It’s a more common kind of task to identify a coach’s greatest games or a team’s most significant moments. However, what about the under-the-radar games which gave rise to a coach’s biggest achievements?
For instance: North Carolina State could not have won the 1983 national title with that remarkable win over Houston had it not found a way to somehow escape Pepperdine in a first-round game few national analysts and chroniclers had focused on at the time. The nation remembers the Houston game; the Pepperdine game made a seminal sports moment possible.
Which five games fit that basic description in the coaching career of Dean Edwards Smith, who died late Saturday at the age of 83?
You need not wait to find out:
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5 – 1976 SUMMER OLYMPICS PRELIMINARY ROUND: UNITED STATES 95, PUERTO RICO 94
The Puerto Rican team in the 1976 Summer Olympics had a player named Butch Lee — yes, the same Butch Lee who led Marquette over Dean Smith’s North Carolina team in the 1977 NCAA Tournament’s championship game in Atlanta.
One year before Lee beat Smith, though, he fell one point short. This enabled the United States to go unbeaten in preliminary-round play at the ’76 Olympics. More important is the fact that the U.S. team avoided a psychological scar four years after the Munich controversy in 1972. If the United States had lost this game, who knows how the rest of the 1976 Olympic tournament would have unfolded? This win in a non-elimination contest did set the table for Smith’s gold medal, which was also America’s gold medal in Montreal.
4 – 1968 ACC TOURNAMENT SEMIFINAL: NORTH CAROLINA 82, SOUTH CAROLINA 79 (OT)
In 1968, the ACC tournament had to be won in order for an ACC team to make its way to the big show in the NCAA tournament. North Carolina didn’t have too much of a problem in the quarterfinals or the final, but South Carolina took the Tar Heels to overtime in the semis. Had UNC lost this game, Dean Smith wouldn’t have reached his first national championship game a few weeks later.
3 – 1967 NCAA EAST REGIONAL SEMIFINAL: NORTH CAROLINA 78, PRINCETON 70 (OT)
The Tar Heels had not made the NCAA tournament since 1959. This was their return to the Big Dance, Smith’s first NCAA tournament game. The opposing coach: Butch van Breda Kolff, who guided Bill Bradley and Princeton to the Final Four in 1965. Princeton’s victory over Wichita State in the third-place game that year marked the Ivy League’s last win at the Final Four.
More about van Breda Kolff: This would become his last NCAA tournament appearance at Princeton before a jump to a very different world compared to the Ivies: the Los Angeles Lakers. Breda Kolff led the Lakers to the 1968 and 1969 NBA Finals, enabling him to remain one of only four men to reach a Final Four and the NBA Finals. The other three men? Larry Brown (the only man to win a national title and an NBA title as a head coach), Jack Ramsay, and Fred Schaus.
Speaking of reaching the Final Four: Smith moved within one win of his first Final Four by getting through this overtime test against Princeton. Without this escape, Smith couldn’t have notched that first trip to college basketball’s promised land a few days later with a victory over Boston College (coached by Bob Cousy) in the East Regional final.
2 – 1981 NCAA WEST REGIONAL SEMIFINAL: NORTH CAROLINA 61, UTAH 56
From 1976 through 1980, North Carolina had endured five painful NCAA exits — four in its opening NCAA tournament game, one in the 1977 final against Marquette, a loss which generated as much critical press toward Smith as any he suffered in his long tenure in Chapel Hill. Entering the 1981 NCAA Tournament, UNC and Smith felt the burden of the previous half-decade, like it or not.
What made this West Regional semifinal so daunting for the Tar Heels was that it was played in Salt Lake City against a very good Utah team, the No. 3 seed in the region. It would have been one thing if second-seeded North Carolina was playing an 11 or even a 6 seed in the Sweet 16, but this was a third seed in a road game.
Imagine, in the modern age of March Madness, a 2 seed having to play a Sweet 16 game on the 3 seed’s home floor. That’s what UNC had to do in 1981 against Utah. By surviving this game, North Carolina and Smith surmounted their toughest obstacle on the road to a Final Four appearance and a national runner-up finish. This 1981 season, along with the subsequent 1982 season, did so much to stitch together the Smith era at North Carolina.
Speaking of 1982…
1 – 1982 NCAA SECOND ROUND: NORTH CAROLINA 52, JAMES MADISON 50
Dean Smith’s first national championship found its crowning moment against Patrick Ewing, John Thompson, and Georgetown. It became possible because of a win over Clyde Drexler, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Houston’s other high-flying stars in the national semifinals.
However, if North Carolina had not clawed past Lou Campanelli’s James Madison Dukes in its 1982 tournament opener, Smith never would have been able to chase away his demons in New Orleans a few weeks later.
