Record: 33-4, 14-2 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Lost in semifinal
NCAA Tournament: Won
Final AP Ranking: 2
All-ACC Players: Raymond Felton (1st), Sean May (1st), Jawad Williams (3rd), Rashad McCants (3rd)
All-Americans: Sean May (2nd)
Which team was better, 2005 or 2009 North Carolina? It’s a tough, tough call. Both teams lost four games, both lost in the semis of the ACC Tournament, both went on to win the national championship. Both were inside-oriented teams who didn’t shoot a lot of threes, but were efficient when they did. Both teams played at a lightning-quick tempo led by a blindingly fast point guard. Both teams were experienced, returning pretty much everyone from the year before.
One difference you can point out is that the 2009 team was everybody’s preseason #1, because the 2008 team was so good and everybody was back. The 2005 team wasn’t like that. The 2004 team was very good, but their 19-11 record didn’t show it. They had played the toughest schedule in the country and lost a bunch of close games in a ridiculously good ACC. I don’t want to say the 2005 team flew under the radar – they were preseason #4 – but they weren’t the odds-on favorites to win the national championship.
In particular, the 2004 team did not have a championship-caliber defense. They gave up 75 points per game and were 228th among Division I teams in opponents’ Effective FG%. If they were to take a step forward, Roy was going to have to get them guarding better.
It was tough to get a read on this team early. Their first game was a mystifying 11-point loss to Santa Clara, a game the Heels scheduled on their way out to Maui. They didn’t lose another non-conference game, but the schedule wasn’t that difficult. They got a nice win over Kentucky, but that was the only ranked non-conference team they played. Going into conference play, they were ranked third in the nation.
After opening with home wins over Maryland and Georgia Tech, the Tar Heels traveled to Winston-Salem to take on fourth-ranked Wake Forest. Chris Paul dominated the game, tallying 26 points, 8 assists, and 5 steals against just 1 turnover in leading the Demon Deacons to 95-82 win.
After that setback, the Tar Heels got back to pounding the rest of the ACC, winning their next five games by an average of 22 points. They were 18-2 going into their annual visit to Cameron Indoor to take on 17-2 Duke. Carolina came out on the short end of an ugly, grinding 71-70 game that dropped Roy Williams to 0-3 against his archrivals.
The Tar Heels quickly got back to their winning ways, running their record to 25-3 going into the rematch with the Blue Devils. This one was a Blue Blood classic. With 19 seconds left and Carolina down by two, Felton was fouled. He made the first and missed the second. Somehow Marvin Williams came out of a scramble with the ball and sank the game-winner.
“The put-back that Marvin Williams had at the end of the game at the Smith Center was the loudest moment of any arena I’ve ever seen in my life,” [Roy] Williams recalled. “Whether it was Allen Fieldhouse, Rupp Arena, Stillwater for Oklahoma State, at that moment, it was the loudest I’d ever heard a basketball arena be and what a great win and thrill it was for us that day.”
In the ACC Tournament, the second-ranked Tar Heels played a terrible semifinal game against Georgia Tech. The Jackets advanced behind a game-high (and, probably safe to say, career high) 35 from Will Bynum.
After two easy games, a talented Villanova team awaited in the Sweet 16. The Tar Heels survived this one 67-66, not without help from a controversial traveling call that negated a potential tying bucket for the Wildcats. The regional final was another battle, this time with Wisconsin. Sean May had 29 to lead the Tar Heels to an 84-78 victory and a berth in the Final Four against Michigan State. After trailing at half, Carolina caught fire in the second half and sprinted to an 87-71 win.
And so the final that everyone wanted was set. Illinois and Carolina had been the two best teams in the country all year. The 37-1 and top-ranked Illini were talented, experienced, big, and tough. Their guard trio of Luther Head, Deron Williams, and Dee Brown was perhaps unlike anything we’ve ever seen in college basketball. Try to find another team with three guards who each averaged over 12 points and 3.5 assists per game.
Carolina dominated the first half, running out to a 13-point lead. Illinois used a 10-0 run midway through the second half to tie the game at 65. The Heels retook the lead on a Felton three, but Illinois battled back again to tie it at 70 on a three by Head with 2:32 remaining. The Illini wouldn’t score again. Marvin Williams tipped in a wild McCants miss, and that’s all the Tar Heels needed. Illinois missed several decent-to-good looks in the last two minutes, Felton added the final margin at the line, and Roy Williams had his first national championship.
Sean May‘s 2005 tournament performance is arguably the greatest ever by an ACC player. That is a strong statement, but I stand by it. In six games he averaged 22 points and 11 rebounds on 67% shooting. In the final, he scored 26 on 10-for-11. I covered this topic in more depth in my ACC 100 post on Sean May.