100 years of basketball

The following story originally ran in the March 30, 1982 edition of The Daily Tar Heel.

NEW ORLEANS — And on the seventh try, Dean created national champions.

UNC coach Dean Smith, after six previous trips to the final four, finally came away with the big one — the NCAA collegiate basketball title — as the North Carolina Tar Heels beat the Georgetown Hoyas 63-62.

It had been more than a decade since North Carolina ended a season on a sweet note. The exit of Dean Smith and the subsequent struggles eventually led to that 8-20 rock bottom in 2002.

Roy Williams, too, had been stymied in his pursuits of the promised land, as four close calls in the Final Four produced no championships for his Kansas program.

But two short years after Williams returned to UNC, his spark would combine forces with the Tar Heels’ reinvorgated spirit to turn the program around.

Lynch. Montross. Williams.

Not exactly the awe-inspiring 1982 trio of Jordan, Worthy and Perkins.

But whatever the 1993 version of the North Carolina men’s basketball team lacked in star power, it made up for with style.

Besides bearing witness to perhaps the most famous timeout in college basketball history (see Webber, Chris), the Tar Heels also displayed unwavering resilience with their backs against the wall.

In the NCAA tournament alone, UNC rebounded from a 10-point deficit three times, including a 23-13 mark against Michigan in the championship game.