Ah, “The World’s Greatest Arena.” That’s how they describe the Garden.
Hubert Davis said last week that as long as he coaches the Tar Heels, they will play at least one game every season at Madison Square Garden. And it was shocking to find out that, in his nine years as an assistant to Roy Williams, Davis and the Heels did not play in the world’s greatest arena.
When Carolina tips off against Ohio State Saturday at 3 p.m. in the CBS Sports Classic, it will be the first time UNC played there since December 2010, beating Rutgers in a bounce-back season that would end in the NCAA Elite 8.
Nine months earlier, Carolina had lost to Dayton in the championship game of the NIT there after a five-game run that gave Williams a respectable 20-17 record; after a dismal seven-week stretch when those Tar Heels dropped from No. 12 in the polls to out of sight and contention for their usual NCAA bid.
Since then, Williams took his team back to New York, but it was as a pretty regular participant at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, from the ACC tournaments to another CBS Sports Classic, in which Carolina spanked UCLA in December of 2015 on the way to the Final Four in Houston.
The Tar Heels will be playing in a building that underwent a $1 billion upgrade from 2011-13 when, somehow, the Knicks, Rangers and college basketball continued to play there. UNC is 29-11 in the Garden, the first visit coming at the 1968 Holiday Festival that ended in bitter disappointment.
The second-ranked Tar Heels, two-time defending ACC champions, were set up to play No. 1 and two-time defending national champion UCLA in a rematch of the 1968 NCAA title game in Los Angeles. The Heels had lost All-American Larry Miller, but the Bruins still had 7-1 center Lew Alcindor who was converting to Sunni Islam and would take the name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
It was freezing and snowing for three days outside on 34th Street but it was hot, hot, hot inside the Garden.
UNC had beaten rugged No. 8 Villanova with All-American to-be Howard Porter in the first round and was a heavy favorite against unranked St. John’s in the semifinals. But the then-Redmen held the ball and pulled off a 72-70 shocker in Charlie Scott’s return to his hometown.
No rematch with “Lewis Kareem” (as John Wooden called him) and they settled for blowing out Princeton, 103-76, in the third-place game. Bummer.
So Hubert and UNC return to his homecourt with the Knicks for 4 seasons, and he’ll have stories about trying to guard and score on Michael Jordan and other all-pros.
By the way, the Heels are 12-3 all-time against Ohio State.
Featured image via MSG.com
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