I plead guilty when it comes to the 1967 Tar Heels snub.
My book Game Changers celebrates the 50th anniversary of Charlie Scott’s enrollment as UNC’s first black scholarship athlete. But there is another milestone that I downplayed in my book, one that so far the university has not announced any plans to celebrate.
The 1966-67 team was Dean Smith’s sixth at Carolina but his most important because it began the unparalleled dominance of the once-embattled young coach. That team – with senior Bob Lewis, junior Larry Miller, and sophomores Dick Grubar, Rusty Clark and Bill Bunting in the starting lineup – won the ACC regular season and beat Duke for the third time in the ACC tournament final to earn an NCAA bid.
In those days, the regular season meant little beyond seeding for the conference tourney. One team went on to the NCAAs and it was the winner of the ACC tournament. Theoretically, the last place team in the standings with a losing record could have won the tournament and walked away with the ACC’s only NCAA invitation.
What that 1967 team accomplished by winning both, plus the Eastern Regional before losing to Dayton in the Final Four, was only the beginning for Smith. The next season, when sophomore Scott came up from the freshman team to replace the graduated Lewis, the Tar Heels did it again – won both the ACC regular season and tournament, plus another regional and eventually lost to UCLA (and a pretty good center named Lew Alcindor) in the national championship game in Los Angeles.
The 1969 team, with junior Scott as All-ACC and All-American, did it for the third straight year, and has never been matched by any ACC school. That established Smith as the best coach in the league, a future Hall of Famer. That sophomore class of 1967 – Grubar, Clark, Bunting, Joe Brown and Gerald Tuttle – owns the 3-peat and surely should have been honored on the 50th anniversary of their first title season. That team certainly rated a home game half-time appearance and recognition.
Coach Smith is gone and Roy Williams was a junior in high school. No one, except sports information director emeritus Rick Brewer, remains at UNC from that special year. Hope Carolina does plan to honor these dynasty-starters, maybe next season or in 2019 on the 50th anniversary of the hat trick.
[NOTE: UNC director of athletic media relations Steve Kirschner says a celebration for the 1967-68-69 teams is being planned for next season or the following year.]
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I was a member of the 1963 freshman team, headlined by Bob Lewis, who as a 6’3″ center, could outleap the Kangaroo Kid, Billy Cunningham. I was a 6′ guard who occasionally guarded Lewis in practice, but the kid was unstoppable. He had to move to a guard position on the varsity because of his relative short stature, but he thrived there and holds the UNC single game scoring record of 49 points against FSU.
You are absolutely right. 1966-67 was my freshman year after suffering thru the previous 5 years in junior high and high school in Durham as a Carollna fan. I vividly remember the win at Kentucky and tping the trees behind Avery, Larry Miller’s back to back floor length drives for game winning layups in consecutive games at Wake and Duke in January after the shocking home loss to Princeton, and waiting 4 hours to secure prime seats for the season ending Duke game and the players carrying coach Smith off the court after they won to clinch the regular season title. Carmichael was electric that year and going to the Final 4 seemed like the fulfillment of a dream. If you were there at the pep rally at South Building to send the team off to Louisville you won’t have forgotten Joe Brown saying “Well here we are. Right in the middle of the big time.” Thanks to the 66-67 team the Tar Heels have been there ever since.