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I hope the teams get to take an educational tour of Maui.
Carolina returns to the Maui Invitational for the ninth time, as the popular college basketball tournament returns to its home at the Lahaina Civic Center after storms and wildfires destroyed a large portion of the island three months before the last eight-team tourney was scheduled.
The 2023 event moved to Honolulu while Maui began to rebuild, a job that is far from finished after the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in a more than hundred years. The invitational is known for bringing some of the best teams in the country, and this year they may get to see more than just each other.
Carolina is playing in the event for a record ninth time and is going for its fifth championship and to take home the trophy and commemorative surfboard. Another title will tie Duke’s five for the most in tournament history.
The Heels have certainly done the best to earn their four surfboards. Each time, UNC has gone on to reach the NCAA Final Four, the last three winning national championships in 2005, 2009 and 2017 under Roy Williams. The 1999-2000 team, coached to the title by Bill Guthridge, lost in the semifinals of the Final Four after sweeping Southern Cal, Georgetown and Purdue in Maui.
Funny, Dean Smith never won the Maui Classic, losing in the title game on both trips.
Over Thanksgiving, Williams twice had teams that looked like they could win it all in the Big Dance.
In 2004, the Heels lost their opening game of the season to Santa Clara on the way to Maui, playing without star point guard Raymond Felton, and then turned it on with Felton back to win all three in Lahaina. In 2008, Williams had indisputably college ball’s top team by the following March and began the season by clobbering two opponents by 72 points before beating No. 8 Notre Dame by 15 for the surfboard.
In 2016, like in ’09, Carolina was coming off a bummer Final Four but overcame departing seniors Brice Johnson and Marcus Paige to beat two teams by 75 points and then edged No.15 Wisconsin for their fourth surfboard.
The pairings are out for this year’s Maui Invitational. Top seeds UConn and UNC are in opposite brackets and can only play each other in their third game Wednesday, November 27. The defending national champs Huskies open the event against Memphis Monday morning at 9:30 Hawaii time; the Tar Heels play Dayton about 14 hours later to close out the first round and with a win will face the Auburn-Iowa State survivor.
The fact that Connecticut and North Carolina will play so far apart gives the Huskies more overall downtime before round 2. Clearly, they’re the bigger dogs in Maui this year.
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.
