#OTD (March 30) in 1981 President Ronald Reagan was shot. Vice President George H.W. Bush immediately headed back to Washington D.C. from Texas by plane. In the meantime, Secretary of State Alexander Haig met with the Press and announced that, “I, Al Haig, am in control at the White House.” Thankfully he was badly mistaken, showing a lack of knowledge of the Constitution, and was never ‘in control.’ Though the 25th Amendment to the Constitution has recently been much discussed, on that day it was not invoked.
UNC was set to play Indiana that evening for the National Championship but until Reagan emerged from surgery in stable condition that day the game was in doubt. White House Press Secretary James Brady was gravely wounded and fully recovered. When the doctors signaled that the president would survive and was not even badly wounded, the game was played. The starters for Carolina were Al Wood, James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Jimmy Black, and Mike Pepper. Matt Doherty, Jimmy Braddock, Chris Brust, Pete Budko, and Eric Kenny also played. Wood was the leading scorer with 18, Perkins grabbed 8 rebounds, and Black dished out 6 assists. Isaiah Thomas had 23 points and 5 assists for Indiana. The Hoosiers won 63-50.
At that point in his 19 year-long head coaching career Dean Smith had yet to win a National Championship. His coaching opponent that night, Bobby Knight had captured a title five years previously, winning in 1976. I have never been a fan of Bobby Knight. I can respect that his players graduated. Something apparently motivated him away from corruption as well. Just the same, the sentiments that he so frankly expressed over the years and the acts that worldview drove him to commit have always been, in the main, extremely repulsive.
So many of his performances over the years were juvenile and mean-spirited. After the conclusion of his coaching career at Texas Tech in 2008 he continued to speak his mind in public venues and in 2016 and 2020 was a vocal backer of Donald Trump. At one point he was the winningest head coach in the college game and passed Coach Smith to reach that milestone. He begat the equally foul-mouthed coach in Durham, Mike Krzyzewski, who currently tallies the most wins on the court.
My apologies if my views on this offend you. I won’t be swayed so do not try. I have heard many suggest that Coach Smith and Knight were friends but I have long searched for evidence and have only found them to have been acquaintances. More recently I have heard of more evidence that they were indeed friends. If true then that is yet another tribute to Coach Smith’s Christian character. To be sure, both men acknowledged one-another’s coaching prowess.
I felt this way about Knight before 1981 by the way, and his behavior in the subsequent 40+ years up to his passing on 11/1/23 only worked to heighten my disgust. If you know me you’ve either heard this or are not surprised. I’ve always kind of wished that contest had been postponed but it was played and UNC lost. I have poured over the sources in search of how the respective locker rooms dealt with that period of uncertainty after the shooting over both Reagan’s survival and, of course, whether the game would be played that evening. I have yet to find any satisfying account - I will keep looking.
I know Coach Smith was a man of faith and right mindset and suspect that any locker room discussion would have reflected that as it also did on the court. An attempted murder of a global leader had happened and as the day progressed that person’s life hung in the balance. Reagan emerged from surgery at 6:20 and despite an earlier dire prognosis he was declared ‘out of danger.’ The game proceeded as scheduled. It was quite a day — and night.
Knight’s Hoosiers won. That Carolina team, minus senior starters Al Wood and Mike Pepper, added a young Wilmingtonian the next year and emerged victorious over Georgetown giving Coach Smith his first National Championship.
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