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The uncanny Carolina-Kansas connection goes back more than 75 years.
When Dean Smith was finishing up his Air Force duty after graduating from Kansas and playing for the legendary Phog Allen, he served as an assistant coach at the Air Force Academy under Bob Spear, who urged Smith to take an assistant’s job with Carolina coach Frank McGuire in 1958.
The Tar Heels had come off the 1957 NCAA championship with a magical 32-0 season. They did it with consecutive triple-overtime wins in the Final Four in Kansas City. In the championship game, McGuire’s team defeated – guess who – Kansas with 7-footer Wilt “the Stilt” Chamberlain, who eventually played in the NBA for McGuire. Always the gamesman, McGuire sent his 5-foot-11 point guard Tommy Kearns out to jump center against the Stilt. As a Wall Street stockbroker, Kearns eventually had his tallest client ever.
After Smith succeeded McGuire and built his own Hall of Fame career, he had repeated opportunities to return to Kansas as the head coach. He turned each offer down but recommended others with UNC pedigree, starting in 1983 with Larry Brown, who won the 1988 national championship at KU, and Brown’s successor Roy Williams who before he left Carolina for Kansas helped Smith recruit an underrated guard from Virginia named Hubert Davis.
The Jayhawks and Tar Heels have met 12 times over the years, seven of them in the NCAA tournament, including in the 1991 Final Four at Indianapolis. Williams won and Smith was ejected late in the second half. They had a rematch two years later in the semi-finals at the Superdome in New Orleans where Smith won and two nights later brought home his second national championship.
During Williams’ 15-year tenure at Kansas, Jayhawk fans lived in fear that he would leave to succeed Smith someday at Carolina.
After Bill Guthridge retired in 2000, Williams turned down returning to UNC and remained at Kansas for three more years, going to back-to-back Final Fours in his last two seasons there. In 2003, he succeeded Matt Doherty and came home to coach the Tar Heels for 18 seasons. Doherty’s former assistant Fred Quartlebaum is now the Director of Basketball Operations at KU. UNC assistant coach Brad Frederick is the son of the former Kansas Athletic Director who had the guts to hire the unknown Williams.
Williams and his Kansas successor Bill Self played in the 2008 NCAA semifinals in San Antonio, with Kansas holding off a late Carolina comeback. Kansas holds a 5-2 record against UNC in post-season play.
After Ol’ Roy retired and turned the job over to Davis, the Tar Heels advanced to the 2022 NCAA Championship game against the Jayhawks. The Heels led by 15 at the half before finally succumbing to a late KU rally.
They meet once again Friday night at Allen Fieldhouse, where Dean Smith and Roy Williams began as a player and head coach in college basketball.
Featured image via Todd Melet
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
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