GoHeels Exclusive: An Oral History Of The 1967-69 Tar Heels

by Pat James, GoHeels.com

Before the apprenticeship under Dean Smith, his first head-coaching job at Kansas or winning three national championships at North Carolina, Roy Williams doubted his college choice.

Inspired by Buddy Baldwin, his high school coach and mentor at T.C. Roberson High in Asheville, Williams hoped to pursue a career in coaching. So in the fall of 1968, he followed in Baldwin's footsteps and enrolled at UNC.

But just five weeks into school, Williams questioned the decision. Chapel Hill, he thought, might not be the place for him.

Until his senior year of high school, he had watched no more than three Carolina basketball games on TV. He joined the freshman team, looking to learn under Smith's tutelage. What he found was much greater.

"Basketball started," Williams said, "and oh my gosh, I can't even explain the feeling that I had for North Carolina basketball and the love I had."

He observed Franklin "Rusty" Clark, Bill Bunting, Dick Grubar, Joe Brown and Gerald Tuttle – the five seniors who became the first and only class in ACC history to win the regular-season title outright and the ACC Tournament in three straight seasons from 1966-69. He marveled at Charlie Scott, the junior who led the Tar Heels to a third consecutive Final Four later that spring.

"My love for North Carolina basketball," Williams said, "was because of those guys and the way they played and how they played together and the team-play attitude and Bill running and the changing of the defense and the unselfishness. I adopted more of that for my beliefs in the game of basketball than anything else ever."

And for that and the precedent those great 1966-69 teams set, a reunion is being held this weekend to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their historic championship run.

UNC has finished worse than third in the ACC only five times since the 1966-67 season. In that span, it has claimed 26 of 51 ACC regular-season titles and 17 ACC Tournament championships.

The Tar Heels have also thrived on a national scale. They've appeared in 44 NCAA Tournaments and 18 Final Fours, more than any other school in the country. A top-five finish in one of the national polls has occurred 23 times.

The program's consistency during this stretch is unparalleled. So is the importance of those who it started with.

"It's easy to get caught up in what's going on now and what's going on maybe 10 years ago," Grubar said. "But you've gotta look back and think about how did all of this begin."

'An opportunity to do something'

UNC established itself as one of the top powers in college basketball during the early part of the 20th century. But after coach Frank McGuire left for the NBA in 1961, four years after leading the Tar Heels to the 1957 national championship, Smith took over a rebuilding program.

And before finally finding success at UNC, he endured the most trying two years of his career.

The Tar Heels went 23-15 in Smith's first two seasons. But during the 1963-64 campaign, they fell to 12-12 and a fifth-place 6-8 mark in the ACC. The next year, upon returning from a defeat at Wake Forest that extended UNC's losing streak to four games, there was a dummy of Smith hanging in effigy.

A lesser-known effigy incident occurred later that season. But amid the turmoil, the program appeared poised for a turnaround.

After some initial recruiting struggles, Smith landed his first big-name recruit, the highly sought-after Bob Lewis, in 1963. A year later, the Tar Heels beat out Duke for Larry Miller, an even more heralded prospect.

Miller: "It wasn't like we were on UCLA's campus or anything like that. They weren't that good. But the campus was beautiful and the people were great."

Bunting: "The two of them formed that nucleus. And then, for some reason, Dean really started concentrating in our own state."

The pivotal 1965 recruiting class consisted of three in-state players. Clark, a 6-foot-10 center from Fayetteville, was Smith's first true big man. Bunting, a 6-foot-8 forward from New Bern, provided extra size. Brown, a 6-foot-5 forward from Valdese, proved to be a valuable reserve.

Tuttle, a 6-foot guard from London, Kentucky, also played crucial minutes off the bench. Grubar, a 6-foot-4 guard from Schenectady, New York, assumed the role of the team's quarterback.

Clark: "I always had been a Carolina fan. Both my parents went to Carolina, so it was a blue-and-white household. And I was fortunate enough to get a non-athletic scholarship."

Brown: "I had people telling me, 'Don't go to Chapel Hill. They're going to fire Dean Smith.' But I kind of ignored all that."

Grubar: "I think we really thought we had an opportunity to do something and bring Carolina basketball back after it being down for the 10 years after they won the 1957 championship."

Miller: "Without that class, we wouldn't have gone anywhere."

Freshmen didn't receive varsity eligibility in basketball until the 1972-73 season. So the members of the 1965 recruiting class spent their first year on campus playing for the Larry Brown-led freshman team.

Every year, the freshmen played the varsity in a preseason scrimmage. The 1965 scrimmage was held at newly constructed Carmichael Auditorium. And this installment produced an upset.

Bunting: "It was a sellout crowd of students, and they just went wild."

Grubar: "(Larry Brown) was a young guy then, and he was really a firebrand. Back then, you could see he was going to be a great coach. He told us, 'You play as hard as you can and you do this and you listen, you'll have an opportunity.'"

Joe Brown: "Larry really taught us what it takes to play at that level. He coached to win that game. We played hard and, fortunately, we won. Well, unfortunately, we won, because afterward, after we finished our practices we had to scrimmage the varsity for an hour or more."

But the public scrimmage demonstrated what kind of help was on the way.

During the 1965-66 varsity season, Lewis and Miller combined to average 48.3 points, still the highest average by two UNC players in the same season. Despite that, the team compiled a 16-11 record. Many fans came early to games to see the freshmen play.

Clark: "I think that ability to practice together, to play together and to stay together for that year allowed us to mold into a stronger unit than we would have had we been blended in with the varsity."

Joe Brown: "We had good crowds in there, and I think that year tickets were pretty easy to come by. But our sophomore year, it got a whole lot harder."

Coming together

When those freshmen joined the varsity as sophomores for the 1966-67 season, Smith's hopes for a more balanced team started coming to fruition.

Lewis and Grubar teamed up in the backcourt, Bunting and Miller formed a one-two punch in the frontcourt and Clark started at center. The sophomores understood their roles. The upperclassmen no longer felt pressured to carry the team.

Bunting: "I think (Smith) recruited an entire team, and we knew our positions from Day 1 and stayed in them for four years. And to have Lewis and Larry to build around, it all came together."

Brown: "We listened to Coach Smith, and we came to realize that if we listened to him and did the things he asked us to do, we were going to win. Every win we had after that just reinforced that conclusion."

The Tar Heels won their first nine games by an average margin of 26.3 points. The most momentous victory came on Dec. 13, 1966, when they visited defending national runner-up Kentucky and won 64-55.

Miller: "We beat them, and (Kentucky coach) Adolph Rupp came up and congratulated us. 'That was a really great game, guys.'"

Clark: "To beat them on their own court was a tremendous confidence builder. It let us know we were good and we could play at a national level."

With the Kentucky win, UNC ascended to No. 3 in the AP poll, its highest ranking since the 1958-59 season. Princeton ultimately handed the Tar Heels their first loss. But they won their next seven contests, all against ACC opponents.

Before that season, Lewis, a senior, and Miller, a junior, had played out of position. But the sophomore additions changed that.

After spending his first two varsity seasons at power forward and then small forward, Lewis passed more and shot less in his move to the backcourt. Miller shifted from power forward to the wing. Exhibiting more of an outside shooting touch, he averaged 21.9 points to win the first of two straight ACC Player of the Year awards. He's the only UNC player to claim the honor twice.

Clark: "Bob was such a great shooter. He was quick and could really move with and without the ball."

Bunting: "You've got to give a lot of credit to Bobby Lewis. He came on board and really got things rolling. … I think he has been overlooked with his importance to the program, but Larry sure was just as important."

Williams: "The thing I always got with Larry was the toughness, the competitiveness and the willingness to take and make the last shot."

Grubar: "In the preseason, (Miller) would run and run and run, and he was the fastest on the team. His whole chest had to be hard. He could play as hard as anybody, and he played as hard as anybody. And I don't think he ever thought anybody was better than him."

Brown: "The intensity level that (Miller) played at, the energy he had and the hard work he put in, it just transcends into something special. And that's what Larry was for the University of North Carolina."

The Tar Heels finished 12-2 in conference play to win the ACC regular-season title for the first time under Smith. But that meant little. At that time, only the ACC Tournament winner received an NCAA Tournament berth.

Williams: "People used to have to go in the game and take their knife and cut a hole to watch the game because there was so much pressure there you couldn't even see the floor."

Grubar: "I always felt like the ACC Tournament was bigger than the NCAA at that time because there just seemed to be more interest, especially in North Carolina because it was all over every newspaper back then."

When UNC arrived at the 1967 ACC Tournament in Greensboro, Smith Barrier of the Greensboro Daily News, among other writers, picked Duke to win.

Grubar: "We were pretty happy that he did that."

Miller: "I remember his name because I said, 'This guy doesn't believe in us.' I inspired the guys. 'Let's show them we're better.'"

The Tar Heels barely overcame eighth-seeded N.C. State in the first round, winning 56-53. In the second, they trailed Wake Forest by four at halftime. But Miller erupted for 29 second-half points, leading UNC to an 89-79 victory and the championship game against Duke.

The Blue Devils had won three of the previous four ACC Tournaments. Yet Lewis and Miller combined for 58 points in an 82-73 win, the Tar Heels' third over Duke that season. For the first time since 1957, UNC was the ACC champion. Miller was named Tournament MVP.

Bunting: "To me, it almost felt like the national championship because I put so much stock in winning the ACC Tournament."

Miller: "Back then, winning the ACC title was like you were the king. … You won the ACC Tournament and, boom, you've done something."

In the East Regional, the Tar Heels avenged their loss against Princeton and outplayed Boston College to reach the Final Four. But a 76-62 defeat against Dayton left them one win shy of the national title game. They then lost to Houston in the consolation game.

Miller: "We played three straight games to get into the (NCAA) Tournament, then you played two in the East Regional and then you played in the Final Four. We probably ran out of steam, and we had no experience as far as being in the big game."

Clark: "We thought we were a better team than fourth in the nation. But for a bunch of sophomores and guys who hadn't been there before, that was not all bad."

Brown: "At that point, you're not knowing if you'll ever get back. We kind of just took it all in and enjoyed it."

'Our best team'

UNC entered the 1967-68 season without Lewis for the first time since 1963-64. Yet with four returning starters, the team faced heightened expectations following its Final Four run.

Brown: "That might have been our best team, really, our junior year. … You lost about 20 points a game when you lost Bobby. But then you got Charlie Scott."

Scott, a 6-foot-5 guard from Harlem, came up from the freshman team, along with guards Eddie Fogler and Jim Delany. By joining the varsity squad, Scott became the Tar Heels' first African-American player.

Brown: "That didn't matter to us. He was a teammate, just like any teammate. But when you can play at that level, that certainly helps that transition."

Grubar: "He was one of the quickest guys I had ever seen at that time. I used to have to guard him in practice, so I knew how tough he was. The man could jump and he could pass. He was an all-around great, great player. … We knew we shouldn't lose anything. Maybe we'd even be better because Charlie was a better defensive player."

After a 2-0 start, UNC dropped its third game at Vanderbilt. That setback, however, inspired a 20-game winning streak that featured victories over three top-10 opponents in Kentucky, Princeton and Utah.

The Tar Heels suffered back-to-back 87-86 losses against South Carolina and Duke to conclude the regular season. But they'd already secured a second consecutive ACC regular-season title.

UNC topped Wake Forest and then South Carolina in overtime on its way to the ACC championship game in Charlotte. Once there, it knocked off N.C. State 87-50. Miller was again the Tournament MVP.

Miller: "They tried to slow it down against us, and it didn't work. They were pretty nasty back then, (N.C.) State was. We dominated the game."

The 37-point winning margin remains the largest in an ACC Tournament title game.

In the East Regional, the Tar Heels beat undefeated St. Bonaventure and Bob Lanier, a consensus second-team All-America selection. They then triumphed over Davidson and Mike Maloy. Clark totaled 40 points and 27 rebounds across both games to earn East Regional MVP honors.

Grubar: "Rusty came out and just outplayed (Lanier). He was an All-American, and Rusty was a good player, an all-conference player. He just dominated him."

Delany: "I think Rusty may have been the most underrated player in the history of Carolina basketball. If you look at what he did, he was the centerpiece of the centerpiece group."

Clark's performance carried UNC back to the Final Four. This time, the team didn't falter in the national semifinals, upending Ohio State 80-66 in Los Angeles. Finally, the Tar Heels were in the national championship game again. But their opponent, UCLA, lacked vulnerabilities.

The Bruins had won three of the last four national titles. They went 30-0 in 1967, and their only loss in 1968 had come against Houston, their Final Four opponent.

After the win over Ohio State, Smith let his players stay in the arena to watch UCLA's 101-69 victory over Houston.

Brown: "He never did that. We never got to watch the other team play. We might see some film or something. But we never watched the opposing team."

Grubar: "We thought we could play with them the whole game."

Smith decided UNC's best chance to win would be to shorten the game by employing the Four Corners offense. The Tar Heels trailed by 10 at halftime. But in the second half, they couldn't find an answer for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then Lew Alcindor, who scored 34 points to lift UCLA to a 78-55 win in front of a partisan crowd.

Bunting: "You couldn't find a Carolina fan. I know we were there, but it was so loud and it was so for UCLA."

Clark: "They were probably the greatest accumulation of talent on one team. And of course, they had a great coach (in John Wooden)."

Success amid unrest

The turbulent 1960s reached new levels of tension in the spring and summer of 1968. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated within months of each other, and protests became more strident, including on UNC's campus.

Smith granted players some freedom of self-expression. But on the basketball court, he stressed that they understood their roles as representatives of the University.

Delany: "We were from different places, probably had different thoughts. But whether there was social, political or cultural unrest, there was a space to participate. I think there was an expectation that participation wouldn't be a cost to the team. It was somewhat implicit, really."

Grubar: "(Smith) would always be there to talk about it and what we were doing. I think we were able to stay together as a family and not step out into the hangers-on and the people who wanted to use you for whatever thing they were trying to push on the University or within the University."

Brown: "For Charlie, it was kind of hard to isolate himself from that. I think there was a lot more pressure on him than there was any of us. And for him to play and perform through that the way he did is admirable."

With Miller's graduation, Scott moved to small forward and Fogler joined the starting backcourt for the 1968-69 season. And Scott became the Tar Heels' go-to scorer.

He increased his scoring average from 17.6 points as a sophomore to 22.3 as a junior. That helped the team average 88.9 points, still the fifth most in school history, and win the ACC regular-season title with another 12-2 conference record.

Despite leading the league's best team, Scott didn't garner the ACC Player of the Year award.

Delany: "I think we all knew what it was – there were people who were casting votes who were doing it on something other than basketball ability."

Brown: "Charlie almost didn't come out and play the next game. He was that taken aback by it. I was rooming with him for that tournament, and I remember (assistant) coach (John) Lotz had to drive him around and talk to him about things like, 'You can't let your teammates down. Don't give in to this, don't give in to them.' I think that was huge motivation for him."

UNC dispatched Clemson and Wake Forest to advance to the ACC championship game against Duke. At halftime, the Blue Devils led 43-34. But the Tar Heels rallied for an 85-74 win behind Scott's 40 points, becoming the second program to win three straight ACC Tournament titles.

Scott scored 23 points to help vanquish Duquesne, 79-78, in the East Regional semifinals. He then sent UNC to the Final Four with 32 points, including the game-winning jumper at the buzzer, in an 87-85 victory over Davidson.

But the Tar Heels' historic championship run ended a week later. Without Grubar, who suffered a season-ending knee injury against Duke, they fell to Purdue in the national semifinals.

Grubar: "I think I was playing my best basketball of my career going into the (ACC) Tournament and from there on. It was real disappointing. You go into a funk for a while, and that's kind of what I did."

Clark: "Losing him was a major hurt. I think we were very fortunate to get as far as we did given those circumstances."

'As special as any of the others'

Nearly 50 years have passed since Clark last donned a UNC uniform. A Morehead Scholar, he went to medical school before eventually returning to Fayetteville and working as a longtime vascular surgeon.

Even then, he's still approached by people who remember him and the teams he played on.

"I would've thought no one would know who we were," Clark said. "But that's not the case. Frequently, people come up and say something. It's very flattering that people remember."

Delany, the Big Ten commissioner, hosted a reunion for the 1967-77 teams last summer. Several players, including a majority of the 23 on at least one of the three straight championship teams, met for dinner at the Angus Barn in Raleigh. The next day, some went to a cookout at Delany's Chapel Hill home.

The closest relationships, however, are those between classmates. The five members of the Class of 1969 go to dinner and Tar Heel games somewhat regularly. They've attended their children's weddings.

"We've all been pretty close," Brown said. "I feel like if I needed something right now, I can call any one of those guys and they wouldn't even ask. They'd just come."

Miller said he lost touch with some of his teammates after Smith's death in February 2015. But he's talked with a few ahead of his anticipated return to the Smith Center for the N.C. State game on Saturday, when they'll be honored at halftime.

The 1966-69 teams never won a national title. But 50 years later, their accomplishments haven't been replicated. They remain unique, part of an unforgettable era.

"You don't have to be on a national championship team to really feel good about being part of a successful Carolina team over a four-year period," Bunting said. "It makes us feel as if our team was as special as any of the others."

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