donbosco
Legend of ZZL
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This is what I recollect...
On the Friday morning of March 18, 1977 all over Chapel Hill and throughout the Tar Heel Nation the faithful awoke after sparse sleep and perhaps some ringing between their ears. St. Patrick’s Day had been a raucous one that saw Dean Smith’s squad defeat the sainted Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, then led by the South Bend Dandy Digger Phelps. I was a second semester freshman and had never seen the likes of it. Sure, I had lived and died with the fortunes of the Tar Heels since my earliest memories but to be in Chapel Hill for such madness caught me by surprise. My dorm, Everett, had arranged to watch the game in Whitehead dorm, “all-girl” and across campus – we would supply the keg and the women would make sure that the TV was working and provide some snacks. Why anyone thought this was a good idea is beyond me. Those were different times in so many, many ways.
The game was a true barnburner – as playing Notre Dame on St. Patty’s Day ought to be. Carolina was 25-4 and ranked #4 in the country. UNC was down by 10 at the half, 30-40 and the Irish lead grew to 14 in the first minute of the second half. These were the days when neither a shot clock nor the three-pointer sped up the game nor rendered leads easily evaporated. Down fourteen was a huge deficit. Carolina pressed – the starting line-up of Mike O’Koren, Chicky Yonakor, Walter Davis, John Kuester, and Phil Ford mounted an all-out press. Guard Tom Zaliagaris played significant minutes and was joined by big men Steve Krafcisin and Bruce Buckley. A Sophomore Dudley Bradley clocked three minutes, freshmen Dave Colescott and Jeff Wolf logged two and one respectively.
In the wildness of that classic pressing defense Carolina managed an 18-4 run and tied the game at 48. Notre Dame countered and pulled ahead 60 to 52. There is some sweetness to what next transpired as the audacious Digger Phelps sent his team into the Four Corners. But Notre Dame was missing the Offense part of that classic tactic and Carolina. Digger, in trying to be cool and ironic, asked his team to do something that they barely understood that their opponent knew like the back of their own hand. Carolina picked apart the Irish stall and with 2 seconds remaining, all-time great point guard Phil Ford nailed two free throws to give his team the victory 79-77.
It was a pressure cooker contest with Walter Davis returning to the court with a broken right index finger (suffered in an ACC Tournament win over NC State), tape signaling the injury. (Carolina students were seen around campus and in class in the aftermath with white athletic tape adjoining their index and middle fingers in solidarity). Davis scored 8 points and took down 8 rebounds. Freshmen Mike O’Koren and Rich Yonakor had stepped up (UNC also lost center Tommy Lagarde to injury that season) while Phil Ford’s backcourt mate John Kuester did yeoman work in all facets of the game, picking up the slack. He had been named the ACC Tournament MVP and would go on to win that same award in the NCAA Eastern Regional. Ford was a Legend in hitting the two winning free throws by overall scoring 29 points (he was 9 for 9 from the line).
Back at Whitehead dorm the boys from Everett went bonkers as the buzzer sounded – that staid and well-furnished residence hall was laid waste that night. And then we were off to Franklin Street with thousands more. While I have read of other occasions of students “taking the street” this game registers as the first of four consecutive mob actions on Franklin as exciting games sent students “up town” on the following Saturday (a 79-72 win over Kentucky), and then again the following Saturday after an 84-83 topping of UNLV. Sadness sent us all to Franklin on Monday, March 28 after a devastating loss to Al McGuire’s Marquette Warriors.
The Tar Heels two stars constituted the walking wounded – Ford had hyper-extended his elbow in the last minutes of that Notre Dame win and of course, Walter Davis was playing with the broken finger of his shooting hand. Tommy Lagarde had gone out some ten games earlier never to return. This was one of Coach Smith’s greatest patchwork coaching jobs as he was constantly forced to turn to his bench and freshmen to step up. In the main they did. And on campus that fueled the emotion. Players were very present among the student body in those times and we saw them in The Pit and in our classes. We saw them in the bars and discos of downtown (the drinking age was 18 so if you were in school then you were legal). It was an improbable run that year that ended in defeat but the journey could have hardly been more sweet. Coach Smith was, of course, again denied his National Championship and pundits and scoundrels would continue to snark that he “couldn’t win the big one” until the 1982 team put the silence to that jeer.
It was a tough two weeks that run to the finals. My grades suffered as did my wallet and my brain. Psychology 10 and Poli Sci 41 both went sideways. And the Women of Whitehead never, ever had a Mixer with Everett Dorm again.
