The Tar Heels have played 13 games on St. Patty’s Day.
Tonight, they will play for the 14th time on St. Patrick’s Day, the global holiday to honor the patron saint of Ireland that has since turned into a celebration of dancing, eating and drinking, mostly drinking. Roy Williams is 2-0 on St. Patty’s day at UNC, beating Murray State in the 2006 NCAA Tournament and Michigan State the next year in the game that Tyler Hansbrough played with a broken nose and mask that he ripped off in the second half.
Bill Guthridge was 1-0 on March 17, beating Missouri in 2000, the game that launched the Tar Heels onto their second Final Four in three years under Coach Gut. In Dean Smith’s 36 seasons, his teams played 10 times when leprechauns were frolicking all over the world. He won nine of the those 10, losing his last St. Patty’s Day game to Texas Tech in 1996, when the Red Raiders’ Darvin Ham shattered green UNC’s hopes in the Big Dance, along with a backboard.
The Heels played some famous and infamous games on March 17, three times with wins that catapulted them to the Final Four. None was more memorable than their 1977 dramatic victory over, of all teams, Notre Dame in the Sweet Sixteen at College Park, Maryland. Carolina also defeated Villanova in 1991 and Murray State in 1995 on the way to those Final Fours. In 1980, the Heels stunned top-ranked Oklahoma in the second round on Rick Fox’s driving bank shot, as Woody Durham bellowed, “The game is over! The game is over!”
And there was the 1984 win over Temple on St. Patty’s day, five days before perhaps Carolina’s best team ever lost to Indiana in the game that TV announcer Dan Dakich supposedly shut down Michael Jordan. Sure you did, Dan, keep telling people that!
Perhaps the most special March 17 victory came in 1967, when the Tar Heels avenged a regular–season loss to Princeton in the Eastern Regional at College Park and gave Smith his first of what would be 65 NCAA Tournament victories, another record he held the day he retired 30 years later.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Tar Heels!
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