Record: 27-5, 12-2 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in national semifinal
Final AP Ranking: 4
All-ACC Players: Charlie Scott (1st), Bill Bunting (1st), Dick Grubar (2nd)
All-Americans: Charlie Scott (2nd)
This was the third of three straight ACC Championship and Final Four teams at North Carolina. Larry Miller was gone, but the Tar Heels still had Charlie Scott, and they had three outstanding seniors in Rusty Clark, Dick Grubar, and Bill Bunting.
This trio isn’t as well known as they ought to be. They never lost an ACC Tournament game; they won the ACC regular season three times; at no time was any of their teams ranked outside the Top 10; and they reached the Final Four three times. Each of the three made All-ACC once. They were overshadowed to some degree by two all-time greats in Miller and Scott, but they were special players in their own right.
This team rolled along like a machine. They started the year ranked second in the polls and never dropped below fourth. A narrow loss to St. John’s at Madison Square Garden, a two-point game against South Carolina, and a loss to Duke in Vic Bubas’ last home game at Cameron were the only blemishes on a 22-3 regular season.
The ACC Tournament is remembered for Charlie Scott‘s 40-point game in the final against Duke. It was right up there with Randolph Childress 1995 as one of the all-time great performances in a tournament final. The other significant event in the tournament was an injury to Grubar that would keep him out of the NCAA Tournament. This meant more time for Eddie Fogler, Jim Delany (the same Jim Delany who was later commissioner of the Big Ten), and Gerald Tuttle.
On to the East Region in the NCAA Tournament. UNC as the ACC champion received a bye into the regional semifinals and a matchup with #9 Duquesne, where the Tar Heels survived a second-half Dukes comeback to eke out a one-point win. Next up was fifth-ranked Davidson in a rematch of the regional final from the prior year, won narrowly by the Tar Heels. This year’s Wildcats had beaten four ACC teams during the regular season in what turned out to be Lefty Driesell’s last season before taking the Maryland job. It was a thrilling, high scoring, back-and-forth game. In the end, there was a little too much Charlie Scott. The New York junior scored a game-high 32 and sank the decisive jumper with two seconds left. It was an especially bitter pill for Driesell, who had recruited Scott hard and was thought to have the inside track before a late push by Dean Smith convinced Scott to come to Chapel Hill.
In the Final Four, Carolina faced sixth-ranked Purdue, led by first team All-American Rick Mount. This is where Grubar’s absence finally caught up with the Tar Heels. Purdue’s backcourt of Mount and Bill Keller dominated Fogler and Tuttle, outscoring them 56-6 and forcing them into 12 turnovers. The Boilermakers pulled away in the second half to a 92-65 victory.
This team played fast. Their average of 89 points per game still ranks in the top 20 all-time in the ACC. They set league records for total field goals made (later broken by 1973 UNC) and field goals per game (later broken by 1973 NC State).
With Grubar injured, there was a built-in excuse to fail to make it to another Final Four. But they found a way, capping off an unmatched three-year run. No other ACC program has ever had a three-year stretch of winning the regular season, winning the tournament, and making the Final Four.