Monumental events often make me go back in time to recall what was happening 10, 20, 30 years ago. The passing of Dean Smith, whose legacy will live forever, came almost cosmically as the basketball season heads into the home stretch with February Fretting before March Madness.

So what was going on at those various 10-year mileposts?

Photo Courtesy Jeffrey A. Camarati, GoHeels.com

Photo Courtesy Jeffrey A. Camarati, GoHeels.com

Well, ten years ago, Roy Williams was getting ready to win his first national championship after returning as head coach from Kansas in April of 2003. The second-ranked Tar Heels went to Duke on February 9th and lost 71-70 when Raymond Felton did not adjust to Duke’s double team and never got the potential winning shot off. The Tar Heels avenged that defeat almost one month later (without the ill Rashad McCants) by scoring the last 11 points to catch and defeat the Blue Devils on Marvin Williams’ offensive put-back and three-point play.

“The loudest arena I’ve ever been in anywhere, anytime,” Roy Williams said after his team clinched first place in the ACC standings and the No. 1 seed in the NCAA East Regional with the 75-73 win.

Easy wins over Oakland and Iowa State at the old Charlotte Coliseum advanced Carolina to the Regional in Syracuse, where the Heels survived a controversial traveling call against Villanova and stubborn Wisconsin to reach the Final Four, UNC’s first since 2000 and Williams’ fifth as a head coach (after four at KU).

In St. Louis, the Tar Heels came back from a shaky first half against Michigan State, then won going away and two nights later used a second-half spurt and held off Illinois to cut the nets down and receive a visit from Smith and Michael Jordan in their Edward Jones Dome locker room. Smith and his trusted assistant for 30 years, Bill Guthridge, got to enjoy it all at courtside. By the time Carolina won it all again in 2009, both fine gentlemen had begun to have health problems.

Twenty years ago, Smith was close to retirement but had regained the mantle of America’s coach by taking his third team to the Final Four in the 1990s. The 1995 Tar Heels finished in a four-way tie for first (with Maryland, Virginia and Wake Forest as Duke languished in last place without its fallen leader), lost the ACC Tournament championship game to Wake in overtime and went to the South Regional as the No. 2 seed behind top-ranked Kentucky. They handled Murray State and Iowa State in Tallahassee, warded off Allen Iverson and Georgetown in the Sweet Sixteen in Birmingham and faced Rick Pitino and his Wildcats for a trip to the Final Four in Seattle.

RASHEED WALLACE smallerThis was one of the greatest games in Carolina history, as the Heels fought from behind in a rough-and-tumble foul fest that included a scuffle between Rasheed Wallace and Kentucky’s Walter McCarty. Smith’s smallish three-guard lineup that season (Calabria, McInnis, Donald Williams) finally wore down the Wildcats, spread the floor and let Wallace and Jerry Stackhouse go to the hole and send Kentucky packing, cancelling Pitino’s pre-planned victory party at a local bistro. The Final Four wasn’t much fun, with Stackhouse getting hurt on the opening tip and the old dome shooting woes returning in the 75-68 loss to defending national champion Arkansas (which lost its title to UCLA two nights later).

Thirty years ago, coincidentally, the 1985 Tar Heels also played the regional in Birmingham, but that’s where it ended to eventual Cinderella champion Villanova. Carolina (which had lost Jordan to the pros) defeated Auburn (which had similarly lost Charles Barkley) in the Sweet Sixteen despite having to play without Steve Hale (injured against Notre Dame in the second round in South Bend). The Heels were leading Villanova by 8 points and had the ball on what was supposed to the last possession of the first half. Kenny Smith thought he was tied up by ‘Nova’s Harold Jensen, but it turned into a steal and three-point play for Rollie Massimino’s team at the buzzer. The lead was down to five, and Villanova outscored Carolina 39-22 in the second half with the formula that shocked defending NCAA champion Georgetown the next week in Lexington, Kentucky (all five starters combined for the team’s 56 total points by scoring between 9 and 15).

Dean Smith photoForty years ago was the emergence of freshman Phil Ford, who helped UNC snap a nine-game losing streak to N.C. State and then was named MVP in the 1975 ACC Tournament, perhaps the most thrilling in history. Carolina defeated Wake Forest and Clemson in overtime to get the Wolfpack for a third time, and Ford was masterful in the Four Corners, feeding Mitch Kupchak for the decisive basket in the 70-66 victory that sent the Tar Heels to the NCAA tournament and left State at home because regular-season champion Maryland got the ACC’s second bid. Carolina defeated New Mexico State in its NCAA opener but then lost a big lead and the game to Syracuse in Providence, the last time Jim Boeheim was not the Orange head coach. He was the next year, after Roy Danforth left the cold weather to coach at Tulane (one of the dumbest coaching moves in history).

I was still in high school 50 years ago, but the 1965 Carolina season was a memorable, if not championship, one. Smith was in his fourth year after succeeding Frank McGuire and, despite finishing with a winning record, was hung in effigy by rowdy students after the team returned from a lopsided loss at Wake Forest. The Tar Heels went on to upset Duke twice that season behind senior Billy Cunningham and sophomore Bob Lewis, and that spring signed the recruiting class that would turn Smith’s program around two years later. When sophomores Rusty Clark, Bill Bunting and Dick Grubar joined senior Lewis and junior Larry Miller in the starting lineup, Carolina won its first ACC championship in 1967 and Smith was on his way to becoming the iconic coach who built Carolina into a national power and the ACC into the best college basketball league in the country.