Tag: greatest teams

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.

Record: 33-7, 14-4 (2nd place)
ACC Tournament: Lost in semifinals
NCAA Tournament: Won
Final AP Ranking: 6
All-ACC Players: Justin Jackson (1st), Joel Berry (2nd)
All-Americans: Justin Jackson (1st)

This was a throwback team. In an era when many of the top programs were full of one-and-done freshmen, this team played mostly juniors and seniors. In an era when teams emphasized the efficiency of the three-point shot, this team played inside out. It wasn’t that they couldn’t shoot threes; it was more like, why bother? We’re bigger than you, so we’ll get it inside, and on the off chance we miss, we’ll just get the rebound and try again. Of all the great rebounding teams Roy Williams had, this one may have been the best. They led the nation in offensive rebound percentage at 41.3% – 12% higher than the D-1 average of 29.3%. That means that 41.3% of the time they missed a shot, they got their own rebound. That’s a lot of extra shots.

They were deep. They played nine guys consistently until Kenny Williams got hurt, and then they played eight the rest of the way. Justin Jackson and Joel Berry were the stars. Jackson had one of the great breakout years in the history of the league. I would compare it to Josh Howard in 2003 or Chris Carrawell in 2000. He was pretty good before that, but there was nothing to indicate he was suddenly going to be a first team All-American.

They were skilled with the ball. They were 2nd in Division 1 in assists and 296th in turnovers. They were sneaky good in this regard; no single player was in the Top 10 in the league in assists per game, but five players averaged 2+ assists per game.

But the (not-so-)secret weapons were Kennedy Meeks and Isaiah Hicks. There wasn’t another team in the country that had two big men of this quality. Meeks was the rebounding machine and the better defender while Hicks was the more skilled offensive player. Between the two of them, they dominated the interior.

Going into the NCAA Tournament, they were ranked sixth in the AP poll. They had lost seven games, which is a lot for a #1 seed, but they got a lot of credit for strength of schedule. Prior to the tourney, they had already played 17 games against teams ranked in the Top 50 at kenpom. The ACC was really deep that year with eleven teams in kenpom’s Top 55, nine of which would go on to make the NCAA Tournament.

They survived a tough second round game against Arkansas. The Razorbacks led 65-60 with 3:28 remaining, but they didn’t score again. The Tar Heels had a much easier time of it in a Sweet 16 win over Butler where they were in control all the way. That set up a titanic regional final showdown with a Kentucky team that had beaten the Tar Heels 103-100 in the best game of the regular season. This team was loaded, with freshmen Bam Adebayo, De’Aaron Fox, and Malik Monk, who had dropped 47 on the Tar Heels in the regular season game. Just like the Arkansas game, the Tar Heels trailed by five in the closing minutes, and just like the Arkansas game, they went on a 12-0 run late to seize control of the game. Luke Maye was tremendous off the bench.

First up in the Final Four were the 9th-ranked Oregon Ducks, who had just knocked off #1 seed Kansas to win the Midwest region. Carolina didn’t shoot it well, but behind a monster game from Meeks, they dominated the interior. The Tar Heels took control early in the second half and although Oregon kept within striking distance, they could never close the gap. It was a game that wasn’t quite as close as the final one-point margin indicated.

In the final they faced a Gonzaga team that had lost one game all year. The ‘Zags led most of the first half, but the Tar Heels surged into the lead early in the second, and from there it was as close as could be. From about the 17:00 mark, no team had more than a four-point lead until the very end of the game. The game was disjointed and ugly, with 44 fouls called and neither team shooting well. In the end, it came down to the last few possessions, and like the Arkansas and Kentucky games, the Tar Heels knew how to close.

This team wasn’t stacked with NBA players. They had plenty of talent, mind you, but it wasn’t the overwhelming talent of a Duke or a Kentucky. What they had was a hard-nosed, cohesive, experienced, gritty, skilled group that had come within a hair’s breadth of winning the national championship in 2016 and came back determined to finish the job.

Record: 23-5, 9-3 (2nd place)
ACC Tournament: Lost in final
NCAA Tournament: Did not make it
Final AP Ranking: 4
All-ACC Players: John Lucas (1st), Len Elmore (1st), Tom McMillen (2nd)
All-Americans: Len Elmore (2nd)

They say timing is everything. Perhaps there is no better illustration than the 1974 Maryland Terrapins.

Here is a team that featured three players (Tom McMillen, Len Elmore, John Lucas) who were named to the ACC 50th Anniversary team of the 50 greatest players in ACC history. The only other teams who can claim that are the Laettner/Hurley/Hill Duke teams and the Worthy/Perkins/Jordan Carolina team. They are one of only two teams in my Top 25 (can you guess the other?) who did not win the ACC championship or make the Final Four. If you could pick this team up and time travel to another season, they would have been the best team in the country and the favorite to win a national championship.

But in 1974, they were not the best team in the country, or even the second-best. They were stuck behind UCLA, who had merely won 76 straight games and the previous seven national championships and had one of the greatest players in the history of college basketball in Bill Walton. And they were stuck behind NC State, who would break that streak of national championships and was led by another of the greatest players in the history of college basketball in David Thompson. The Terrapins lost five games that season: one at UCLA by a point, three to NC State, and one at fourth-ranked North Carolina.

Both of their regular season matchups with NC State followed similar scripts: tense, tight, and too much David Thompson. In the first game, DT scored 41 on 14-for-20 from the field; in the second, he went for 39 on 16-for-26. The best player, in the biggest game, doing his thing. The Wolfpack needed every bit of it to overcome subpar performances by Tommy Burleson. The Newland, NC senior shot 3-for-19 in the first game and scored only 11 in the second.

The ACC Tournament, of course, was everything. The big storyline was whether Maryland could finally get over the hump against NC State. Including the 1973 season, they were now 0-5 against Thompson. With all the attention on Maryland and NC State, North Carolina probably felt overlooked and ignored. The Tar Heels had been ranked in the top 5 all season and hadn’t lost to anyone other than NC State and Maryland. So when Maryland and Carolina faced off in the semis, it was a titanic game in its own right. Both teams had been swept by NC State; they had split with each other; and the only other loss by either team was Maryland’s one-point loss at UCLA. Maryland was ranked #4 and Carolina #6.

It was an absolute beatdown. Maryland put up 105 points, shot 63% from the field, and all five starters scored at least 17 points, which is pretty incredible if you think about it. It was one of the worst beatings that a Dean Smith-coached team ever suffered.

It’s worth pointing out that by this point in the season, Maryland was playing five guys. That’s it. Against Carolina, their starters played 196 of the 200 minutes. The only reason Lefty took a starter out was foul trouble, and sometimes not even then; he would just play the guy until he fouled out. They were supposed to have Wilson Washington, a highly touted freshman big man from Norfolk, but Washington left after playing one game and eventually transferred to Old Dominion (where he would lead the Monarchs to a Division II national championship).

As for the final, I don’t have anything fresh or new to say about it. Jack McCallum of Sports Illustrated wrote a fine article about it in 1998, and I would encourage you to read that. Or just watch the game. It really was that good, and Maryland really was the most deserving team ever to miss the NCAA Tournament.

One interesting coda that fans might not realize is that Maryland did go to the tournament in both 1973 and 1975. In 1973, they were the runner-up to NC State but got the bid because of NC State’s probation. In 1975, they were the first ever at-large bid from the ACC. So at least all of these great players did get an opportunity to play in the NCAAs. Both teams lost in the regional final. Without doing an exhaustive study, I would conjecture that Lefty is the greatest coach who never made the Final Four. His teams went 0-4 in regional finals (two at Davidson, two at Maryland).

Record: 32-4, 14-0 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Lost in final
NCAA Tournament: Lost in Elite 8
Final AP Ranking: 2
All-ACC Players: Joe Wolf (1st), Kenny Smith (1st), JR Reid (2nd)
All-Americans: Kenny Smith (1st)

North Carolina in the 1980s is probably the greatest decade that any ACC team ever had. If we’re allowed to cheat a little bit and look at just the nine-year period from 1981 to 1989, the Tar Heels:

• were ranked in the Top 10 in the final AP poll every year
• made the Sweet 16 every year, nine-for-nine
• went 101-25 in the ACC (this is mind-boggling considering how good the ACC was)

And yet… after 1982, the Tar Heels had very little to show for all that regular season excellence. They lost in the regionals every single year, and until the 1989 team finally broke through, they couldn’t win an ACC Tournament either.

I’ve written about this era before. I don’t think there was anything particularly wrong with these teams. It was just one of those things. They got upset a few times, they ran into other really good teams a few times… suddenly in 1991 they started getting to Final Fours again, without really doing anything differently.

Two of the teams from this decade of underachievement are particularly notable: the 1984 team, which we will come to later, and this 1987 team.

They were preseason #1. Kenny Smith was the senior point guard par excellence. Joe Wolf and Dave Popson, both seniors, provided size, skill, and experience on the interior. Sophomore Jeff Lebo was a deadeye shooter. JR Reid was one of the best freshmen in the country. There was quality depth with Ranzino Smith, Scott Williams (trick shoulder and all), Curtis Hunter, and Steve Bucknall coming off the bench.

They are one of the best offensive teams in the history of the league. They are one of only seven teams, and the only UNC team, to average 90 points per game. They have the ACC record for highest Effective FG% at 58.4%. (Effective FG% accounts for the fact that threes are worth more than twos.) They averaged 21.7 assists per game, a mark that has not been equaled in the 37 years since. The starting guards, Smith and Lebo, both shot over 60% from two and 40% from three. Wolf, Reid, and Popson were all over 54%. I could go on.

The only blemishes on a 26-2 regular season were an early December loss at UCLA and Reggie Miller and a midseason loss at Notre Dame. They were barely challenged as they romped to a 14-0 ACC regular season record. Their only close game was a one-point victory over a tough, experienced Virginia team.

But the ACC championship was snatched from their grasp by their old rivals from Raleigh. NC State had somehow emerged from a turbulent regular season to make the ACC Tournament final after overtime wins over Duke and Wake. Conjuring up some classic Jimmy V magic, the Wolfpack played a nearly perfect game in the final, with the Vinny Del Negro free throws providing the final one-point margin.

The Tar Heels rebounded quickly in the NCAAs, scoring 113 in an opening round blowout of Penn and 109 in a similar dispatching of Glen Rice and Michigan. The Sweet 16 brought an opportunity to avenge their regular season loss to Notre Dame, and the Tar Heels seized it, shooting 65% from the field (15-for-18 from JR Reid) to put away the Irish.

The regional final brought a matchup against Syracuse, and it was here that North Carolina met its match. In Sherman Douglas, the Orange had someone who could kinda-sorta keep up with Kenny Smith. And going up against Derrick Coleman and Rony Seikaly, the Tar Heels were in the rare position of not being dominant inside.

It was a tremendous battle. Kenny Smith was terrific, and the front line of Reid, Wolf, and Popson didn’t play badly on offense. But this team, for all its virtues, was not particularly tough defensively on the interior, and the Orange took advantage. Coleman and Seikaly dominated the offensive glass, and that was ultimately the difference as Syracuse outlasted the Tar Heels 79-75. It was a disappointing ending, but Syracuse was outstanding. They came within a Keith Smart jumpshot of being national champions.

Effective FG% > 57%, 3-point era (since 1987):

1. UNC 1987, 58.4%
2. Notre Dame 2015, 58.3%
3. Clemson 1987, 58.3%
4. UNC 1988, 58.0%
5. Duke 1992, 57.7%
6. Virginia Tech 2018, 57.7%
7. Duke 1999, 57.4%
8. UNC 1995, 57.3%
9. Virginia Tech 2017, 57.0%

ACC Teams Averaging 90 Points per Game:

1. NC State 1973, 92.9
2. NC State 1975, 92.7
3. Duke 1965, 92.4
4. Duke 1999, 91.8
5. NC State 1974, 91.4
6. UNC 1987, 91.3
7. Duke 2001, 90.7

Record: 32-4, 15-1 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Lost in final
NCAA Tournament: Lost in Elite 8
Final AP Ranking: 3
All-ACC Players: Roshown McLeod (1st), Trajan Langdon (1st), Steve Wojciechowski (3rd)
All-Americans: None

The 1995 season was a disaster for the Duke program. The narrative is well known. Coach K had back surgery, tried to come back too soon, and had to be shut down for the season. The team was turned over to Pete Gaudet. Unfortunately for his reputation, they fell apart, finishing last in the ACC regular season.

We’ll never know what their record would have been had K been healthy, but make no mistake: this team wasn’t very good. This was not a Top 10 team that Pete Gaudet ran into the ground. Our memories tend to craft narratives that are tidier than reality, and a common one about this team is that 1995 was a one-year aberration. Not exactly. The 1996 team was 18-13, 8-8 and lost to Eastern Michigan in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. There were real problems in the program, and some rebuilding was in order. Give Coach K credit for recognizing this. I’m sure it would have been easy to tell himself that his return would solve everything. But he understood that the program had slipped since the Laettner/Hurley/Hill days. They had to look at the kids they were recruiting.

So starting in 1997, and for the next several years, he went on one of the great multiyear recruiting runs in college basketball history. Let’s take a look at the major recruits and transfers during that period and classify them as All-American, All-ACC, major contributor, or non-impact players or transfers.

Year	All-American	All-ACC	Major Contributor	Non-Impact/Transfer
1997	Chris Carrawell	Roshown McLeod Nate James		Mike Chappell
1998	Elton Brand Shane Battier	William Avery		Chris Burgess
1999			Corey Maggette
2000	Jason Williams Mike Dunleavy	Carlos Boozer		Casey Sanders Nick Horvath
2001		Chris Duhon		Andre Sweet
2002		Dahntay Jones Daniel Ewing
2003	JJ Redick Shelden Williams		Shavlik Randolph Sean Dockery	Michael Thompson
2004			Luol Deng

So in this stretch, K signed 24 big-time players. A full 14 of those players – 58% – were All-ACC players. Seven (29%) were All-Americans. Two others, Maggette and Deng, were one-and-done players who almost certainly would have reached All-ACC level had they stayed. So basically over an eight-year period, 2/3 of the players K brought in were All-ACC level players. He was bringing in an average of one All-American and one other All-ACC caliber player per year.

Don’t you wish your coach could do that?

In terms of sheer volume of really good players, it may not equal late 2010s Duke, when K was reloading his team with a handful of elite one-and-done guys every year; but in the context of the time, that’s about as good a recruiting stretch as anybody ever had.

Now, to bring it back to 1998. The 1997 team had been very good, but you get the sense that the hangover from 1995 had not worn off completely. Jeff Capel and Greg Newton were still around, and they were (perhaps to an unfair degree) strongly associated with 1995’s failure. Despite winning the ACC regular season, it was somehow unsurprising when the Blue Devils fell to 4-12 NC State in the first round of the ACC Tournament and were upset by Providence in the second round of the NCAAs. It would be left to the 1998 team to finish the task of restoring Duke to the top of the college basketball world.

Notice was served in the Maui Classic when the Blue Devils toppled #1 Arizona and usurped that ranking for themselves. This was a team that could absolutely bury you. They beat Virginia by 44, Villanova by 28, Maryland (which was ranked) by 32 and 27, Wake by 36 and 31, #12 UCLA by 36.

One team they didn’t bury was Carolina. In fact, they got buried over in Chapel Hill, 97-73, and suffered a similar if less embarrassing fate in the ACC Tournament final. Of course, that 1998 Carolina team with Jamison and Carter was itself a great team that would go on to make the Final Four.

Duke got a tough draw in the NCAA Tournament with eventual champion Kentucky being in their region. The Wildcats were the strongest of the #2 seeds and had a good argument for a #1 seed themselves. They had nearly won the national championship the previous year and had breezed through the 1998 SEC. The game was a classic. Duke led by 17 with 9:30 to go, but sparked by a flurry of threes and a flagrant foul on McLeod, Kentucky stormed back and pulled out an 86-84 victory.

Though they didn’t win the ACC Tournament or reach the Final Four, this was the team that erased any lingering memories from Duke’s mid-1990s mediocrity and re-established them as one of college basketball’s elite programs.

Record: 36-3, 14-2 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in national semifinal
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: Tyler Hansbrough (ACC POY), Wayne Ellington (2nd)
All-Americans: Tyler Hansbrough (National POY)

This was the forerunner to the 2009 national championship team. In fact, the core of that team – Tyler Hansbrough, Wayne Ellington, Ty Lawson, Danny Green, and Deon Thompson – were together for three seasons from 2007-2009. All three teams were ranked in the Top 5 and each could have won the national championship. The 2007 team, despite its youth, had a tremendous year, winning the ACC regular season and tournament and reaching a regional final. Despite the one-and-done departure of freshman Brandan Wright, expectations were sky high for the 2008 team.

They opened with 18 consecutive wins and stormed to a 32-2 record, ACC regular season and tournament titles, and a #1 national ranking. The offense was overwhelming. The Tar Heels were the best offensive rebounding team in the country, bar none. They made free throws a huge competitive advantage, leading the nation in free throws made. Hansbrough, Ellington, Green, and Lawson all shot over 80%. They led the nation in two-point field goals made and led the ACC in two-point FG%. Like many of Roy Williams’ teams, they didn’t shoot many threes, but when they did, they shot them well. They were the most efficient offense in the country according to kenpom.

There were some minor vulnerabilities lurking. They were a good defensive team, but not a great one. They gave up 80+ points an awful lot for a great team. On the interior, they lacked a real shot-blocker (this is where Wright would have come in handy), and Hansbrough was never a great defender.

It was also an unusually easy schedule for a Carolina team. They scheduled Ohio State and Kentucky on the road, which sounds tough, but those programs were having down years. Their toughest nonconference game was probably the opener at Davidson with Steph Curry. The ACC was a bit down that year; after Carolina and Duke, Clemson was pretty good, and that was about it. Carolina was the only ACC team to make it to the Sweet 16 that year. So the gaudy record was a little bit deceiving. They weren’t quite as battle-tested as you might expect a 32-2 ACC team to be.

But nitpicking aside, this team was clearly a strong contender to win the national championship. They cruised through the East region without much of a challenge, setting up a showdown with fourth-ranked Kansas in the Final Four. What followed was one of the strangest games I can ever remember watching. Kansas got out to a shocking 40-12 lead in the first half. Carolina cut the lead to all the way to five with eight minutes left, and Danny Green had a good look at a three that rimmed out that would’ve cut it to two. From that point, Kansas dominated the last eight minutes and won going away.

But it doesn’t take away from a tremendous year for this group. 36-3, ACC champions, made the Final Four, stopped only by the best team in the country and eventual champion. And with no seniors and no underclassmen leaving early, it set them up perfectly for what was to come in 2009.

Record: 31-3, 17-1 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in round of 64
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: Kyle Guy (1st), Devon Hall (2nd), Ty Jerome (3rd)
All-Americans: None

We may as well begin by acknowledging the elephant in the room. There is no consideration of 2018 Virginia that does not begin with their historic loss to UMBC. That is what most people will remember about this team: one game that overshadows everything else they accomplished. There has never been a game like that game, and perhaps there never will be. For a team like UMBC to score 53 points in the second half against the best defensive team in the country, in a game when they had everything to play for… I don’t typically look for psychological explanations for sporting events, but I don’t think this is explainable otherwise.

Even the psychological explanation is problematic. Typically when I think of sports psychology in basketball, I think of shooting under pressure. Perhaps we can all understand a poor shooting performance in a high pressure situation. But how do you explain a complete defensive breakdown in a high pressure situation? And don’t tell me it’s because De’Andre Hunter was out. I know he was an excellent player, and it hurt them, but he played only 20 minutes per game that year. They were still playing great defense when he wasn’t on the floor.

I can’t explain that game. But I do know that before that game, Virginia went 31-2. I know they played 21 games against ACC competition and won 20 of them. That record is simply too good to leave off this list.

There’s been a lot said over the years regarding Virginia’s style of play and whether it hurts them in March. It’s not just Virginia; a team’s style of play and how that affects their postseason prospects is a frequent topic of debate for sports pundits. You’ll notice that no two authorities ever seem to agree in their assessment of what particular style of play leads to postseason success. Defense wins championships, offense wins championships, the Yankees are too reliant on the home run, etc. These debates tend to be long on unsubstantiated assertions and conjecture, and short on facts.

In general, I think this kind of argument is a lot of hooey. The game is the game, and it doesn’t suddenly become a different game after the regular season. There is no particular style of play that works in the postseason.

However, there is some evidence that balanced teams tend to overperform in the postseason, and by extension, unbalanced teams tend to underperform. Balanced in this context means balanced between offense and defense. 2018 Virginia was relatively unbalanced. Kenpom had them ranked #1 in defensive efficiency and #30 in offensive efficiency.

So I don’t buy that Virginia’s style “doesn’t work in the postseason”. They won the national championship the next year with the exact same style. The difference is, the 2019 team was just better offensively and therefore was better balanced. Balanced teams are harder to game plan for, better able to compensate when something isn’t working, and therefore harder to upset.

Record: 28-5, 9-3 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in national final
Final AP Ranking: 5
All-ACC Players: Phil Ford (1st), Walter Davis (1st), Tom LaGarde (2nd)
All-Americans: Phil Ford (1st)

This team is often remembered for what might have been, but what they did accomplish was impressive enough. In case you’re unfamiliar with the details, All-ACC center Tom LaGarde injured a knee in mid-February and missed the rest of the season. Sweet-shooting Walter Davis broke his finger in the ACC Tournament against NC State. He was able to come back and play, but the injury may have hampered his effectiveness. And All-American guard Phil Ford hyperextended his elbow in the round of 16 win over Notre Dame and did not seem to be himself after that. In spite of all that adversity, the Tar Heels advanced to the national championship game before losing to Marquette.

It’s an interesting narrative, but the funny part is, Carolina won all those games, except the last one. From the time that LaGarde got hurt, they won twelve in a row. So if you’re lamenting what might’ve been, the only thing there is to lament is the national championship game. Would the Tar Heels have won it with a healthy group? I have no idea. I do think they were a better team at full strength than Marquette, but the better team doesn’t always win.

If you look at the game as it was actually played, Walter Davis played well. It’s not obvious from his stat line that he was hampered in any way. Ford, though, did not play well after the injury, and it seems likely that he was affected. The other thing this game is remembered for is Dean’s decision to go to the Four Corners midway through the second half with only a slim lead. They had used the same tactic to good effect in prior games, but this time it didn’t work. Marquette regained the lead and salted it away from the line in the last few minutes, going 23-for-25 for the game.

The attention on what might’ve been shouldn’t detract from the tremendous run this team made. In succession, they beat a really good Purdue team, #10 Notre Dame, #3 Kentucky, and #4 UNLV. The Tar Heels trailed at half in three of those four games. Davis, freshman Mike O’Koren, and senior guard John Kuester played extremely well. Ford gutted it out in spite of his elbow, and Rich Yonakor filled in admirably for LaGarde.

From the Weird Scheduling Department: Carolina’s last regular season game was a non-conference game on Sunday against #10 Louisville. Not only is it odd to have a non-conference opponent for your last regular season game and Senior Day, but they played at Duke just the day before. Why in the world would you schedule games on back-to-back days like that to finish the season? There must be a story behind that. In any case, it didn’t bother the Tar Heels, who ran away from Louisville in a game that wasn’t as close as the 96-89 score indicated.