There has never been a Carolina player quite like Larry Miller.

Half of the famed L&M Boys along with Bob Lewis, who I featured yesterday, Miller was the first five-star recruit signed by Dean Smith. He was from Pennsylvania, where Duke won the recruiting landscape with three Final Four teams in the early 1960s. But instead of following his state-mates to Durham, Miller wanted to build something of his own in Chapel Hill.

At 6’4” Miller was muscle-bound, athletic and drop-dead gorgeous. His motto was “work hard and play hard,” which he did. Of Miller, they said he could party the night before then still go out and get 20 and 10 the next afternoon in an ACC game. Once, on the way back from a big win at Virginia, he paid the kitchen boy at a restaurant where the Tar Heels were eating to sneak a case of beer on the bus. That must have been some ride home!

Miller is the only Tar Heel to win two ACC Player of the Year awards and two ACC tournament MVPs. Think of the other All-Americans who starred here – Rosenbluth, Shaffer, Scott, Ford, Worthy, Jordan, Jamison, Hansbrough – no one else did that. His 32 points, combined with Lewis’ 26, beat Duke for a third time in the 1967 ACC championship game and sent Carolina on to the first of three straight conference titles and trips to the Final Four.

With a small medal around his neck and black hair flopping as he played, Miller could shoot the left-handed jumper, feed the post or drive it to the hole to muscle it up and in. He was a ferocious rebounder for his size, and a dogged defender. Plus, he had a penchant for the big play as much as any Tar Heel before or after him.

He went play for the old ABA with the red-white-and-blue ball and three-point line and still holds the ABA single-game scoring record of 67 points for the Carolina Cougars. At the front end of his career, he was the all-time leading high school scorer in Pennsylvania, where he still lives and remains a legend to this day.

Larry Miller thrilled fans, wowed the girls and drove fear into the hearts of opposing coaches and players. He was an all-time great and the second half of the L&M Boys, who began the Dean Smith reign of greatness.

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