)
At some point, I have to do a post or series of posts on the best years ever for the ACC. It seems like every year I look at from the mid-1970s through the early 2000s, I can’t believe how good the league was. 1986 is like that.
At the top of the league, Duke, Carolina, and Georgia Tech were in the Top 10 all year long, every single poll. Those three teams collectively also held down the #1 ranking all year. Georgia Tech was #1 preseason; they quickly ceded it to Carolina, who held it until mid-February, handing it off to Duke, who held it the rest of the way.
After the big three, you had NC State, Virginia, and Maryland. NC State finished 7-7 in the ACC, but they were ranked much of the year, had non-conference wins over #12 UNLV and #16 Louisville, and reached the Elite Eight. Maryland had Len Bias, and the best they could do was 6-8 and a 6th place (out of eight) ACC finish.
Shoot, seventh-place Clemson was a good team, and they went 3-11 in the conference. They beat 32-3 Bradley on a neutral court and made the third round of the NIT.
(I will concede that last-place Wake Forest was terrible.)
Duke’s only two regular season losses were back-to-back in mid-January. After a 16-0 start, they went to Chapel Hill to play also-undefeated Carolina. It was, not coincidentally, the first game in the Dean Dome. The Tar Heels pulled it out 95-92. Then the Blue Devils had to go to Atlanta to face #4 Georgia Tech, and they dropped that one as well.
They wouldn’t lose again until the national championship game. On the back nine of the schedule, they picked off Georgia Tech easily in the rematch, won a squeaker at NC State, notched nonconference wins against ranked opponents in Notre Dame and Oklahoma, and closed the regular season with an 82-74 Senior Day win over the Tar Heels.
The ACC Tournament final was a rubber match with defending champion Georgia Tech. If you’re like me – an old guy who grew up with the 1980s and 1990s ACC – go back and watch this game. It will remind you of everything you loved about ACC basketball. What stood out to me was how good Georgia Tech was. Mark Price, John Salley, Duane Ferrell, Tom Hammonds, and Bruce Dalrymple? That’s a heckuva team. It was a one possession game for most of the second half. In the last four minutes or so, the teams kept trading the lead. It came down to one possession. After a slick turnaround by Alarie gave Duke a one-point lead, Cremins called timeout with 37 seconds left to set up a play. He wanted to get a shot for Price, but Dawkins denied it. Price dished to Craig Neal, who was on the floor only because Dalrymple had fouled out. Neal’s contested 17-footer was well short, Duke grabbed the rebound, Georgia Tech had to foul, Dawkins made the free throws (of course), and that was the ballgame. No three-pointer, so if you were down three with less than ten seconds left, the game was basically over.
In the NCAAs, after a first round scare against Mississippi Valley State in which Duke didn’t take the lead until midway through the second half, the Blue Devils mostly coasted through the rest of the region, taking advantage of some upsets elsewhere in the bracket and playing a relatively easy schedule (including a regional final win over David Robinson and Navy) to reach the Final Four.
That set up a titanic Final Four showdown with second-ranked Kansas. Duke had beaten the Jayhawks all the way back on December 1. Since then, Kansas had lost only two more games and were riding a 16-game winning streak. It came down to a few possessions at the end of the game. Freshman Danny Ferry made a couple of big plays, Kansas wasn’t able to convert a few opportunities, and the Blue Devils advanced to the national championship game.
Duke led for most of the game, but it was never a comfortable lead, and Louisville just executed a little bit better in the last few minutes of the game. Duke had good looks down 66-65 and 68-65, but they wouldn’t go down, and that was the game. In the final analysis, Duke’s interior defense didn’t get it done. Louisville’s frontcourt of Pervis Ellison, Herbert Crook, and Billy Thompson had 48 points on 21-for-31 from the field. There were too many point-blank looks. Part of it is that Jay Bilas and Mark Alarie were in foul trouble for much of the game which may have forced them to play softer than they normally would. Regardless, Duke still could’ve won the game by knocking down a couple of open shots late, but it didn’t happen. They were a better team than Louisville, but they weren’t better on that particular night.
For more context on this team, check out my post on Johnny Dawkins where I wrote in depth about the Duke Class of ’86. That group of Dawkins, Alarie, Bilas, and David Henderson was exceptional. But they needed Tommy Amaker to get them over the top. Speaking of Amaker, remember the pass-first point guard? The floor general and defensive stalwart who had as many assists as points? The ACC had a lot of those guys over the years – Amaker, Steve Blake, Jimmy Black, Craig Neal, Derrick Phelps, Steve Wojciechowski… is it just me, or is that type of player gone now, or at least rarer?