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The North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball program is the intercollegiate men's basketball team of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels have won five NCAA Tournament Championships (1957, 1982, 1993, 2005 and 2009)[1] and were retroactively named the national champions by the Helms Athletic Foundation for their undefeated season in 1924. North Carolina's five NCAA Tournament Championships are tied for third-most all-time.[2][3] They have also won 17 Atlantic Coast Conference tournament titles[4] and 29 Atlantic Coast Conference regular season titles[5] (including an Atlantic Coast Conference record 19 outright Regular Season Championships).[5] The program has produced many notable players who went on to play professionally, including Michael Jordan, and many assistant coaches who went on to become head coaches elsewhere.
The Tar Heels are currently #3 on the Division I all-time wins list. From the Tar Heels' first season in 1910–11 through the 2012–13 season, the Tar Heels have amassed a .737 all-time winning percentage (second highest all-time), winning 2,090 games and losing 745 games in 103 seasons.[6][7][8] The Tar Heels also have the most consecutive 20-win seasons, with 31 seasons from the 1970–71 season through the 2000–2001 season.[9] On March 2, 2010, North Carolina became the second college basketball program to reach 2,000 wins in its history. The Tar Heels are currently ranked 3rd all time in wins trailing Kentucky by a total of 21 games and Kansas by a total of 10 games. The Tar Heels are one of only four Division I Men's Basketball programs to have ever achieved 2,000 victories. Kentucky, Kansas, and Duke are the other three. The Tar Heels have appeared in the NCAA finals nine times, and have participated in a record 18 NCAA Final Fours,[10] have made it into the NCAA tournament 44 times (second-most all-time),[2][11] and have amassed a total of 109 victories (second most all-time).[2][11] North Carolina also won the National Invitation Tournament in 1971,[4] has appeared in two NIT Finals, and has made six appearances in the NIT Tournament.[4] Additionally, the team has been the number one seed in the NCAA Tournament 14 times, the latest being in 2012 (most #1 seeds all-time), has been ranked in the Top 25 in the AP Poll 808 weeks all time (#1 all-time),[12] has beaten #1 teams a record 12 times,[13] have the most consecutive 20-win seasons with 31,[14] and have the most consecutive top-3 ACC finishes with 37.[14] North Carolina has ended the season ranked in the Top-25 of the AP Poll 43 times and in the Top-25 of the Coaches' Poll 44 times. Further, the Tar Heels have finished the season ranked #1 in the AP Poll 5 times and ranked #1 in Coaches' Poll 5 times. In 2008, the Tar Heels received the first unanimous preseason #1 ranking in the history of either the Coaches' Poll[15] or the AP Poll.[16] In 2012, ESPN ranked North Carolina #1 on its list of the 50 most successful programs of the past 50 years.[17]
All of these streaks ended in the 2001–02 season, when the Tar Heels finished 8–20 on the season under coach Matt Doherty. They also finished tied for 7th in conference play, behind Florida State and Clemson—only their second losing conference record ever (the first being in the ACC's inaugural season).
Additionally, the Tar Heels have an active 57 consecutive home game winning streak against Clemson, who has never beaten the Tar Heels in Chapel Hill."[18] Until the 2010 ACC Tournament, North Carolina was the only program to have never played a Thursday game in the ACC Tournament since it expanded to a four-day format. UNC is still the only men's basketball program to have played just once on Thursday of the ACC Tournament.
North Carolina played its first basketball game against Virginia Christian, on January 27, 1911, a 42–21 win for North Carolina.[13] In 1921, North Carolina joined the Southern Conference.[19] The 1924 Tar Heels squad went 26–0 and was retroactively awarded the national championship by the Helms Athletic Foundation in 1936.[20] Overall, the Tar Heels played 32 seasons in the Southern Conference from 1921 to 1953. During that period they won 304 games and lost 111 for a winning percentage of 73.3%. The Tar Heels were winners of the regular season for nine times and won the Southern Conference Championships eight times.
In 1953, North Carolina split from the Southern Conference and became a founding member of the Atlantic Coast Conference.[21] The Tar Heels won their first NCAA Championship under coach Frank McGuire in 1957, led that year by Lennie Rosenbluth and several other transplants from the New York City area. C.D. Chesley, a Washington, D.C. television producer, piped the 1957 championship game in Kansas City to a hastily-created network of stations across North Carolina, which helped prove pivotal in basketball becoming a craze in the state.[22] The 1957 National Championship game versus Wilt Chamberlain's Kansas Jayhawks was the only triple overtime final game in championship history.[23] North Carolina had defeated Michigan State 74-70 the previous night also in a triple overtime game.
In 1960, the Tar Heels were placed on NCAA probation for "improper recruiting entertainment" of basketball prospects-to date, the only time the basketball program has ever faced sanctions from the NCAA. As a result, they were barred from the 1961 NCAA tournament[24] and also withdrew from the 1961 ACC Tournament. Following the season, Chancellor William Aycock forced McGuire to resign. As a replacement, Aycock selected one of McGuire's assistants, Kansas alumnus Dean Smith.
Smith's early teams were not nearly as successful as McGuire's had been. His first team went only 8–9, and his first five teams never won more than 16 games. This grated on a fan base used to winning; in 1965 some of them even hanged him in effigy. However, Smith would go on to take the Tar Heels to heights no one had even contemplated.[25] When Smith retired in 1997, the Kansas graduate and Phog Allen disciple had the most wins ever of any NCAA Division I men's basketball coach with 879 wins, and the 9th highest winning percentage (77.6%)[26][27] During Smith's time as head coach, North Carolina won the ACC regular season championship 17 times, won the ACC tournament 13 times, won the NIT in Eric Montross. While at North Carolina, Smith helped promote desegregation by recruiting the University’s first African American scholarship basketball player Charlie Scott.[29]
Smith unexpectedly retired before the start of practice for the 1997–98 season. He was succeeded by Bill Guthridge, who had been an assistant coach at the school for 30 years, the last 25 as Smith's top assistant. During Guthridge's three seasons as head coach he posted an 80–28 record, making him tied for the then-NCAA record for most wins by a coach after three seasons.[30] The Tar Heels reached the NCAA Final Four twice, in the 1998 tournament and again in the 2000 tournament. North Carolina reached the Final Four in 2000 as an 8-seed, their lowest seeding in a Final Four appearance.[31]
Georgetown.
Despite the turnaround from the year before and the NIT appearance, at the end of the season Matt Doherty was replaced as head coach by Roy Williams. Williams had served as an assistant to Smith for 11 years before leaving to spend the first 15 years of his Hall of Fame head coaching career leading Kansas to 9 conference championships and four Final Fours before Smith convinced him to return home.
In Williams' first season, the Tar Heels finished 19–11 and were ranked in a final media poll for the first time in three years. They returned to the NCAA tournament and were ousted in the second round by Texas. The following year, the Tar Heels won their fourth NCAA title and Williams' first as a head coach.[33] After winning the championship, Williams lost his top seven scorers, but the 2005–06 season saw the arrival of freshman Tyler Hansbrough and Williams was named Coach of the Year. The Tar Heels swept the ACC regular season and tournament titles in 2007 and 2008. The 2008 ACC Tournament was the first time North Carolina has ever won the ACC Tournament without defeating at least one in-state rival during the tournament.[34] North Carolina lost in the national semifinals of the 2008 NCAA tournament to Williams' former program Kansas.
In the 2008-2009 season, the Tar Heels won their fifth NCAA title by defeating Michigan State in the championship of the 2009 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. The Tar Heels won all six of that year's tournament games by at least 12 points, for an average victory margin of 20.2 points, and only trailed for a total of 10 minutes out of 240 through the entire tournament.[35] Wayne Ellington was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player, the fourth Tar Heel so honored.
The 2009–2010 Tar Heels struggled throughout the regular season finishing with a 16–15 record,[36] and dropped to #3 in Division I in all-time wins. They later lost in the first round of the ACC Tournament, playing in the first "play-in" Thursday game for the first time since the ACC grew to 12 teams. The Tar Heels did not receive an NCAA tournament bid, and instead accepted a bid to the NIT.[37] During the season, the Tar Heels reached the 2,000-win milestone with a home win over Miami on March 2, 2010, becoming the second fastest college team to do so (North Carolina was in its 100th season of basketball at the time of this accomplishment). The Tar Heels were able to make it to the final game of the NIT, losing to Dayton in the final game finishing with a 20-17 record.
The 2010–2011 Tar Heels, with the addition of Harrison Barnes, Kendall Marshall, and Reggie Bullock, eighth in the preseason polls, struggled out the gates, starting with a 2-2 record, the worst start since the 2001-2002 season. After losses to Illinois and Texas, the Tar Heels fell out of the rankings. The losses of senior Will Graves, to dismissal, and Larry Drew II, to transfer and also the unexpected off-season transfers of David and Travis Wear did not help matters. However, the Tar Heels improved greatly during the conference season, finishing first in the ACC regular season with a 14-2 record. Williams was named Conference Coach of the Year for his efforts of getting his team to work through the adversity to finish strong in the regular season.[38] Also during the season, the term Tar Heel Blue Steel was coined, referencing the Tar Heel men's basketball walk-ons. The term was started by one of the players, Stewart Cooper, in hopes that it would be a replacement for "walk-ons" and other less catchy names and soon enough Roy Williams caught on, as well as the rest of the Tar Heel Nation. North Carolina lost to Duke in the ACC Tournament Finals and made a significant run in the NCAA Tournament until they were eliminated in the Elite Eight by Kentucky, finishing with a 29-8 record.[39]
The 2011–2012 Tar Heels finished the regular season with a final record of 32-6, including a 14–2 record in ACC regular season play which allowed the team to win the conference regular season championship outright. The team fell to Florida State in the championship game of the 2012 ACC Men's Basketball Tournament. The team was a #1 seed in the Midwest Regional of the 2012 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament; the team reached the Elite Eight and was defeated by Kansas 80-67. This defeat was the second time UNC lost to Kansas in the NCAA Tournament with Roy Williams as UNC head coach. Roy Williams (coach) previously coached Kansas from 1988–2003. The loss to Kansas was also UNC's second straight loss in the Elite Eight, after losing to Kentucky the year before. Kansas later fell to Kentucky 67-59 in the National Championship Game. Before the Kansas game, the Tar Heels won their previous three games in the NCAA Tournament by an average of 13.7 points. In the second round game versus Creighton, starting UNC point guard Kendall Marshall broke his right wrist with 10:56 remaining[40] in the second half with UNC leading 66-50. Marshall continued to play by dribbling primarily with his left hand, including getting fouled on a drive to the basket with 7:09 left in the second half. He left the game against Creighton with two minutes left with UNC leading 85-69. UNC coach Roy Williams announced Kendall Marshall's injury at the Creighton post-game press conference.[41] Kendall Marshall did not play in UNC's two following games in the NCAA Tournament, a 73-65 overtime win over Ohio in the Sweet 16 and the aforementioned 67-80 loss to Kansas in the Elite Eight. The 2013-2014 men's basketball team also made history this past season. By the seasons end, the North Carolina Tar Heels were the only team in the history of men's college basketball to beat the preseason's number 1,2,3 and 4 top ranked teams in the same season.
The Tar Heels own several notable streaks in the history of college basketball. They appeared in either the NCAA Tournament or National Invitation Tournament (NIT) every year from 1967 to 2001. This includes 27 straight appearances in the NCAA tourney from 1975 (the first year that competition allowed more than one team from a conference to get a guaranteed bid) to 2001—the longest such streak in tournament history. The Tar Heels also notched 37 straight winning seasons from 1964 to 2001, the third-longest such streak in NCAA history, behind UCLA's streak of 54 consecutive winning seasons from 1948 to 2001, and Syracuse's currently active streak of 42 seasons from 1971 to date. They also finished .500 or better for 39 years in a row from 1962 (Dean Smith's second year) to 2001, the third-longest such streak in NCAA history, behind Kentucky's streak of 61 consecutive seasons from 1926 to 1988 (the Wildcats were barred from playing in 1952-53 due to NCAA violations) and UCLA's 54-season streak.
From the ACC's inception in 1953 to 2001, the Tar Heels did not finish worse than a tie for fourth place in ACC play. By comparison, all of the ACC's other charter members finished last at least once in that time. From 1965 to 2001, they did not finish worse than a tie for third, and for the first 21 of those years they did not finish worse than a tie for second.
Additionally, the Tar Heels have an active 57 consecutive home game winning streak against Clemson, although the Tigers have defeated the Tar Heels in regular season games in Charlotte and Greensboro.[42] Until the 2010 ACC Tournament, North Carolina was the only program to have never played a Thursday game in the ACC Tournament since it expanded to a four-day format.
North Carolina has a record 13 victories over the AP number one ranked team.[46][47][48][49]
To have his number retired, a player must win one of the following six widely recognized player of the year awards:[50]
Eight players (including Jack Cobb, whose jersey did not have a number) have had their numbers retired. Tyler Hansbrough's number 50 is the eighth to be retired, after he won all six major player of the year awards during the 2007–08 season.[51]
Forty-seven former North Carolina men's basketball players are honored in the Smith Center with banners representing their numbers hung from the rafters. Of the 47 honored jerseys, eight are retired.
To have his jersey honored, a player must have met one of the following criteria:[53]
The following 59 McDonald's All-Americans have played for North Carolina:[54]
The following players won their state's Mr. Basketball award in high school.
NBA Assistant Coaches:
The Tar Heels have appeared in the NCAA Tournament 45 times. Their combined record is 110–43. They have appeared in 18 Final Fours, 9 National Title games and are 5 time National Champions (1957, 1982, 1993, 2005, 2009).
The Tar Heels have appeared in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) five times. Their combined record is 13–5. They were NIT champions in 1971.
The Carolina Basketball Museum[58][59] is located in the Ernie Williamson Athletics Center and contains 8,000 square feet.[60] It was built to replace the old memorabilia room in the Dean Smith Center.[60] Designed by Gallagher & Associates, the cost of construction was $3.4 million.[60] The museum opened in January 2008.[61][62]
The UNC junior varsity basketball team was originally used at North Carolina as freshmen teams because freshmen were not allowed to play on the varsity team until the NCAA granted freshmen eligibility in the 1970s.
After most schools decided to disband their J.V. squads, North Carolina's athletic department opted to keep the team so that non-scholarship students were given the chance to play basketball for UNC. North Carolina also uses their J.V. team as a way for varsity assistant coaches to gain experience as head coaches. Roy Williams was a J.V. coach for eight years before he was hired at Kansas.
Students at UNC are only allowed to play on the team for two years, and then they are given a chance to try out for the varsity. The J.V. team also serves as a way for coaches to evaluate players for two years on the J.V. so they will better know what to expect when they try out for varsity later in their careers.
UNC's J.V. team plays a combination of teams from Division II and III schools, some community colleges, and a few prep schools from around the North Carolina area.
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