University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Arizona Series Comes Home
January 27, 2006 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 27, 2006
By Adam Lucas
Carolina and Arizona, two of the powerhouse programs in college basketball, have met in Seattle. They've met in Charlotte, Indianapolis (a pause here for the obligatory shudder from Tar Heel fans at any mention of that infernal dream-crushing city), and Springfield. They've even met in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Given the far-flung locations in which the two teams have played a game of basketball, it seems a little odd that none of their five meetings have taken place in Chapel Hill or Tucson. That will be remedied over the next two seasons. The Wildcats come to the Smith Center this weekend and the Tar Heels make a return trip to Arizona next season.
The home-and-home series will give Carolina a chance to break through against one of their most thorny nonconference rivals. Indiana currently holds the title as peskiest nonconference foe and probably will for as long as anyone who remembers the 1984 NCAA Tournament is still living. But the Tar Heels went into Assembly Hall and won last season and they've split the last four meetings.
The same isn't true of the series with Arizona, which has developed into one of those programs that gives you a deep sense of foreboding when you see them on the other side of the NCAA Tournament bracket. The Wildcats have won the only two postseason meetings between the squads--one in 1988 and one in 1997.
The 1988 game was one of three straight season-ending contests for the Tar Heels in which they were eliminated by a superior individual performance--Syracuse's Rony Seikaly in 1987, Arizona's Sean Elliott in 1988, and Michigan's Glen Rice in 1989. Elliott scored 24 points in the regional final game played in Seattle, including 11-of-14 from the foul line.
That game could be rationalized. The Wildcats, seeded first in the West Region, were almost certainly the better team.
It wasn't quite so easy to come to grips with what happened during the 1996-97 season. Carolina opened the season with plenty of national attention. Antawn Jamison, Vince Carter, and Ademola Okulaja were seasoned sophomores, and they were being paired with a flashy new point guard from New York named Ed Cota. A top-10 preseason ranking followed, and the Tar Heels opened the year with a game against Arizona in Springfield, Mass.
In hindsight, what happened first in that game served as foreshadowing for the way Carolina's season would begin...and end.
Carter controlled the opening tip and was headed for an easy layup--or, given Carter's athleticism, something even more exciting than an easy layup. But as he took flight, he had a moment of doubt. As he reached the peak of his jump, he forgot which basket belonged to the Tar Heels. He had just enough doubt to suspect he was preparing to lay the ball in to the Arizona hoop.
He fired the ball back toward midcourt, diffusing a potentially momentum-seizing play.
"I've never seen that one," Dean Smith said after the game. "I think it just dawned on him, `Uh-oh. Maybe.'"
The unfortunate part was that Carter was indeed preparing to score on the correct basket. Had he simply dropped the ball through, the Tar Heels would've had an early 2-0 lead.
Instead, they stumbled to an 83-72 defeat. Most of the pregame talk had been about the matchup of rookie point guards Cota and Mike Bibby. It was unsung Wildcat swingman Michael Dickerson who ended up being the story, as he hit seven 3-pointers and finished with 31 points.
By the time the teams met again in Indianapolis in the Final Four, Carolina had regained momentum and was riding a 16-game winning streak. They'd been seeded first in their region; underdog Arizona had been the fourth seed in their bracket.
But the Wildcats had a weapon they hadn't had in Springfield--guard Miles Simon, who'd been held out of the season opener due to academic difficulties. Such was born, for Carolina fans, what might as well be known as the Miles Simon Rule.
The rule holds that any player who feels slighted during their recruitment by Carolina or wanted to attend Carolina will ultimately come back to haunt the Tar Heels in some fashion.
Simon badly wanted to play in Chapel Hill, but the Tar Heels already had Donald Williams and Dante Calabria. Dean Smith wrote the Mater Dei High standout a letter explaining Carolina's logjam at his position.
"I have that letter up on the bulletin board in my room right now," Simon told reporters before the Final Four. "That was the school I always wanted to go to. I look at that letter every day. It's right next to my bed. They said they were stacked at the number-two guard spot. If I had gone there, I would've been able to compete with who was there. I loved Carolina blue."
Seasoned Carolina fans probably felt a deep sense of unease as soon as they read that quote. They knew exactly what was coming because they'd seen it happen so many times over the past few decades of Tar Heel hoops.
And then, it happened.
The Tar Heels began the game with a 15-4 run in the first 4:30. Carter was phenomenal, torching the Wildcats with baseline dunks and alley-oops. But as quickly as the spurt had started, it ended. And suddenly Carolina could do nothing right. After posting 15 points in four minutes, the Tar Heels would get only 43 points over the next 35 minutes. The halfcourt offense bogged down and the favored Heels shot 11-of-39 in the second half.
Predictably, Arizona shot a season-high 29 three-pointers and made 11. Miles Simon, the former Tar Heel recruit, scored a game-high 24 points as 'Zona churned out a 66-58 victory.
The two programs then went on an 8-year hiatus. It will end tomorrow when the Wildcats--including first-year assistant coach, yes, Miles Simon--come to Chapel Hill for a 1 p.m. tipoff.
Roy Williams will have more than a passing familiarity with several Wildcats because of his emphasis on recruiting the west while at Kansas. And there's at least one Arizona player who is already familiar with the Tar Heels.
While it's probably not enough to invoke the Miles Simon Rule, Mustafa Shakur says he "dreamed" of playing Carolina in Chapel Hill and will have multiple family members in attendance.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. He is the coauthor of the official book of the 2005 championship season, Led By Their Dreams, and his book on Roy Williams's first season at Carolina, Going Home Again, is now available in bookstores. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly or learn more about Going Home Again, click here.
