02-09-2005, 09:35 AM
Every generation thinks they own the exclusive rights to the time period when the Carolina basketball rivalry with Duke University burned the brightest.
You were in Chapel Hill in the 1960's? You were there for the beginning, the time period when it wasn't entirely unlikely that you'd attend a game and a brawl would break out, maybe even involving the fans.
You were in Chapel Hill in the 1970's? Eight points in 17 seconds, need anything else be said? Sweet D banked in a 30-footer and rewrote the definition of comeback.
You were in Chapel Hill in the 1980's? Maybe you saw Matt Doherty drive the length of the court in 1984 to force overtime against the Blue Devils on Senior Day at Carmichael. Or maybe you road-tripped to Atlanta to watch the 1989 ACC Tournament championship game, perhaps the most ferocious final in history.
You were in Chapel Hill in the 1990's? Then you've got fond memories of the double-overtime thriller at Cameron Indoor in 1995, a bloody Eric Montross turning back Duke in 1992.
It's a rivalry like no other in college basketball, the two combatants separated by just eight miles.
That distance has become synonymous in the national media for an implication that the two schools somehow share a brain, that the similarities extend beyond the terrific basketball traditions to an overall outlook on life.
That's not the case, as any good Tar Heel knows. The University of North Carolina has much more in common with fellow ACC member Virginia than with Duke. 82% of the latest incoming class at Chapel Hill was from the state of North Carolina. Duke's latest freshman class includes approximately the same percentage of students from the Southeast and Northeast.
Duke's total enrollment is 10,800; Carolina's is 25,494. Cameron Indoor is a bandbox that only recently received air conditioning and seats just over 9,000 spectators. The Dean Smith Center is a monument to basketball tradition, replete with vast banners, jerseys, and an expanse of light blue.
Depending on how dark you like your shade of blue, you either think that Dean Smith is a father figure who happens to be the architect of modern basketball or an underachiever blessed with great talent. You also think that Mike Krzyzewski is either a selfish, foul-mouthed salesman who values his program more than the individuals who play for him or the standard by which all college coaches will eventually be judged.
How can the spacious gap between those two perceptions and ways of life be bridged? By high-quality basketball that makes the state and, usually, the nation stop and pay attention at least twice a year.
***
It used to be that you could go to a boxing match and a Duke-Carolina basketball game would break out. The 1961 contest in Durham featured a near-brawl, with Art Heyman and Larry Brown trading shoves in the closing minutes of Duke's 81-77 victory. Fans eventually became involved in the confrontation, and it took a passel of policemen to restore order.
There was no fight in the 1965 game, but there was one of the biggest wins of Dean Smith's young career. The fourth-year head coach had been hung in effigy following a Jan. 6 loss to Wake Forest, and there was some unrest about the direction of the basketball program. That loss had necessitated a meeting for Smith with athletic director Chuck Erickson, and although it ended on amicable terms, no employee wants to have a meeting with his boss just hours after a difficult setback.
It didn't appear that Duke was an appropriate tonic. The Blue Devils were ranked sixth in the nation and had made an appearance in the national championship game the previous spring. They featured Steve Vacendak and Jack Marin and were probably salivating at the thought of a 6-6 Carolina team that looked to be in disarray.
"We were a fired-up group when we got there," Smith wrote in his book, A Coach's Life. "I would prefer not to be hung in effigy to motivate a team, but that incident helped."
Smith designed a patient offense and sticky defense that seemed to frustrate the Devils. While the Heels were sinking over 50 percent of their shots, Duke hit just 26 of 66 field goal attempts, enabling Carolina to pull out a 65-62 victory.
That same year, there was a player on the UNC freshman squad who would prove to be an important part of the Carolina-Duke rivalry. Larry Miller had been an outstanding high school player in Catasaqua, Pennsylvania. Word had it that Miller was in the bag to attend Duke; Smith and assistant coach Ken Rosemond had other ideas. After an intense recruiting battle, Miller surprised most observers by picking the Tar Heels. It was the first head-to-head recruiting victory for Smith over Duke and it set the stage for the next three decades of the rivalry.
Each school would get their share of outstanding players over the ensuing years, most of whom would contribute in some way to the terrific Duke-Carolina rivalry. The watershed year for the battles between the rivals was 1974, which saw two fantastic games. The two teams actually met for the first time on Jan. 5 in Greensboro in the Big Four Tournament. Carolina won that game 84-75, and although it was an important win, there was no hint of the double helping of classics that were to come.
The Big Four games did not count in the ACC standings. The first of the two league meetings, a Jan. 19 battle at Cameron Indoor, has been almost forgotten in the glow of the game later that season. But the initial contest was a masterpiece in its own right. Tied at 71 with just a few seconds to play, Bobby Jones stole an inbounds pass and drove to the basket for a game-clinching off-balance layup that sealed a 73-71 victory.
It was a heart-pounding finish, culminating with Jones dashing halfway down the court for the game-winning layup and then continuing his sprint, Forrest Gump-style, straight into the locker room. He stopped running long enough to play in the March 2 rematch at Carmichael Auditorium, a game that might be the signature moment in the history of the rivalry, at least from the Carolina perspective.
With Carolina trailing by eight points with 17 seconds to play and without the luxuries of the present-day three-point shot, the following moments unfolded this way:
# After a Tar Heel timeout, Jones made a pair of free throws, trimming the margin to six.
# Walter Davis intercepted a pass and fed John Kuester for a basket, cutting the deficit to four points. Timeout, Carolina.
# Duke turned the ball over on the inbounds play and Jones put back an offensive rebound to cut the Blue Devil lead to two points with six seconds to play. Timeout, Carolina--Smith was already reaping the benefits of his strategy of conserving timeouts for the end of a game.
# Duke's Pete Kramer, a reliable foul shooter, was fouled. He missed the front end of a one-and-one and Ed Stahl snatched the rebound. The Heels called their final timeout.
# Smith drew up a play that used Jones as a decoy. Davis got a good look at the basket from 30 feet away and banked in the game-tying shot, sending Carmichael into a state of pandemonium.
What has been almost forgotten after the great comeback in regulation was that Duke held a four-point lead in overtime before eventually running out of gas and losing 96-92. From that moment on, "eight points in 17 seconds" became a Tar Heel mantra. Never was a game out of reach, never should defeat be conceded.
The 1980s saw a new participant in the rivalry, as Duke hired a little-known coach named Michael Krzyzewski before the 1980-81 season. He struggled initially, losing eight of his first nine games to Smith and the Tar Heels. Only a Gene Banks jumper in the last second of regulation in 1981 that tied the score and a Banks offensive rebound and putback in the extra period kept him from starting out 0-9 against Smith.
In 1984, the intensity reached its current levels. Carolina was on the verge of becoming just the sixth team to finish the ACC regular season unbeaten when they hosted Duke on Senior Day on March 3. Matt Doherty dribbled the length of the court and hit a 14-footer over Dan Meagher with one second remaining to force overtime, and the Michael Jordan-led Tar Heels eventually prevailed 96-83 in double overtime.
Around that same time, Krzyzewski made his legendary "double standard" comment that implied that there were two sets of rules in the ACC: one for UNC and one for every other team in the league. That was the first salvo in a battle that continued until Smith's retirement in 1997. Carolina and Duke played one of the most heated ACC Tournament finals in history in 1989, but it was almost overshadowed by the off-court battle between the two coaches. After taking offense to "J.R. Can't Reid" signs at Cameron that he felt were racially motivated, Smith pointed out that the combined SAT scores of Reid and fellow Tar Heel Scott Williams were higher than those of Duke's Christian Laettner and Danny Ferry. That incited Blue Devil fans, who felt Smith was using confidential information to his advantage.
With that as prelude, the 1989 final was a classic--an ugly classic, but a classic. Reid and Ferry banged under the basket all afternoon, Phil Henderson drew a technical foul as emotions rose, and the game wasn't over until Steve Bucknall and King Rice converted key free throws down the stretch. Actually, it wasn't over even then. Danny Ferry very nearly threw in a three-quarters court shot at the buzzer that would have tied the game.
"I don't know if this old man's heart could have taken it if Ferry had made that one," Smith said after his team's 77-74 triumph.
The battles--both between the coaches and the players--would continue. Smith and Krzyzewski would later disagree about the cleverness of the Cameron students, beer ads on ACC telecasts, and several other issues. But the memorable moments between the two teams continued. In 1995, it was Duke overcoming a 17-point first half lead (and Jerry Stackhouse's incredible one-handed reverse thunder dunk over Eric Meek) at Cameron to build a 12-point second-half advantage. The Tar Heels built an eight-point lead in the first overtime before Jeff Capel hit a running midcourt shot to tie the game and force a second overtime, during which Carolina eventually prevailed, 102-100.
Three years later, the two teams split their regular-season meetings and were clearly the class of the conference. They met in the ACC Tournament final for a game that showed the true capabilities of that 1998 Carolina squad, which featured Antawn Jamison, Vince Carter, Shammond Williams, and Ed Cota. Jamison was dominant in the third meeting between the two teams, posting 22 points and 18 rebounds in Carolina's 83-68 victory.
Although the decade is still young, the 2000's have already seen one classic--Carolina's 85-83 win at Cameron in 2001 behind 24 points and 16 rebounds from Joseph Forte and 14 points and ten rebounds (and two clinching free throws) from Brendan Haywood. That win enabled current students to make the same boast as their predecessors, that they and they alone had seen the Duke-Carolina rivalry at its best.
And maybe, just maybe, each generation has been correct.
You were in Chapel Hill in the 1960's? You were there for the beginning, the time period when it wasn't entirely unlikely that you'd attend a game and a brawl would break out, maybe even involving the fans.
You were in Chapel Hill in the 1970's? Eight points in 17 seconds, need anything else be said? Sweet D banked in a 30-footer and rewrote the definition of comeback.
You were in Chapel Hill in the 1980's? Maybe you saw Matt Doherty drive the length of the court in 1984 to force overtime against the Blue Devils on Senior Day at Carmichael. Or maybe you road-tripped to Atlanta to watch the 1989 ACC Tournament championship game, perhaps the most ferocious final in history.
You were in Chapel Hill in the 1990's? Then you've got fond memories of the double-overtime thriller at Cameron Indoor in 1995, a bloody Eric Montross turning back Duke in 1992.
It's a rivalry like no other in college basketball, the two combatants separated by just eight miles.
That distance has become synonymous in the national media for an implication that the two schools somehow share a brain, that the similarities extend beyond the terrific basketball traditions to an overall outlook on life.
That's not the case, as any good Tar Heel knows. The University of North Carolina has much more in common with fellow ACC member Virginia than with Duke. 82% of the latest incoming class at Chapel Hill was from the state of North Carolina. Duke's latest freshman class includes approximately the same percentage of students from the Southeast and Northeast.
Duke's total enrollment is 10,800; Carolina's is 25,494. Cameron Indoor is a bandbox that only recently received air conditioning and seats just over 9,000 spectators. The Dean Smith Center is a monument to basketball tradition, replete with vast banners, jerseys, and an expanse of light blue.
Depending on how dark you like your shade of blue, you either think that Dean Smith is a father figure who happens to be the architect of modern basketball or an underachiever blessed with great talent. You also think that Mike Krzyzewski is either a selfish, foul-mouthed salesman who values his program more than the individuals who play for him or the standard by which all college coaches will eventually be judged.
How can the spacious gap between those two perceptions and ways of life be bridged? By high-quality basketball that makes the state and, usually, the nation stop and pay attention at least twice a year.
***
It used to be that you could go to a boxing match and a Duke-Carolina basketball game would break out. The 1961 contest in Durham featured a near-brawl, with Art Heyman and Larry Brown trading shoves in the closing minutes of Duke's 81-77 victory. Fans eventually became involved in the confrontation, and it took a passel of policemen to restore order.
There was no fight in the 1965 game, but there was one of the biggest wins of Dean Smith's young career. The fourth-year head coach had been hung in effigy following a Jan. 6 loss to Wake Forest, and there was some unrest about the direction of the basketball program. That loss had necessitated a meeting for Smith with athletic director Chuck Erickson, and although it ended on amicable terms, no employee wants to have a meeting with his boss just hours after a difficult setback.
It didn't appear that Duke was an appropriate tonic. The Blue Devils were ranked sixth in the nation and had made an appearance in the national championship game the previous spring. They featured Steve Vacendak and Jack Marin and were probably salivating at the thought of a 6-6 Carolina team that looked to be in disarray.
"We were a fired-up group when we got there," Smith wrote in his book, A Coach's Life. "I would prefer not to be hung in effigy to motivate a team, but that incident helped."
Smith designed a patient offense and sticky defense that seemed to frustrate the Devils. While the Heels were sinking over 50 percent of their shots, Duke hit just 26 of 66 field goal attempts, enabling Carolina to pull out a 65-62 victory.
That same year, there was a player on the UNC freshman squad who would prove to be an important part of the Carolina-Duke rivalry. Larry Miller had been an outstanding high school player in Catasaqua, Pennsylvania. Word had it that Miller was in the bag to attend Duke; Smith and assistant coach Ken Rosemond had other ideas. After an intense recruiting battle, Miller surprised most observers by picking the Tar Heels. It was the first head-to-head recruiting victory for Smith over Duke and it set the stage for the next three decades of the rivalry.
Each school would get their share of outstanding players over the ensuing years, most of whom would contribute in some way to the terrific Duke-Carolina rivalry. The watershed year for the battles between the rivals was 1974, which saw two fantastic games. The two teams actually met for the first time on Jan. 5 in Greensboro in the Big Four Tournament. Carolina won that game 84-75, and although it was an important win, there was no hint of the double helping of classics that were to come.
The Big Four games did not count in the ACC standings. The first of the two league meetings, a Jan. 19 battle at Cameron Indoor, has been almost forgotten in the glow of the game later that season. But the initial contest was a masterpiece in its own right. Tied at 71 with just a few seconds to play, Bobby Jones stole an inbounds pass and drove to the basket for a game-clinching off-balance layup that sealed a 73-71 victory.
It was a heart-pounding finish, culminating with Jones dashing halfway down the court for the game-winning layup and then continuing his sprint, Forrest Gump-style, straight into the locker room. He stopped running long enough to play in the March 2 rematch at Carmichael Auditorium, a game that might be the signature moment in the history of the rivalry, at least from the Carolina perspective.
With Carolina trailing by eight points with 17 seconds to play and without the luxuries of the present-day three-point shot, the following moments unfolded this way:
# After a Tar Heel timeout, Jones made a pair of free throws, trimming the margin to six.
# Walter Davis intercepted a pass and fed John Kuester for a basket, cutting the deficit to four points. Timeout, Carolina.
# Duke turned the ball over on the inbounds play and Jones put back an offensive rebound to cut the Blue Devil lead to two points with six seconds to play. Timeout, Carolina--Smith was already reaping the benefits of his strategy of conserving timeouts for the end of a game.
# Duke's Pete Kramer, a reliable foul shooter, was fouled. He missed the front end of a one-and-one and Ed Stahl snatched the rebound. The Heels called their final timeout.
# Smith drew up a play that used Jones as a decoy. Davis got a good look at the basket from 30 feet away and banked in the game-tying shot, sending Carmichael into a state of pandemonium.
What has been almost forgotten after the great comeback in regulation was that Duke held a four-point lead in overtime before eventually running out of gas and losing 96-92. From that moment on, "eight points in 17 seconds" became a Tar Heel mantra. Never was a game out of reach, never should defeat be conceded.
The 1980s saw a new participant in the rivalry, as Duke hired a little-known coach named Michael Krzyzewski before the 1980-81 season. He struggled initially, losing eight of his first nine games to Smith and the Tar Heels. Only a Gene Banks jumper in the last second of regulation in 1981 that tied the score and a Banks offensive rebound and putback in the extra period kept him from starting out 0-9 against Smith.
In 1984, the intensity reached its current levels. Carolina was on the verge of becoming just the sixth team to finish the ACC regular season unbeaten when they hosted Duke on Senior Day on March 3. Matt Doherty dribbled the length of the court and hit a 14-footer over Dan Meagher with one second remaining to force overtime, and the Michael Jordan-led Tar Heels eventually prevailed 96-83 in double overtime.
Around that same time, Krzyzewski made his legendary "double standard" comment that implied that there were two sets of rules in the ACC: one for UNC and one for every other team in the league. That was the first salvo in a battle that continued until Smith's retirement in 1997. Carolina and Duke played one of the most heated ACC Tournament finals in history in 1989, but it was almost overshadowed by the off-court battle between the two coaches. After taking offense to "J.R. Can't Reid" signs at Cameron that he felt were racially motivated, Smith pointed out that the combined SAT scores of Reid and fellow Tar Heel Scott Williams were higher than those of Duke's Christian Laettner and Danny Ferry. That incited Blue Devil fans, who felt Smith was using confidential information to his advantage.
With that as prelude, the 1989 final was a classic--an ugly classic, but a classic. Reid and Ferry banged under the basket all afternoon, Phil Henderson drew a technical foul as emotions rose, and the game wasn't over until Steve Bucknall and King Rice converted key free throws down the stretch. Actually, it wasn't over even then. Danny Ferry very nearly threw in a three-quarters court shot at the buzzer that would have tied the game.
"I don't know if this old man's heart could have taken it if Ferry had made that one," Smith said after his team's 77-74 triumph.
The battles--both between the coaches and the players--would continue. Smith and Krzyzewski would later disagree about the cleverness of the Cameron students, beer ads on ACC telecasts, and several other issues. But the memorable moments between the two teams continued. In 1995, it was Duke overcoming a 17-point first half lead (and Jerry Stackhouse's incredible one-handed reverse thunder dunk over Eric Meek) at Cameron to build a 12-point second-half advantage. The Tar Heels built an eight-point lead in the first overtime before Jeff Capel hit a running midcourt shot to tie the game and force a second overtime, during which Carolina eventually prevailed, 102-100.
Three years later, the two teams split their regular-season meetings and were clearly the class of the conference. They met in the ACC Tournament final for a game that showed the true capabilities of that 1998 Carolina squad, which featured Antawn Jamison, Vince Carter, Shammond Williams, and Ed Cota. Jamison was dominant in the third meeting between the two teams, posting 22 points and 18 rebounds in Carolina's 83-68 victory.
Although the decade is still young, the 2000's have already seen one classic--Carolina's 85-83 win at Cameron in 2001 behind 24 points and 16 rebounds from Joseph Forte and 14 points and ten rebounds (and two clinching free throws) from Brendan Haywood. That win enabled current students to make the same boast as their predecessors, that they and they alone had seen the Duke-Carolina rivalry at its best.
And maybe, just maybe, each generation has been correct.