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.