Feb. 19, 2008

By Steve Phillips
Special to theACC.com

For more than 20 years, winning the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament was the only way a league team could punch an NCAA postseason ticket.

Even after 1975, when the NCAA began accepting at least one at-large team, an ACC Tournament championship seemed the only springboard to a national title.

The 1982 North Carolina and 1983 N.C. State teams rode the momentum of ACC Tournament championships to claim college basketball's grand prize. Other great teams that fell short in the ACC Tournament ultimately failed in their NCAA title quests as well.

That changed in the dramatic fashion in the early 1990s.

The ACC boasted three consecutive national champions as Duke captured back-to-back titles in 1991 and '92 and North Carolina broke through in 1993. But for the first time, winning the ACC Tournament wasn't the unofficial prerequisite.

While all three teams played in ACC Tournament title games at the Charlotte Coliseum, only Duke's 1992 team left a winner. The Blue Devils' 1991 national championship team had to regroup from a crushing loss to rival UNC. And the 1993 Tar Heels had to first recover from an upset loss to Georgia Tech before they claimed coach Dean Smith's second national title.

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1991: RECOIL AND RECOVERY

Though Duke had finished just one game ahead of North Carolina in the final 1991 regular-season standings, the Blue Devils appeared odds-on favorites to capture the ACC Tournament.

Duke defeated the Tar Heels twice during the regular season, including the season finale that meant outright claim to first place. That seemed doubly important, since the conference then featured just eight teams and one of those - Maryland - would not compete in the ACC Tournament due to imposed sanctions. The Blue Devils, as the No. 1 seed, received a first-round bye.

The first two rounds of the tournament went according to form, with North Carolina gutting out tough wins over lower seeded Clemson and Virginia, and Duke breezing to a 93-72 win over N.C. State in the semifinals.

Duke entered Sunday's championship game with a 26-6 record and a No. 6 national ranking. UNC, ranked seventh, stood 24-5.

It couldn't have been more even on paper, and the previous weekend's game at Chapel Hill had been close. All the same, UNC's Smith seemed to almost sound a tone of concession as the teams prepared to meet for a third time.

"We have a chance, I'm not saying we don't," Smith finally. "Not a great one, probably, but a chance."

It turned out to be a chance UNC maximized to full advantage.

"You never know what kind of game it is going to be until the ball goes up," said Tar Heel senior Rick Fox. "But in the locker room before the game, I could sense that this could be our day. Everyone was emotional and ready to go. We didn't have a lot of guys walking around with quiet looks on their faces."

The emotion carried over to the opening tip, and UNC burst out of the gate.

Fox scored on a rebound follow shot 18 seconds into the game, drew a foul from Christian Laettner and converted the free throw for a quick 3-0 lead. Seconds later, Fox stripped the ball from Laettner at midcourt and drove for an uncontested layup to make it 5-0.

By the first television timeout, the Tar Heels led 11-2. Duke had gone 1-of-4 from the floor and committed six turnovers, including three by sophomore point guard Bobby Hurley.

"When you don't come out ready to play and the other team does, those kinds of things seem to happen," Hurley said.

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski noted that the start was a complete reversal from the Blue Devils' 83-77 win over the Tar Heels one week earlier. In that game, Duke had come out the aggressor.

"Today, North Carolina came out and gained control of the game right away," Krzyzewski said. "They knocked us back. We weren't running our offense, and their offense was outplaying our defense. They are a stronger team than we are (physically), and I think they were quicker today."

The Tar Heels held a 49-36 halftime lead, and any hopes the Blue Devils had of getting back into the game went up in flames at the outset of the second half. Fox scored seven quick points to key an 11-4 flurry and give UNC a 64-40 lead.

"I thought the first four minutes of the second half were going to be important, and they were - but they were important for North Carolina," Krzyzewski said. "Our kids kept fighting and playing hard, but they were never in synch."

The game ended with the Tar Heels 96-74 winners. Fox, who finished with 25 points in 27 minutes, picked up the Everett Case Trophy as tournament MVP.

The Blue Devils began the trek home northward on I-85, but not before stopping off in Salisbury to watch the NCAA Tournament selection show on television. They saw the Tar Heels placed in Syracuse as the No. 1 seed in the East, while Duke was ticketed for Minneapolis as the No. 2 seed in the Midwest.

"It was disappointing to see Carolina get the No. 1 seed in the East," Duke senior Greg Koubek said later. "Don't get me wrong - they earned it. But we felt like we'd let something slip away."

Eight previous Duke teams had reached the Final Four prior to 1991, but each of those had advanced through the East Regional. Within days after the crushing ACC Tournament loss, Krzyzewski had his troops refocused and ready to change history.

The Blue Devils tore through the Midwest field and on to Indianapolis, where they scored a colossal upset of defending national champion and previously unbeaten UNLV in the semifinal round.

UNC also reached the Final Four, but the Tar Heels fell to Kansas in the national semifinals to thwart the chance of an All-ACC title game. The Blue Devils handled the Jayhawks, 72-65, for the program's first NCAA crown.

Grant Hill, who starred as a Duke freshman, credited Krzyzewski for setting the ultimate goal at the outset of the season and letting nothing - including the seemingly devastating loss to UNC in the ACC Tournament finals - shake his team's resolve.

"He said (in preseason), `Our goal is to win the national championship,' " Hill said. "To tell you the truth, I didn't think we could. But as the year progressed, I saw what the coach was thinking. As we discovered our identity throughout out the season, you could see it. We had the potential to get there."

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1992: NO ROOM FOR DOUBT

Duke not only went through the 1992 regular season as defending national champions, the Blue Devils played many games in which they simply overmatched the opposition. According to Georgia Tech guard Jon Barry, the domination was as much mental as physical.

"I think Duke has this mystique that makes other teams back down," Barry said. "They scare people. You can't worry about playing Duke. You have to play your game."

UNC played its game well enough to pull out a 75-73 win in Chapel Hill, and Wake Forest scored a 72-68 victory in Winston-Salem. But the Blue Devils otherwise clicked along, and even an ankle injury that kept Hurley sidelined for most of February and early March could not prevent them from entering the ACC Tournament at 25-2 and a clear No. 1 seed.

Hurley was back in action by the time Duke arrived in Charlotte. That had to factor into any serious discussion as to whether any team stood a serious chance of denying the Blue Devils their first ACC title since 1986. But first, fans at the Coliseum were treated to a tournament first.

The addition of Florida State's via expansion had given the ACC nine teams and thus an unbalanced tournament bracket. The conference decided to hold a first-round game on Thursday night between the No. 8- and No. 9-seeded teams. The winner would move on to face the No. 1 seed in the quarterfinal round on Friday afternoon.

So Maryland and Clemson did honors in 1992, with the eighth-seeded Terps posting an 81-75 win. The real story, however, was the reception the game received from the Coliseum crowd.

ACC officials feared most fans would ignore the contest, giving it the feel of a "play-in" game that was somewhat removed from the rest of the tournament. To their surprise and delight, a crowd of 16,013 turned out to watch to Maryland and Clemson.

"I was really glad to see people other than Clemson and Maryland people at the game," Maryland coach Gary Williams said. "We had the 8 vs. 9 game when I coached (Boston College) in the Big East, and we never drew close to that kind of crowd.

According to ACC media relations director Brian Morrison, Charlotte Coliseum officials had anticipated a crowd of no more than 14,000. In the years that followed, the Thursday game drew even larger crowds until the tournament format was changed in the late 1990s.

"I think you can attribute (the large turnout) to this being a great basketball state," Williams said. "People like to watch basketball games and guys working hard. I'm glad it was a great game in terms of caliber of play and in terms of effort."

The higher seeds continued to win through Saturday's first semifinal game, when Duke scored an 89-76 win over fourth-seeded Georgia Tech to secure a spot in the championship round for the fourth time in five years.

The first upset of sorts finally took place in the second semifinal game, when third-seeded North Carolina fended off No. 2 Florida State for an 80-76 win. George Lynch's 21 points and 14 rebounds led the defending conference champion Tar Heels.

While a No. 3 seed defeating a No. 2 seed is hardly uncommon in tournament play, UNC's win over the Seminoles loomed as a mild surprise. FSU, in its first season as an ACC member, had beaten the Tar Heels fairly handedly twice during the regular season. UNC had struggled at times, once enduring four straight league losses and finishing a modest 9-7 in ACC play.

But the championship game marquee read "Blue Devils vs. Tar Heels," just as it had in 1988, 1989 and 1991.

As members of the '89 and '91 teams, UNC's seniors knew the feeling of winning an ACC Tournament title. But while members of Duke's 1992 team wore national championship rings, none had experienced the taste of winning an ACC Tournament. Since winning the event in 1986 and '88, Duke had repeatedly come up just short.

"It's a really big deal," Hurley said. "It's something we haven't done."

The wait was over. In a complete 180 from the previous year's championship game, the top-ranked Blue Devils battled back from an early five-point deficit, charged ahead and left the Tar Heels in the dust. A crowd of 23,532 watched Duke cruise to a 94-74 win.

Laettner, who received the Everett Case Award, scored 25 points and grabbed 10 rebounds. Hill, appearing close to full speed for the first time since injuring his ankle three weeks earlier, added 20 points.

Hill went 8-of-8 from the floor on an array of medium-range jumpers, baseline moves and fastbreak dunks. Hurley answered any questions about his own injury recovery by handing out a championship-game record 11 assists. His 28 assists in three games set another ACC Tournament mark.

Duke, which improved to 28-2 with the win, became the first team to win both the ACC regular-season and ACC Tournament titles since Krzyzewski's 1986 Blue Devil squad.

"Thinking back on our ACC careers, not to have won at least one (ACC) tournament suggests that you haven't done all you needed to do, all you could do," said senior Brian Davis. "We would have missed out on a lot."

The euphoria didn't prevent the Blue Devils from turning their attention to the NCAA Tournament, where they would be the No. 1 overall seed in addition to defending champions.

"I'm sorry we couldn't make it more interesting today, but I thought we played very well," UNC's Smith said. "I didn't think Duke could play any better than they did in Durham (an 89-77 win over the Tar Heels a week earlier), but they did. They're just remarkable. It's probably Duke against the field in the NCAAs."

Smith, who would see his own team reach the NCAA tourney's Sweet 16 for a 12th straight year, proved correct.

Duke received the ultimate scare from Kentucky in the East Regional finals, but escaped with perhaps the most memorable finish in college basketball history. The Blue Devils claimed a 104-103 overtime win when Laettner caught Hill's long inbounds pass and sank a 16-footer at the buzzer.

From there, it was on to the Final Four for the fifth straight year, where wins over Indiana and Michigan made Duke the first team since UCLA (1972-73) to claim back-to-back national titles. That meant status something akin to legendary, especially for Laettner, who graduated as the fifth-leading scorer and 10th- leading rebounder in ACC history.

"I'm not saying he's the best player ever," Krzyzeweski said. "But he is certainly as interesting a player and kid that has ever played in this conference."

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1993: CAUGHT WITH GUARD DOWN

North Carolina entered the 1993 ACC Tournament top-ranked nationally and seeded No. 1, and the stars seemed perfectly aligned for the Tar Heels through Friday's quarterfinal round.

Second-seeded Florida State fell to seventh-seeded Clemson. Sixth-seeded Georgia Tech took out third-seeded Duke. Even No. 4 seeded Wake Forest fell victim to a mild upset when it dropped a 61-57 decision to fifth-seeded Virginia.

The history-making day of attrition seemingly made things all but academic for UNC, which beat Maryland by 36 points to advance to Saturday's semifinal round.

But on a day a heavy snowstorm caused a temporary power shortage at the Charlotte Coliseum, the Tar Heels saw their hopes suddenly darkened as well.

In the closing minutes of UNC's 74-56 win over Virginia, Tar Heel point guard Derrick Phelps broke free on a breakaway layup attempt and was fouled from behind by Virginia's Jason Williford.

Phelps left the Coliseum on a stretcher. X-rays showed no broken bones, but a severe contusion of the lower back left the UNC junior doubtful for Sunday's championship game against Georgia Tech (a 69-61 semifinal winner over Clemson).

"I was going for the ball," Williford said. "I thought I made a hustle play. I didn't intentionally try to hurt him or anything. I went over and asked if he was OK, and we shook hands."

Phelps wound up making a relatively speedy recovery, but not quickly enough to play against the Yellow Jackets less than 24 hours later. That proved a major blow to UNC, which for all its overall talent lacked depth at the point guard position. Most of the primary duties required of that position would fall to 6-foot-8 senior Henrik Rodl in the championship game.

"Derrick is the one person who we don't have someone comparable to replace him," Smith said. "There is somebody who can come in and do the job at other positions, but we haven't found that at point guard."

The Tar Heels didn't find it in the championship game against Tech.

UNC's offense sputtered almost from the start. Unable to crack the Yellow Jackets' 2-3 zone with any degree of consistency, the Tar Heels fired away from medium and long range more than they wanted or had planned.

The result was a 77-75 loss and a 39.4 percent shooting effort from the floor that included a 6-of-21 showing from 3-point range. Donald Williams, who would seemingly be unable to miss in the Final Four games three weeks later, finished 4-of-18 - and that was only after he connected on a meaningless 3-pointer at the final buzzer. The 6-foot-8 Lynch, who normally thrived inside, spent an inordinate amount of time wandering around the perimeter and checked out at 4-of-12.

Phelps' absence was more glaring at the defensive end, where Tech point guard Travis Best often buzzed past the Tar Heels on penetration to the basket.

"Obviously, we missed him," UNC center Eric Montross said of Phelps. "He would have matched up with Travis Best. We don't know how that matchup would have gone today for sure, but Derrick did very well against him both times we played during the regular season.

Lynch minced fewer words.

"If Derrick had played today, I think we would have won easily," Lynch said.

Lynch, a senior motivational leader and the master of positive spin, even implied the two-point upset loss was a bit of a moral victory.

"I actually thought we'd lose by 10 or 20 points," Lynch claimed. "We'll use this as a motivating factor, the fact we played as well as we did without Derrick."

Other Tar Heels had trouble being as positive. UNC teams had failed to win the four previous tournaments in which it was seeded No. 1 (1983, 1984, 1987 and 1988), but the 1993 team appeared to be playing its best at the right time. Not only had the Tar Heels won 11 straight games since losing at Duke in early February, none of the victories had been by fewer than 10 points.

"We set three goals for ourselves this year - win the regular season, win the ACC Tournament, win the NCAA," said junior Brian Reese, who led UNC against Georgia Tech with 24 points. "We didn't attain our goal when it came to this step."

But several cubicles away in the Tar Heel locker room, Lynch continued to look ahead. Like the Duke team leaders of two years earlier, he realized that it was possible to quickly rise from the ashes, to take an ACC Tournament loss and build momentum instead of allowing it to be a momentum killer.

"We can't lose another one, so maybe this loss was good in a sense," Lynch said. "It's easier to win six in a row than it is to win 18."

Lynch's take proved accurate. With Phelps back to run the point, UNC advanced to the Final Four through the East Regional, took out Kansas in the national semifinal at New Orleans, then defeated Michigan for the program's third NCAA title.

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FOOTNOTE TO HISTORY

Duke's 1994 team made a strong bid to follow the formula of the 1991 Blue Devils and '93 Tar Heels.

After being seeded first but stumbling against Virginia in the semifinals of the ACC Tournament, Duke regrouped and stormed through the Southeast Regional as a No. 2 seed.

That placed the Blue Devils back at the Charlotte Coliseum, which was hosting the city's first-ever Final Four. Duke defeated Florida in the opening round and pushed Arkansas to the limit in the championship game before suffering a 76-72 loss.

The ACC Tournament left Charlotte following the 1994 season for a four-year run at the newly renovated Greensboro Coliseum. But Charlotte would welcome the event again in 1999.

"Crowning Moments in the Queen City" returns on March 4.