On Saturday night, Carolina fans and Duke fans alike will witness something that’s never happened before: the two great rivals meeting on the biggest stage, the NCAA Final Four in New Orleans.
But of course both teams are no strangers to the Final Four, with 38 combined appearances between them. UNC is responsible for 21 of those – and Mick Mixon was there to witness more than a few.
Before taking over as the voice of the Carolina Panthers, Mixon worked alongside Woody Durham as the color analyst for the Tar Heel Sports Network from 1989 to 2005. That period included four Final Four trips and one NCAA title in 1993 – also, as it happened, in New Orleans.
97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck spoke with Mixon earlier this week.
Listen to their conversation.
Aaron Keck: (You were) in New Orleans in 1993, one of the two times Carolina went down to New Orleans and came away with the national championship, both of those during the Dean Smith era.
Mick Mixon: That team was special. Veteran team, really good basketball players, all of them. (They) had a lot of versatility. They could switch on screens. Several different long defenders could guard one through four or two through five, and then they were all able to catch and shoot, handle, pass – a lot of people might think that Michigan was the better team, the more athletic team, but the Tar Heels had such a high degree of basketball skill. And that was on display in New Orleans.
Keck: What was your favorite memory?
Mixon: I’m gonna tell you one thing – and I’m telling you this, not to pat Woody and me on the back in any way at all, but because it meant a lot to me. And I often think about it.
So of course, everybody knows Chris Webber calls an additional timeout for Michigan in the critical moment. Woody has his now famous “timeout, timeout,” and he and I both sort of shriek “technical foul.” Well, on the flight to New Orleans for the Final Four, I was reading the rule book, and I had noted something that I did not know. And that was that teams that call timeouts that they don’t have are granted timeouts, but at the expense of a technical foul. I thought, that’s an interesting little note. You get as many (timeouts) as you want, but there’s a technical foul on every end. So now the night of the national final, there’s the Webber timeout – and at some point, I said the NCAA rules allow teams to call timeouts in excess of their granted number, but each one comes at the expense of a technical foul.
So fast forward years later (to a) golf tournament, this guy comes right up to me on the putting green and says, Mick, you don’t know me, but I want to thank you. And I said, for what? He says, well, I was listening to the radio and watching TV – and television never said why Michigan got a timeout. But I had the radio on, and you said what you said, and I just want to thank you for clarifying that.
I loved that. The one guy who was listening that way, I was able to meet his needs.
Keck: You were also there in 1991, when it was very nearly a Carolina-Duke final. Fast-forwarding to the present day – thoughts about this day actually coming? This is the day that we’ve been anticipating, dreading, for many, many years – what does it mean to you?
Mixon: I’m glad you asked me that, Aaron, because for a long time – decades – I hoped against all hope that it never happened. I thought it would put the rivalry into an imbalance that it could never recover from…
But as I’ve gotten older – and maybe it’s just me – I think I can handle it, and I think the rivalry can handle it. I think it’ll be okay. Both teams have had such incredible seasons. Both teams need one another. I mean, for each team, the other is the rabbit that the greyhounds chase. Duke and Carolina recruit better, they go faster, they run harder because of the other one. So I think either way it’ll be okay. I think it’s gonna be unbelievable theater.
Keck: I agree. At least we’ve got a precedent set – in 2012, Kentucky and Louisville met in the Final Four, Kentucky won that game. The rivalry survived there, so it should survive here.
Mixon: And North Carolina and Virginia, you know, Al Wood going off on Ralph Sampson’s Virginia team. And they had a great rivalry, UNC and those Virginia teams.
(But) imagine the stress level. Imagine the Maalox! If I had a company that manufactured antacids, man, I’d be buying all the advertising on the Tar Heel Sports Network.
Keck: This has got to be the biggest game, in terms of magnitude, in the history of the Carolina-Duke rivalry. What now is number two? Like, what was up until now, in terms of magnitude, the (game that had) the most at stake in the rivalry? I was looking back at the ACC tournament finals, back when only one team made it to the NCAA. They only met twice in that period (1967 and 1969), so even that’s kind of limited.
Mixon: I mean, the Bloody Montross game, right? The Marvin Williams stick back? When Duke had it rolling, ’91, ’92, those were rockstar teams. I don’t know what is number two.
Keck: Do you have any superstitions, anything you’re going to do, or wear, anything like that?
Mixon: Lord, no! Woody used to get so mad at me because I was not superstitious and he was superstitious. As you know, Aaron, in any relationship, business or personal, whoever cares less controls the relationship. So Woody would get upset that I would have a tie that had the color of Maryland in it when we were playing Maryland, or I wasn’t sitting in the right spot for our Monday production meeting because we had lost the time before, when we sat in the same spot. So I’m not superstitious, but I respect those who believe that there are metaphysical forces at work in the universe that conspire to influence events.
Photo via The Daily Tar Heel/Helen McGinnis.
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