As North Carolina’s players warmed up for the 1982 title game, Dean Smith’s biggest after six Final Four losses, Sports Illustrated’s Curry Kirkpatrick and some other writers visited the North Carolina coach.
“Smith said he was as loose as he'd ever been,” Kirkpatrick wrote the following week. “As the kindly Georgetown rooting section hollered, ‘Choke, Dean, choke,’ he even bantered with some journalists, showing them a depleted cigarette pack. ‘Fewer [smokes] today than for the Duke game,’ he said.”
What Duke game was Coach Smith talking about? Surely not the two double-digit wins that year. Was it the ACC final three years earlier, one week after the 7-0 game? Phil Ford’s last home game the year before? The 1969 ACC final?
The reference, at least to Kirkpatrick, was so obvious it didn’t warrant clarification. “The Duke game” pointed to January 9, 1965, three days after the lowest point in Smith’s 36-year career. What made that game so special?
The facts
Dean Smith entered his fourth season with a 35-28 record and finishes of fourth, third and fifth in the league. Senior star Billy Cunningham would average 25.4 points and 14.3 rebounds and sophom*ore Bobby Lewis was emerging, but the program, still clouded by recruiting and gambling scandals, seemed far removed from the 1957 undefeated championship team.
Yet Carolina fans and media expected progress in 1964-65. The Tar Heels, just 12-12 the year before, were rankedNo. 13 in the preseason and selected as co-favorites to win the ACC alongside Duke, two-time defending league champions and Final Four participants.
The Tar Heels won early over top-10 Kentucky and Vanderbilt, but the schedule did them no favors. They played 10 games, eight of them away from Chapel Hill, in the first 21 days of December, and it caught up with them. Carolina lost to Alabama on Dec. 19, then by 19 two nights later at Florida and its coach, Norm Sloan.
After a 13-day break, they encountered three ACC road games in six days. This started with a loss against a good Maryland team, then a grisly trip to Winston-Salem.
Carolina made three shots in the first 10½ minutes and trailed, 40-15, after 16 minutes. Wake Forest hit 101 points with 2:34 left, shot 65% in the second half and outrebounded Carolina 48-35.
Four losses in a row. The state’s media, especially the Charlotte Observer, pounced.
“The last ounce of air was quickly pressed out of North Carolina’s basketball bubble here Wednesday night …” the game story began. One Wake player wearing a mouthpiece had managed to intimidate the “timid men from Chapel Hill under the boards.”
The unsparing review continued. “It was one of the worst mismatches in Atlantic Coast Conference history,” the newspaper said. Billy Cunningham (35 points) and Bobby Lewis (23) had done just enough to “keep North Carolina from deleting basketball from its athletic program.”
“We will not lose confidence,” Smith said, blaming his own decision to run with the Deacons. The shots weren’t dropping, “but maybe that’s an easy rationalization.”
The night was about to get worse. As the team bus pulled into Woolen Gym, the passengers found an effigy of Smith hanging in a tree. The Daily Tar Heel’s Peter Gammons – later a vaunted baseball writer – was on the bus and reported the incident. The DTH condemned it editorially.
Dean Smith, 34 years old and four years into his head coaching career, faced a crossroads. Larry Miller, the recruit who would change the course of the program, couldn’t help as a member of the freshman team.Smith's weary team, 6-6 and coming apart, was headed to Duke, the league’s dominant program and a team he had not beaten in seven tries. It would be the team’s 11th game away from home out of 13 games, and third in six nights. And his own student body had deserted him.
Frank Deford reflected on this time while examining Smith’s career for a Sports Illustrated feature in November 1982.
“How close Smith came to not being the coach of that team—and thereby missing all the success that followed—isn't certain. But it was close,” Deford wrote. “Even after he got Miller, but before Miller reached the varsity, Smith was wrestling with himself about whether he should get out of big-time sports.
“And anyway, after the 1964-65 season, if things hadn't improved, he wouldn't have had any choice, no matter what he decided. The hue and cry to fire him was rising.”
Smith met with his players individually the following day. The next day’s practice was the best he had ever seen as a player or coach. “I told them, ‘You’re too good - go home and save it for tomorrow,’” he said.
Meanwhile, the daily newspapers were surethe Tar Heels were in trouble headed to No. 6-ranked Duke, the nation’s top scoring team that had just scored 121 points against Penn State. Duke had won 38 of 39 against ACC opponents and 29 of 30 at home.
The media smelled blood.
“Last chance for the Tar Heels,” read the Charlotte Observer’s headline, adding the Heels “are picked to suffer tonight a cruel insult.” The Raleigh News & Observer seemed more interested in the freshman game featuring Miller.
“The Blue Devils are geared for their eighth straight victory celebration and for presenting the Tar Heels with their fifth hardwood disaster in a row,” the newspaper said.
Smith had other ideas. He deployed a new backcourt - Tommy Gauntlett and Ray Hassell - and told his five starters he would ride with them the entire game.
Carolina opened in a “tenacious” defense and attacked Duke’s man-to-man with backdoor plays and drives to the basket. The Tar Heels led almost all of the first half, hitting 68% of their shots, with 13 of 17 baskets within three feet.
In the second half, Duke spurted to a 53-50 lead, an opportunity for this fragile UNC team to sag in the sweltering Duke gym. Instead, Lewis hit a jump shot. Then Gauntlett and Hassell, the new starting guards, made backcourt steals on consecutive possessions, leading to Gauntlett layups. Carolina led, 56-53.
Lewis made free throws to seal it. The five starters played all but two minutes in the shocking 65-62 win. Duke shot 39% and scored its fewest points of the year.
“Slow the funeral march, maestro. North Carolina ain’t dead yet,” read a more contrite Charlotte Observer. Dick Herbert, the News & Observer columnist, marveled “to suggest that Carolina would suddenly become defensive demons was out of step with the facts.”
Cunningham, credited with “one of the best games of his brilliant career,” finished with 22 points, eight rebounds and numerous blocks. Lewis, described the game before as “too slender” to have an impact, had 21 points, 12 rebounds and five assists.
The impact went much deeper than merely Carolina’s third win over a top 10 team. Smith praised each starter by name. “This wasn’t a strategy game tonight,” he said. “It was five guys doing a job.”
Bet you didn’t know …
Smith was careful to add the team couldn’t let up the next game at home against N.C. State. The Tar Heels lost. But Carolina wonits last seven before the tournament, including payback to Wake Forest and another win over Duke, to finish 10-4 in the league, a game behind Duke, who lost to an emotional N.C. State team playing for ailing ex-coach Everett Case in the ACC final. The Blue Devils lost just five games, two of them to unranked Carolina as the nation’s No. 6- and No. 5-ranked team.
Carolina faced a familiar opponent in the ACC Tournament first round – a Wake Forest team that finished 6-8 in the league and 12-15 overall. The Deacons won by 16 points and Carolina’s season was over.
But a foundational seed had been planted that would bloom for 30 years.
So in conclusion …
In the pantheon of UNC upset wins at Duke, this one ranks ahead of 2006 (J.J. Redick’s senior game) and the 2001 game over second-ranked Duke, and fits snugly behind the 2022 win in Mike Krzyzewski's last game.
The 1965 game featured a really good team losing to a better-than-average team, with neither ultimately advancing to the NCAA Tournament. But the game meant so much more than that. This one usually ranks among Smith’s biggest wins,though nowhere near the top.
But from Smith’s perspective, it may have been the most important – on a variety of levels.
