Sports columnist Ron Green Sr. of The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer said that after World War II, North Carolina had “lots of minor league baseball, good stock car racing, some so-so pro golf tournaments…but nothing exciting, nothing glamorous.”
That
all changed in 1946, wrote Brady Dennis of The Washington Post, when Everett
Case arrived in Raleigh, bringing with him to North Carolina State University “a
wealth of college basketball talent and igniting an explosion of interest.”
Some
folks thought Case was North Carolina’s “Father of Basketball.”
Case won six consecutive Southern Conference basketball tournament titles from 1947-52.
Then, after the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) was formed in 1953, Case won the first three ACC tournament titles from 1953-55.
Coach
Case recruited nationally, bringing top players to Raleigh, including college
superstars like Ronnie Shavlik of Denver, Colo. (shown above), and John Maglio
of Philadelphia, Pa. (shown below).
In
18 years at the helm with NC State, Case compiled a 377-134 (.737) record – still
the best in school history.
“Tired of getting their brains beat out by Case, the other schools started looking for hotshot coaches of their own,” Dennis said.
UNC found Frank McGuire, who was the head coach at his alma mater, St. John’s University in New York City. He arrived on campus in Chapel Hill in 1952.
At
Carolina, McGuire built a championship team in 1956-57 around a core of
players who came from New York and New Jersey, including Lennie Rosenbluth, Joe
Quigg, Tommy Kearns, Pete Brennan and Bob Cunningham.
This
squad went undefeated during the regular season, posting a 24-0 record, and
swept through the ACC tournament.
The Tar Heels breezed into the NCAA Final Four. Carolina downed Michigan State, 74-70, in a semifinal thriller that went three overtime periods. Rosenbluth blistered the nets to lead all scorers with 31 points.
Next up in the championship game was Kansas, featuring Wilt Chamberlain, a towering 7-foot-1 giant. This game also took three overtimes to settle, with Carolina claiming a 54-53 victory. Chamberlain managed 23 points, while Rosenbluth paced the Tar Heels with 20.
Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford wrote that before that storybook 1957 championship, “ACC basketball was popular” in the state.
Afterward, he wrote,
“It was woven into the fabric of North Carolina society.”
In an effort to become “more competitive,” Wake Forest elevated assistant coach Horace Albert “Bones” McKinney (shown above) to the head coaching role in 1957, and Duke hired Vic Bubas (shown below) to take over as head coach of the Blue Devils in 1959.
Bubas had played for Case at NC State and spent eight years as a key assistant with the Wolfpack.
Bubas proved to be a master at recruiting top prospects from across the country, building Duke’s reputation as a perennial powerhouse.
For the record, while coaching at their respective universities in North Carolina, Case and Bubas each won ACC Coach of the Year honors three times, while McKinney won the award twice and McGuire was selected once.
Head-to-head, UNC’s McGuire held a 13-9 advantage over NC State’s Case. Clearly, the “upper echelon” of ACC was entering into a period of parity.
McGuire left Chapel Hill to take the head coaching job with the National Basketball Association’s Philadelphia Warriors for the 1961-62 season.
(Wilt Chamberlain was on that team; he recorded his record-setting 100-point game while playing for McGuire.)
As
he departed Carolina, McGuire recommended that his assistant coach Dean Smith
be named as his successor. Chancellor William Aycock hesitated not one iota. Smart
man.
Case
and Smith went head-to-head for only a brief period, playing just a handful of
games against each other. Case may be the only college coach to have a career
winning record against Smith…but barely.
Clearly, a new era in ACC basketball was about to unfold.
No comments:
Post a Comment