They tied for the regular season crown. The ACC Tournament Championship is on the line and the number one seed in the NCAA East Region. Number 7 in the national rankings versus number 5. And what a game it was!
First, we have a preview of the game, then, two game reports...and a classic SI cover to boot.
For The ACC Championship
Duke To Battle UNC
By MAC McLEOD
ITEM Sports Editor
GREENSBORO, N.C. -- With North Carolina and Duke ending the regular season in a tie for the the top spot in the Atlantic Coast Conference, it was only natural that they be expected to play for the championship in tonight's tournament title game. What was somewhat out of the ordinary was the way the two powers reached the big contest.
Carolina, the team that won the draw for the bye got into action Friday after sitting out Thursday's opening round and simply crushed a very talented but sometimes suspect Maryland team 102-79. It was by far the biggest rout in the tournament so far.
In the second of the second round games, Duke, the team expected at the start of the season to take top honors hands down had its hands full with cellar dweller North Carolina State before coming away with a 62-59 decision.
From the opening toss to the final buzzer, the Carolina-Maryland game was never really a contest. The scrappy Tar Heels did just about everything necessary to win a game and it with the perfection of a diamond cutter.
And once they got the lead, although they at one point did go into their famous four corners offense, continued to build on it.
Maryland, on the other hand, was obviously frustrated and the longer it went the worse it got.
"They beat the devil out of us," confessed Maryland head coach Lefty Driesell. "I believe they could have beaten the Washington Bullets tonight. They just played super. It seems like they shot one hundred percent (62.5) and I can't remember a team of mine shooting so poorly (37.0)."
That was about all the colorful Driesell had to say and that was about all he could say. There was no getting around the fact the for the ninth straight time his Terrapins were no match for North Carolina. In the end, not a single member of the Maryland team has ever beaten a North Carolina squad. That in itself is getting to be a sticky subject around Washington.
For Carolina's Dean Smith it was a rewarding victory.
"It was one of our better games this year," Smith recalled and then couldn't really recall one any better. "I would like to play that well in the finals. Maryland has had a fine season; they beat Notre Dame and Duke but I believe they had an off night tonight."
Before the floor had time to cool down, Duke and State went at it for the other final berth and although the Wolf Pack had won but three games in the conference during the regular season, no one in the building could have guessed it.
From start to finish, the Wolf Pack played the game to perfection with the only exception being that they lost.
They shot extremely well (54.5) and outrebounded Duke by one 26-25, were very patient, and even ran the stall offense almost flawlessly.
"We played about as well as we can play," admitted State coach Norm Sloan. "I thought it was almost a perfect game by both teams. I believe either team could have won. They only thing I feel badly about is the fact that we lost."
The game itself was a nip-and-tuck affair all the way for most of the forty minutes. The only lead was either only one or three points shared by both teams and the biggest lead was five held by Duke on several occasions, but most importantly late in the game.
With 2:30 remaining, the Blue Devils led by five, 50-45, but one minute later Hawkeye Whitney sank a pair of free throws that tied it at 53. From that point on the lead, always in Duke's favor, never got higher than three. At the end it was foul shooting that pulled it out.
"Bob Bender's free throws at the end were very important keys," confessed Duke coach Bill Foster. "We played the final minute without Jimmy Spanarkel (he sustained a slight injury to his eye) and that was a new experience for us under pressure. I agree with Norm that it was a very well played game by both teams."
But all of that is over now. It's all in the past and tonight's game promises to be another in a series of great Duke-Carolina contests.
When they met in the season's final regular season game, Carolina got behind by two points at the start but froze the ball for much of the first half and went to the dressing room without scoring a single point. Duke fans kept reminding Carolina fans about the fact, but if the Tar Heels come anywhere close to their performance Friday, it will be safe to say that a lot of points will be scored in both the first and second halves.
Picking a pattern for the game might be impossible. As Sloan said, "a game never goes as planned. Each one has its own personality."
That will definitely hold true tonight when two of the country's best teams battle for playing spots in the NCAA championships.
[From The Sumter Daily Item, March 3, 1979]
Carolina Tops Duke, 71-63, For Title
GREENSBORO --- Dudley Bradley's hands just wouldn't allow North Carolina to lose the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament basketball championship here Saturday night in the Coliseum.
Bradley, a 6-5 senior forward who had 88 steals during the Tar Heels' regular season, had seven more in the title game against Duke, and that, combined with his overall excellent play, carried North Carolina to its eighth championship in the tournament.
Carolina took as early lead and never trailed in the second half in upending Duke, 71-63.
Duke point guard Bob Bender was undergoing emergency appendectomy surgery at the Duke Medical Center in Durham while Bradley was sparking the Tar Heels.
Bender was taken ill "around 4:15 p.m. at the team's training meal," according to Duke coach Bill Foster. Bender was taken to a Greensboro hospital where his illness was diagnosed, then rushed to Duke. He underwent the operation at the same time the game started, according to Medical Center reports.
"Mr. Bender had his best all-around game of the season last night," said Foster. "Naturally, I would have liked to have had him in there."
Foster didn't dwell on his sudden misfortune. He was willing to give the Tar Heels their credit.
"We tried to key on Wood and O'Koren," Foster said. "But things obviously broke lose somewhere else."
The somewhere else was usually Bradley.
In addition to Bradley's seven steals, he was seven for 11 from the floor and hit two of three foul shots. He had three rebounds and just one turnover in 37 minutes of playing time. He was near-perfect and the seven league coaches voted him the tournament's Most Valuable Player, for which he received the Everett M. Case award.
"We also didn't have a good shooting game," said Foster.
His big guns -- guard Jim Spanarkel and center Mike Gminski -- both had sub-par shooting performances. Spanarkel was three for 12 from the floor and Gminski five for 11.
At the other end of the court, Carolina center Rich Yonakor was a surprising five for eight.
"We didn't expect Yonakor to score five baskets," said Foster.
If there was a key play in the game, it was a Bradley steal of a pass as Duke was on its way to an almost-certain basket on a fast break. Bradley swiped a Spanarkel pass, drove upcourt and fed teammate Al Wood for a stuff shot.
The Devils never seemed to quite recover.
The Tar Heels shot 50 percent on 26 of 52 from the floor to 22 of 49 (45 percent) for Duke. Both teams were 19 of 25 at the free throw line. Duke had a whopping rebound edge, 35-28.
The story of the game was in the turnover statistics where Duke had 14 to just seven by the Tar Heels. And the slower Blue Devils had just one steal.
There isn't any real pressure on either team since both seemed certain to get NCAA bids regardless of the game's outcome.
But Carolina has the advantage.
The Tar Heels will get a first-round bye and play at Raleigh's Reynolds Coliseum Sunday afternoon. Duke, meanwhile, will be at the mercy of the NCAA selection committee and could go to Murfreesboro, Tenn., or South Bend, Ind.
There also is a chance that the Blue Devils will play in Raleigh, but it doesn't seem likely.
"This was a thrilling win over a great Duke team," said Smith.
DUKE fg ft reb pf tp
Banks Gene 8-13 0-0 2 4 12
Dennard Kenny 1-3 0-0 2 5 2
Spanarkel Jim 3-12 7-8 2 4 13
Gminski Mike 5-11 9-13 16 1 19
Harrell John 2-3 0-0 3 3 4
Taylor Vince 5-7 3-3 4 5 13
Gray Steve 0-0 0-1 1 4 0
Goetsch Scott 0-0 0-0 0 0 0
TOTALS 22-49 19-25 35 26 63
NORTH CAROLINA fg ft reb pf tp
Colescott Dave 3-5 5-6 1 3 11
Bradley Dudley 7-11 2-3 3 3 16
Wood Al 4-12 2-4 3 3 10
O'Koren Mike 4-9 10-11 8 3 18
Budko Pete 0-2 0-0 0 1 0
Black Jimmy 0-0 0-0 0 0 0
Doughton Ged 1-2 0-0 2 0 2
Wolf Jeff 1-1 0-1 2 2 2
Virgil John 1-2 0-0 0 1 2
Yonakor Rich 5-8 0-0 6 4 10
TOTALS 26-52 19-25 26 21 71
DUKE 25 38 63
NORTH CAROLINA 31 40 71
[From The Wilmington Star-News, March 4, 1979]
O'Koren Leads Win
GREENSBORO --- Mike O'Koren looked skyward, tightly clutched a silver-colored pair of scissors and let out an excited, almost ecstatic yell.
North Carolina had beaten pre-season favorite Duke, 71-63, here at the Coliseum Saturday night and done what almost nobody back in November thought it had a real chance to do--win the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament.
And O'Koren, who had taken on more of a leadership role in this, his junior season, instead of simply scoring and in the process lost his place on the all-ACC first team, happily took his turn at cutting down the nets.
The elation hadn't dissolved even two television and one radio interviews later.
"Duke is a great team and this was a great team game," O'Koren said, after contributing 18 points, eight rebounds, two assists, a blocked shot and a steal. "It was head-to-head the whole way, but we had an edge because we were never down in the game."
Carolina was down once, at 2-0. Except for that, a tie at two and a tie at 39, the Tar Heels led the entire game with the margin reaching as much as 10.
The Blue Devils struggles to the very end, however, scrambling over loose balls, roaring inside on offense and fouling a Tar Heel almost as soon as one touched the ball in the final two minutes.
Carolina was set up for O'Koren to take the in-bounds pass most of the time, and he was the one most-often fouled.
"I knew they were going to foul me," O'Koren said. "I felt comfortable and just tried to concentrate. You feel a lot of pressure when you're on the line like that, but I've worked on my foul shots and I'm glad I was able to put them in."
O'Koren said he felt a three-point play by Al Wood early in the second half was one of the keys.
Duke had rallied from a 39-30 deficit to tie the game at 39 with 13:44 to play, but Wood countered 33 seconds later with a jump shot from the foul line and a free throw.
When Dudley Bradley hit from the wing 25 seconds later, the lead was back to a more comfortable five.
"The three-point play by Al was a big one for us," O'Koren said. "It gave us a lot of momentum at a time when we needed it. I felt that was really important."
Then O'Koren turned to the season as a whole, one in which almost nobody felt the team would win the title, and not many more felt an NCAA bid would be realized.
A lot of people counted us out at the start of the year," O'Koren said. "We stayed in there and kept working hard, though, I won't say we're tougher mentally than we were last year, but we are more mentally prepared.
"We have to keep concentrating . This team can't let up like we did in late January and early February. We have to really concentrate, We need to keep everybody going."
The Tar Heels suffered back-to-back losses during that lapse in concentration, and had to go to overtime to beat Virginia Tech to avoid a third straight loss.
Since then, Carolina has won seven of eight with the only loss coming to Duke, 47-40, last Saturday.
"We are playing a lot better than we did last year at this time, too," said O'Koren. "I really think the difference is being mentally prepared every time out."
Dudley Bradley, the winner of the Everette Case Award as the tournament's Most Valuable Player, echoed O'Koren's theme about the early predictions.
"Everybody thought we were underdogs," said Bradley, "that we were down. We've really worked and this is a great team. This was a great game, too, but I'm not saying this was our best."
Duke's Jim Spanarkel, meanwhile, said, "It's disappointing, but this team has character and we won't die. We can rebound in the NCAAs and this season is a long way from being over."
[From The Wilmington Star-News, March 4, 1979]
Click here to read the Sports Illustrated article about the Heels and their ACC tournament run.
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