University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Wildcats, Heels Contest Distant Rivalry
December 5, 2002 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 5, 2002
By Adam Lucas
Ordinarily, it takes close contact to build a rivalry. Two teams have to deal with each other every day, live in each other's shadow, read about each other in the sports page in order to develop a distaste for each other.
The basketball programs at North Carolina and Kentucky, however, have somehow developed a bitter nonconference rivalry more by eyeing each other from afar than by exchanging haymakers on the court. In Chapel Hill, there's the lingering suspicion that those folks from Lexington have never quite been on the up and up, and around Rupp Arena there is the sense that those who favor the lighter shade of blue consider themselves somehow superior. The on-court series between the two teams has stopped and started much like a sputtering Volkswagen, but when the squads have seen fit to get together, the Wildcats have been the anti-Indiana-as many heartbreaking defeats as the Hoosiers have dealt the Tar Heels, UK has provided almost as many thrilling victories.
So when the Tar Heels and Wildcats get together on December 7 in Chapel Hill, it won't just be a tussle between the two winningest college basketball programs of all-time. It will be a clash between two very different ways of viewing the world of college basketball.
Kentucky fans don't merely suspect that the basketball universe has its axis right along the Lexington city limits. They know it. It's apparent in the way they shout "Go Big Blue" with near religious fervor, with the way their wardrobes are populated with numerous items possessing the ubiquitous "K" logo.
That obsession with Wildcat hoops can occasionally have unfortunate results. Kentucky received a two-year NCAA probation in 1989 that left them ineligible for postseason play after a lengthy investigation into the tenure of former head coach Eddie Sutton, and they also landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated with the headline, "Kentucky's Shame." Meanwhile, the Tar Heels motored along during that same time period without the slightest hint of impropriety, never even receiving an inquiry from the NCAA, much less a sanction.
Even before he developed a squeaky-clean program in Chapel Hill, UK fans already had a distaste for Dean Smith. In the 1960's, the Wildcats were the king of the college basketball world. They hadn't yet lost what would become a legendary NCAA final to Texas Western in 1966, a game that would change not only the tone of the college game, but also the color. Into that royal world came Smith and his Tar Heels, and to make it even worse, they were invited guests. The teams had once been conference rivals, members of the massive Southern Conference in the 1920's. In those days, the Southern Conference encompassed most of the powerhouse schools in the South, including many of the current Atlantic Coast and Southeastern Conference members. After that alliance had dissolved, so had much of the basketball relationship, but it would eventually be rekindled by a pair of coaches destined to be legends.
It was Rupp who called Smith with the idea for a ten-game series, and Smith who agreed to play six road games in exchange for just four home games. The wily Rupp no doubt thought he had put one over on an unsuspecting neophyte coach, and probably still believed that right up until Smith brought his Tar Heels into Lexington in 1962 and walked out with a victory, riding Yogi Poteet's defense on All-American Cotton Nash to an 68-66 win.
Smith went on to amass a 13-3 record against the Wildcats, winning seven of the initial ten games that he and Rupp had scheduled. He also toppled the Wildcats in the 1977 NCAA Tournament, a game that included a confrontation between Smith and Kentucky player Rick Robey after Robey committed a hard foul on Carolina's John Kuester.
Smith outlasted Rupp, of course, and then had the privilege of setting up a new series between the powerhouses in the late 1980's. That arrangement was to last just two years before new Wildcats coach Rick Pitino withdrew, claiming that UK's nonconference schedule was already loaded with Louisville and Indiana and that the 'Cats couldn't justify playing another nationally-respected opponent in addition to the SEC schedule.
ut Pitino didn't have a choice about the pairings in 1995, when the crafty NCAA Selection Committee placed the Heels and Wildcats opposite each other in the Southeast Regional. Both teams emerged from the first three rounds unscathed, with their regional final to be played in the Kentucky-friendly arena in Birmingham, Alabama.
It was to be one of the signature games of Smith's career.
Faced with certain defeat-Pitino had already reserved a local restaurant for UK's post-victory celebration party-Smith crafted a gameplan that engineered an upset of the six-point favorite Wildcats. Pitino's 'Cats had rained three-pointers throughout the postseason, and allowing them the freedom to fire away from the perimeter seemed like a recipe for trip home.
So, naturally, that was exactly what Smith did. After reviewing game tapes, the Tar Heel coaching staff concluded that the only real marksmen the Wildcats had was Tony Delk. Carolina played tough defense on him but allowed the other 'Cats the freedom to fire at will, and just as Smith has suspected, UK bricked their way to a 7-of-36 performance from beyond the three-point stripe. They weren't much better from close range, as Pitino's Wildcats finished the game shooting 28 percent from the field.
"Not many people figured us out," Pitino said after the game. "That our weakness is our perimeter shooting. But Coach Smith did."
While the defensive philosophy is what most fans remember years later, it was Smith's use of his bench that made the Southeast Regional championship a true signature game. Thanks to some early foul trouble and an altercation with Andre Riddick, Rasheed Wallace played just 23 minutes against Kentucky. Walk-on Pearce Landry logged 16 minutes, as did Serge Zwikker-and this was not the 1997-era Zwikker who had a consistent baseline jumper, it was the gawky underclassman version of the Dunking Dutchmen. Even Shammond Williams, an infrequent contributor at best during his freshman campaign, contributed six minutes.
Since that landmark victory, which propelled the Tar Heels into the Final Four in Seattle, the rivalry with Kentucky has been waged as much off the court as on it. During the early and mid-1990's, the two schools waged a battle of the record books. One summer, it was Kentucky "discovering" an extra win that had not previously been counted in their all-time total. Not coincidentally, that newfound victory tied the two schools atop the record books for the claim of all-time winningest college basketball program. Not to be outdone, the next year the Tar Heel athletic department discovered five uncounted victories.
Although both schools have their geographic rivals that they play every year-UK-Louisville and Carolina-Duke are two of the showcase games in college basketball-fans view the rivalry with the bitterness usually reserved for a local foe.
In 1997, Carolina missed the chance for a championship game showdown with the Wildcats in Indianapolis by suffering a Final Four semifinal loss to Arizona. As the Heels left the court, some Kentucky fans in the boisterous Wildcat contingent at the HoosierDome held up signs that read "Another Carolina Choke." The scene repeated itself a year later, as Utah prevented a championship game for the ages by dispatching Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, and the rest of the Heels in the semifinals. Once again, Wildcat fans seemed almost as delighted with Carolina's loss as they did with their own squad's victory.
At the same time the teams were preparing to resume their battle on the hardwood, the rivalry moved onto the recruiting trail. West Charlotte High's Jason Parker was one of the most sought-after basketball prospects in the class of 1999. A lifelong Tar Heel fan, Parker wanted to wear Carolina blue so much that he attended Fork Union Military Academy for a year in order to shore up his academic credentials.
Transcript questions complicated the situation, however, and once he was told that a scholarship no longer awaited him in Chapel Hill, Parker instead attended Kentucky.
Although the situation was the subject of countless paragraphs of newsprint in 2000, two years later it hardly looks worth the fuss. Parker suffered a knee injury that cost him one season in Lexington, and when the Wildcats return to the Smith Center this winter, he won't be with them-Tubby Smith booted him off the squad for an unspecified violation of team rules. Parker has since landed at the University of South Carolina, where he will play for Dave Odom, a coach who unsuccessfully recruited him to Wake Forest after UNC told the 6-foot-8 forward he would not be admitted.
With the Parker saga as prologue, the teams returned to the court during the 2000 season. Kentucky was 1-3 at the time, but the Wildcats broke a six-game losing streak to the sixth-ranked Tar Heels by posting a 93-76 win at the Smith Center. With Carolina still without point guard Ronald Curry and post presence Julius Peppers, they stumbled to a dismal shooting performance in the debut of the new student riser seats put in before the game in an effort to improve the Smith Center atmosphere.
"I want to apologize to the fans, the students," Matt Doherty said after the game. "The atmosphere was great."
The atmosphere was similarly raucous twelve months later when UK's Tayshaun Prince lit up Rupp Arena with six first-half three-pointers on the way to a 79-59 victory over the struggling Tar Heels. Prince hit shots from nearly everywhere on the court, and Carolina contributed 19 turnovers to the cause.
"I wasn't going to let turnovers affect the way I play," mercurial sophomore Brian Morrison perplexingly said after coughing up the ball an astounding seven times. His coach, perhaps cognizant of the effect the disregard for the basketball was having on his team, didn't see things quite the same way.
"I'm concerned about the decision-making and the turnovers," Doherty said after the game. "We need to stop hurting ourselves. You can credit the defense sometimes, but you also have to give credit to ourselves for those turnovers, too."
One year later, Morrison is gone and the more sure-handed Raymond Felton is the new caretaker of the basketball. The names and faces have changed, but the Carolina-Kentucky rivalry burns as hot as ever.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.
