Almost everyone on the planet has a conference tournament these days. When the Big Ten eventually gives in and starts playing one, only the Ivy League and the fabled American Mid-Continent Conference will not have a postseason tournament.
The reason these tournaments exist is money. People buy the tickets, television shows the games, and the cities that host them rake in all sorts of revenue from the fans who pour in for the weekend.
But there is one conference tournament that is different from all the others. The basics are the same. Money created the tournament and sustains it. But because the Atlantic Coast Conference has had a tournament since it first came into existence in 1954, it is special. The other league tournaments have only been around for a couple of years. The ACC Tournament has always been there.
The nature of the ACC Tournament has changed over the years. Now, the regular season champion comes into the weekend knowing it is in the NCAAs. In fact, most years, the top four teams come in knowing they have bids locked up. Some coaches now talk about sitting players out to rest minor injuries. “It just ain’t life and death anymore,” Lefty Driesell said. “If you win, great. But if you don’t, it’s no big deal.”
Wrong. The coaches could talk all they wanted about the tournament not meaning as much as it once did. Tradition is tradition. Many of the players in the league had grown up watching the ACC Tournament on television. They remembered Maryland–N.C. State. They remembered the infamous 12–10 game between Duke and State in 1968.
They knew that if you won the ACC Tournament you could walk around all summer wearing a T-shirt that said “ACC Champions” on it and they knew it was for, as players like to say, “a banner.” If you won, you could hang a banner in your gym that said “ACC Champions” on it.
And then there were the fans. Some had been to all thirty-five tournaments. Most planned the first weekend in March around the tournament every year. Year in and year out, there was no tougher ticket in sports than the ACC Tournament. There was never a public sale. To buy a ticket you either had to be a student and be selected in your school’s lottery or you had to be a member of one of the school’s booster clubs.
The ACC Tournament, more than anything else, provides the booster clubs with their revenue. It is a simple case of blackmail. Would you like ACC Tournament tickets? Yes. Well, they’re easy to get. Just contribute x thousand dollars annually and you will have the privilege of buying them. Did people object? Heck no. At some schools, there were waiting lists of people hoping to get a chance to fork over their money.
The ACC Tournament is more than just a tournament. It is a social occasion, a part of the lives of the people who participate each year. “It’s like being the king of your neighborhood,” Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “It’s great to have recognition in other places. But it isn’t the same as being considered the best in your own backyard.”
For the eight ACC teams, this was their backyard. The rest of the country didn’t much care who won the ACC Tournament, but from College Park, Maryland, to Atlanta, Georgia, just about everyone who followed basketball did care. A lot.
Winning the tournament could save an entire season. In 1987, N.C. State had dragged into the tournament with a 17–14 record. The Wolfpack needed overtime to beat Duke in the first round. It needed double overtime to beat Wake Forest in the semifinals. And then, in a game it never should have won, it upset North Carolina 68–67 in the final. Carolina had also gone two overtimes the day before to get by Virginia.
When the final was over, the State players celebrated as if they had won the national championship. The Carolina players were crushed. So were the coaches. Assistant Roy Williams, normally as outgoing and friendly as anyone in the profession, sat on a stairway, inconsolable.
To an outsider, this kind of emotion can’t be explained. In 1988, it would be no different. When the eight teams gathered in Greensboro, four of them had already locked up NCAA bids: Carolina, N.C. State, Duke, and Georgia Tech. All four had twenty victories. Maryland, the fifth-place team, was 16–11. Most people thought that an opening-round victory over Georgia Tech would lock a bid for the Terrapins and that even with a loss, they might still get in.
The bottom three teams—Virginia, Clemson, and Wake Forest—were going nowhere unless they found some miraculous way to win the tournament. This was not terribly likely. Between them, the three schools had won the tournament three times: Wake twice, in 1961 and 1962, and Virginia once, in 1976. Clemson was the only school in the league that had never won the tournament. In fact, the Tigers hadn’t reached the final since 1962 and hadn’t won a game since 1980.
But, as State had proven in 1987, strange things could happen in the ACC Tournament.
Each of the top four teams had a motive for wanting to win. Carolina had not won since 1982, a slump that mystified most ACC people since, prior to that, Dean Smith had won the tournament nine times in sixteen years. Starting in 1983, the Tar Heels had been the top seed three times, but hadn’t won. The State loss had been the most crushing, and this year, for the first time since the NCAA expansion, Smith actually admitted that he and his team badly wanted to win.
“We’re coming in here pretending it’s the old days and we have to win to get to the NCAAs,” Smith said. “I think this is important to this team.”
Bobby Cremins and Georgia Tech had beaten Smith and Carolina to win the tournament in 1985. The next year, Tech had lost the final, 68–67, to Duke when Craig Neal missed a jump shot with nine seconds left. Since then, Tech’s star had faded; to get back on the map the Yellow Jackets needed to do well here or in the NCAA Tournament. They had the toughest first-round game, though, since Maryland felt it had to win to get into the sixty-four-team NCAA field.
As for State, Valvano had made a big thing after the ’87 tournament victory that winning in March and hanging banners was what his program was all about. Smith, who had had some trouble winning in March since ’82, really chafed at that one. Now, after a 23–6 regular season, Valvano had to convince his team that March was as important this year as it was last year.
“Last year, we had a mission because we felt we had to win the whole thing to get into the NCAAs,” he said. “The mission should be the same this year. Win, hang a banner, get to play the first two games in our backyard instead of being shipped out west somewhere.”
On Thursday, the night before the tournament, Valvano showed his team three tapes: the ACC championship game against Virginia in 1983, the NCAA championship game that year against Houston, and the ’87 ACC championship game. When the tapes were over, Valvano reminded his team that this was what the entire season was about. “This is what we’ve worked for all year,” he said. “The chance to do that [celebrate] again. That’s what this is about.”
But Valvano was concerned. He didn’t feel that sense of mission he wanted to feel. They were just a little too comfortable with the twenty-three wins.
The same could not be said for Duke. Like Valvano, Krzyzewski wanted his team to rise to the occasion of a championship. He still remembered the feeling of winning in 1986 and wanted that feeling again. He had been bitterly disappointed the year before when his team had come in as the defending champion, played horribly in the first round and lost to State. On Tuesday, sensing that his team was still basking a bit in the Carolina victory, he threw the whole team out of practice.
“You guys have the chance to do something special and you’re throwing it away,” he told his team. “Do you want to go into the tournament like you did last year and embarrass yourselves? Or do you want to play like you’re capable and win it? You decide.”
The opening round of the tournament is always the most unpredictable. Sometimes, the underdogs rise to the occasion to produce remarkable games. Sometimes, they are beaten down by the long season and aren’t capable of competing.
Wake Forest certainly tried. Perhaps no team in America had been crippled by injuries more than the Deacons. Even semihealthy, Wake had managed to pull January upsets over Carolina and State. But by February, with only three of his first seven still able to play, Coach Bob Staak was lucky to be able to field a team.
Still, the Deacons came out flying at the start of their game with Carolina. The Tar Heels acted as if noon was just too early to play and were quickly down 13–4. There were some rumblings in the Greensboro Coliseum but for the most part, everyone just waited. Wake would have to stay in the game for a lot longer than seven minutes to win over any fans.
This is one of the phenomena of the tournament. The crowd is divided equally into eight groups. But if an underdog has a legitimate chance to win, the fans from the other six schools will join their fans in trying to pull them through. No one is more conscious of this sort of thing than Dean Smith.
“I noticed the Duke students waving their arms when we were shooting free throws,” he would say after the Wake game. “They did a good job. They made it feel like a road game.”
Sure, Dean. Two hundred students waving their arms in an arena of sixteen thousand made it feel like a road game. But that was Dean. Before the game, given the choice of benches as the higher seeded team, he had taken what is normally the visitor’s bench—because the Wake fans were at the home bench end of the building. The man misses nothing.
The 13–4 start didn’t last. Carolina went on a 21–1 spree late in the first half to build a 39–28 halftime lead and eventually cruised home with an 83–62 victory. “We just hit the wall,” Staak said. “The kids had hung together and played tough through it all but today we hit the wall. We had nothing left.”
Game two of the afternoon doubleheader was, on paper, the best of the day. That is normal since the No. 4 and No. 5 seeds figure to be the most evenly matched. Georgia Tech had beaten Maryland ten straight times. But Maryland needed this game more and played like it. All season, the Terrapins had shown flashes of great talent. But they had never been consistent.
In truth, they were a team in flux. Many of the players were unhappy with Coach Bob Wade. Perhaps no coach in the history of college basketball had been given the free ride granted to Wade when Maryland hired him in the wake of the Len Bias tragedy. Chancellor John Slaughter, after forcing Lefty Driesell out, hired Wade on a recommendation from Wade’s good friend John Thompson.
Maryland had gone 0–15 in ACC play and 9–17 overall in Wade’s first year. Certainly, under the circumstances, judging Wade on that record would have been unfair. But it was just as stupid to run around shouting that Wade had done a great job—which many people did. CBS voted him the “rookie coach of the year,” one of the more absurd acts of that or any season.
This season, with many players who had been forced to sit 1987 out and with two excellent recruits added, junior-college point guard Rudy Archer and freshman center Brian Williams, the Terrapins were vastly improved. They were 16–11 and a respectable 6–8 in ACC play.
Within the team there were problems, however. Even though Slaughter and Wade kept trumpeting a new commitment to academics, the team was full of academic question marks. Reporters’ questions about whether several players were in academic trouble were being met with answers like “No comment” and “That’s a team matter.” What’s more, two players, Hood and Williams, were thinking of transferring (and would do so at the end of the semester). Wade could claim that Hood’s departure was over playing time. But Williams’s departure was a devastating blow. He was the cornerstone of Wade’s program and his leaving said, in essence, that he didn’t like the way he was being coached and that the so-called new academic emphasis was a crock.
In the short term, though, Maryland had one job: beat Georgia Tech. The Terrapins did that, dominating the game from the start. Ironically, the hero was fifth-year senior Keith Gatlin, a good friend of Len Bias and a man Wade had been ready to write off after he signed Archer. Gatlin had almost left college in the wake of the Bias tragedy. He had lost his eligibility, dropped out of school, wondered if he would ever play again and then come back for one last semester.
A gifted player, he had forced Wade to play him with his brilliance, and today he scored 25 points, knocking in one three-pointer after another when the Terrapins needed them. Tech never could get going and the final was 84–67.
“I never thought I would have this feeling again,” Gatlin said. “The funny thing is, after what I’ve been through, I doubt if losing a basketball game will ever really bother me again.”
There were many twists in this story. The last time Gatlin had played in an ACC Tournament game had been in the 1986 semifinals—against Georgia Tech. In that game, with five seconds left and the score tied, Gatlin had tried to throw a crosscourt inbounds pass to Bias. Duane Ferrell had intercepted it and dunked at the buzzer. He was the hero, Gatlin the goat. Two years later, Ferrell had played poorly and Gatlin superbly. Their roles were reversed. Gatlin just smiled when someone mentioned that.
“You know, I barely remember that game,” he said. “It was at least a couple of lifetimes ago.”
Indeed.
That evening, the favorites each had brief scares. State, after a 22–6 start against Clemson, looked to have a virtual off night. For some reason, Cliff Ellis, whose team was on something of a roll, coming off wins over Duke and Georgia Tech, started the game in a spread offense. His players had no clue what they were doing and were soon in a deep hole. Ellis abandoned that bit of foolishness and the Tigers came all the way back to tie the game at 63–63 with 4:30 left.
Now the crowd was aroused. During the first half it had been so quiet you could hear the sneakers squeaking as players made their cuts. But Clemson is Clemson. With a chance to take the lead, senior Grayson Marshall missed a jump shot. Vinny Del Negro hit at the other end, then stole the ball and fed Charles Shackleford for a dunk. That was that. The final was 79–72. Time for spring football at Clemson—as usual.
The finale to the long day was Duke—Virginia. Traditionally, the last game of the first day is a debacle. Although the schedule says 9 P.M. it never starts before 9:30, and it seems as if the players are tired from watching the other three games.
“It feels like you’re playing in the middle of the night,” Virginia Assistant Coach Tom Perrin said.
For the Cavaliers this would be a sad ending to a sad season. They came in with a 13–17 record, many of the losses near-misses. In February, they had lost their leader, point guard John Johnson, when he had tested positive for drugs. With Johnson, Virginia wasn’t that good. Without him …
“It’s a funny feeling,” Perrin said as he waited for the game to start. “In one way, we’ll all be glad when this is over. In another, I feel really sad knowing we’ll be watching the NCAAs on television. It’s such an exciting time. It will be a real left-out feeling.”
For a half, the Cavaliers acted as if they wanted to give Duke a left-out feeling. Slowing the Blue Devils to their pace—a crawl—they scored the last 10 points of the half and led 26–24. Krzyzewski’s concern that his team was still in a self-congratulatory mood had been well founded. Duke was flat.
Snyder had five turnovers during the first twenty minutes, including two passes that had endangered spectators. “His dad’s here,” Krzyzewski said. “I think he was trying to throw him a pass. I finally said, “Forget your old man and throw the goddamn ball to Ferry.”
In the second half, Snyder did exactly as he was told. With Duke leading, 38–35, Snyder took over the game. He hit a three-pointer and then a free throw. Then he stole the ball from UVA’s John Crotty and fed King, who would have gone in for a dunk if Crotty hadn’t fouled him intentionally. King made one free throw, then Strickland made two more on the ensuing possession. Finally, Snyder stole the ball again and his lay-up made it 47–35 with ten minutes left. Duke was home free.
When it was over, an eager radio man asked Krzyzewski how it felt to get the first one out of the way. “It feels,” Krzyzewski said, “like you feel when you get over a sickness.”
The semifinals were set just before midnight: Carolina–Maryland and State–Duke.
Strangely, each of the four teams still alive was exactly where it wanted to be today. Maryland didn’t care who it played, just so it was still playing. Carolina was delighted not to have to face Tech. State was convinced it would continue its domination over Duke. And the Blue Devils wanted another shot at the Wolfpack.
The opener was your basic yawner. Maryland had shot its wad the day before. What’s more, the Terrapins didn’t really think they could beat the Tar Heels. After an early 15–12 Maryland lead, Carolina went on a 16–4 binge to take a 28–19 lead. Maryland got back to within six by halftime but Carolina started the second half with a 9–2 run and Maryland never again got closer than eight—and that with a minute to go. The final was 74–64.
The only entertainment was provided by the Duke students who, each time the Carolina band played its fight song, stood and held up their fingers to indicate the number of times the song had been played. There are those who believe the Carolina pep band knows only two songs: the fight song and the national anthem. But, in its defense, the band plays the national anthem faster than anyone in the country, clocked at an average of fifty-four seconds when in midseason form. In an era when some singers stretch the anthem to over two minutes, a fifty-four-second rendition cannot be underappreciated.
The other amusing moment came after the game when Carolina’s Jeff Lebo, talking about why it was important for the Tar Heels to win the tournament, commented, “We’re probably the only ones who thought we had a chance at the start of the season.”
Carolina had been a consensus pick to win the league in preseason. When this was pointed out to Lebo, he said, “Well, I saw some preseason magazines that picked us second, third, even fourth.” If a magazine existed that had picked the Tar Heels fourth, no one had ever seen it. If it did exist, one might guess that it would cease to exist making those sorts of predictions very quickly. Anyway, Lebo was convinced he and his teammates were the underdogs. His coach wouldn’t have it any other way.
Game two was as tense as game one had been dull. Krzyzewski had made a point of not talking about revenge to his team beforehand. Instead, he had just said again and again, “Play our game, not theirs.”
State’s game, as had been proven earlier, was hard for Duke to handle. With the two talented big men, Shackleford and Chucky Brown, and the slashing point guard, Corchiani, State was always going to give Duke trouble. What’s more, the Blue Devils were tired; they had played until midnight on Friday and then had to come back and play at 4 P.M. Saturday afternoon. This was the same route State had taken to the championship a year ago. It could be done.
At halftime Duke led 38–36. Just as they had done in Durham, the Blue Devils came out flying at the start of the second half, building a 51–41 lead. But State had seen this before. Valvano inserted Rodney Monroe, his designated Duke-killer, and Monroe began his devastation act again. With some surprising help from backup guard Kelsey Weems, he shot the Wolfpack right back into the game, scoring nine points in four minutes. A Weems free throw tied it at 60–60 and the script looked familiar.
But the Blue Devils were getting some unexpected help of their own. Ala Abdelnaby, the talented but often immature sophomore, came off the bench to score 12 points in nine minutes, giving Duke an offensive spark it needed. Still, when Monroe bombed a three-pointer that Ferry deflected to no avail, State led 67–64 with 5:50 left. Ferry missed a jumper. Shackleford posted and was fouled. Two free throws would make the lead 5.
“This is right where we want to be,” Valvano thought on the bench. “We’ve got them thinking, ‘Oh no, not again.’ We’re on a roll. We’re in control.”
But standing on the foul line, King was not thinking desperate thoughts. “I looked at Shack and said to myself, ‘He’s going to miss.’ I just thought sooner or later our luck had to change against these guys.”
Sure enough, Shackleford missed. Ferry hit to cut the margin to one and then Weems went to the line for another one-and-one. He missed too. Ferry hit a short jumper with 4:15 left and Duke was back up, 68–67.
“Now it’s just a battle,” Valvano said. “They had a chance to ice us, we had a chance to ice them. No one did it. Now it comes down to one play. Those kind, anything can happen.”
Valvano was right. Both teams were reeling with exhaustion. Del Negro, clutch as always, put State back up, 69–68. But then came the shot that should have told people this was Duke’s day.
The shot came from Phil Henderson, the enigmatic sophomore guard. With Duke’s offense looking totally disorganized and State all over Ferry, he nailed a three-pointer. That made it 71–69. Chucky Brown tied it at 71–71, but missed still another free throw. Duke called time with 2:06 left to make sure to get a good shot.
The person Krzyzewski wanted to see shooting in this situation was Ferry. Even on a day when Ferry’s shot wasn’t dropping, he was the key to the Duke offense. He was such a talented passer, such an instinctive player, that any time he handled the ball Duke’s offense improved. “Good things tend to happen,” King said, “when we get the ball to Danny.”
This time, they got the ball to Danny and he drove the lane for a short, pull-up jumper. That made it 73–71. There was still 1:45 left. State wanted the ball in Del Negro’s hands almost as much as Duke wanted it in Ferry’s. He drove the baseline, but with King all over him his shot rolled off the rim. Snyder skied over everyone for the rebound. There was 1:10 left. Duke could not run the clock out. Again, the ball went to Ferry. This time, though, he missed and State had one more chance.
“That kind of situation, last thirty seconds, game on the line, everything is so frenzied it’s usually good for the offense,” Valvano said later. “Almost always, someone on defense will get confused somewhere along the line and you’ll get a good shot. But Duke isn’t your average defensive team. I didn’t want to call time-out, but I had to.”
Valvano called time with twelve seconds left. He wanted to get the ball to Del Negro or Monroe, his two best one-on-one players offensively. Let them do what they could and send Shackleford and Brown to the boards.
On the other bench, Krzyzewski was thinking with Valvano. He also had a picture in his mind that he couldn’t get to go away. “It was a Rodney Monroe highlight film,” he said later. “In it he makes about a million shots against Duke and the last one is a three-pointer at the buzzer in the ACC Tournament.”
For a split second, Krzyzewski was tempted to switch King onto Monroe. But he resisted. Keep the senior on the senior. Del Negro was still State’s most dangerous player. Krzyzewski told King to face-guard Del Negro and Henderson to face-guard Monroe. In other words, their sole responsibility was to deny them the ball. They weren’t to worry about helping out or double-teaming.
Leaving the huddle, thinking with his coach as he always seemed to do, King had the same disturbing vision of Monroe. He walked over to Henderson, pointed at Monroe and said, “Don’t let him get the ball.”
Henderson listened. The ball came in to Corchiani. King and Henderson were all over Del Negro and Monroe. With time running down, Corchiani tried to throw a lob in to Shackleford, who had gotten behind Ferry. But Corchiani had thrown the ball in to Shackleford on a straight line instead of on an angle. “A straight-line lob, there’s time for the help to get there,” Valvano said. “On an angle, the help can’t get there.”
Robert Brickey was the help. He came up behind Shackleford. There was contact. Valvano screamed for a foul. There was no call. The ball rolled off Shackleford’s leg and out of bounds with five seconds left.
Duke was able to run the clock out. It had won—survived—73–71.
Valvano was crushed. He had thought his team was going to win the game and then find a way to beat Carolina. Now it was Duke that would have the chance. Even so, as he and Krzyzewski shook hands, they hugged. They were an odd couple, these two. For thirteen years—first at Iona and Army for five, then at State and Duke for eight—they had coached against each other. They were as different as two men could be except that each, using entirely different methods, was very successful. Twice, Valvano had beaten Krzyzewski. But in the game both wanted most, Krzyzewski had won.
King felt totally drained by the game. “We worked so hard to win it felt so good,” he said. “I was ready to celebrate right then.”
It was Snyder who brought everyone back to earth. As his teammates were congratulating themselves in the locker room, he walked around saying quietly, “Carolina. One more. Let’s go.”
There were very few people in the Greensboro Coliseum for the Duke–North Carolina final who gave the Blue Devils much chance. To begin with, history said that Dean Smith did not often lose to the same team or coach three times in a season. In twenty-seven years, three coaches had done it to him: Vic Bubas, the great Duke coach of the ’60s; Norman Sloan, when he had David Thompson at State in the ’70s; and Bobby Cremins, during his dream season at Georgia Tech in 1985.
There was more. Carolina was rested. The Tar Heels had played early Friday and won easily. They had played first Saturday and won easily. Duke had played very late Friday and won, but not easily. It had played second Saturday and had fallen across the finish line, exhausted.
And, there was the old Smith theory that it’s very hard to beat a good team three times in a season. That had worked for Duke on Saturday. Now, it would work against it.
But in an ACC Tournament final, logic is wasted. Like the tournament itself, the final is unique. The atmosphere is different from an NCAA game, or any other game for that matter. The two teams know each other. They are always playing for a third time. The players are often friends. The coaches know each others’ foibles. And, there is the Krzyzewski theory of being King of the Block. This is the street fight where everyone stands around in a circle while the two big guys go at it to see who is boss.
On Saturday night, after the team had met to go through matchups, King, Strickland, Snyder, and Ferry sat in the hotel watching the movie Stakeout. They had become an almost inseparable foursome, the two seniors and the two juniors. All four had been part of an ACC championship in 1986. But that had been different. They had been complementary players then. Now, they were the nucleus. “We wanted one we could absolutely call our own,” King said.
It would not be easy and they knew it. King had shut down his friend Lebo twice. Doing it a third straight time would be tough. Reid had played poorly in Durham. He wasn’t likely to be so bad again. They talked about the game, the matchups, and how much they wanted to win until exhaustion overtook them and they went to bed.
The referees for the final would be Joe Forte, Dick Paparo, and Tom Fraim. For Fraim, this was special: his first ACC final after twenty-three years of officiating. It would also be his last. He had decided to retire at the end of the season to spend more time with his family. On Saturday night, all the officials got together and took him out for a farewell dinner.
Sunday morning was cool and gorgeous, a reminder that spring was not far away. The arena would be split between Duke and Carolina fans. Many of the other schools’ fans had gone home, selling their tickets to Duke and Carolina people on their way out.
Both teams came out blazing. The first four baskets of the game were three-pointers. Brickey picked up his second foul early. Krzyzewski gambled and left him in. King had been right about Lebo. He opened the game with a three-pointer, then hit another. By halftime, he had 13 points.
It was 37–37 at intermission, Carolina outscoring Duke 10–1 during the last four minutes. Walking off the floor, King heard the Carolina players saying, “Yeah, yeah, we got ’em going now.” His mind went back seven days to Durham. “It was 36–36 then. I thought, ‘Twenty minutes. Just suck it up for twenty minutes.’ ”
That was Krzyzewski’s theme at halftime. He knew his team was tired and sore. But this was no time for nursing wounds. They had to regroup and come back out with as much fire as they had displayed at the start of the game. King wondered if his team could hang on. Reid hadn’t scored a single point in the first half. In fact, the Carolina starting front line had two points combined. That wasn’t going to last.
In the other locker room, Smith thought his team was right where it wanted to be. He knew that his front line wasn’t going to be shut out for forty minutes. He knew Duke had to be tired. “I was very confident,” he said. “We weren’t shooting well, but my gosh, the effort was certainly there.”
The Tar Heels came out blazing in the second half. Ferry missed twice for Duke and Williams and Reid scored for Carolina. Krzyzewski took a quick time-out. He could feel the game slipping away. During the time-out he made a decision. “If they don’t show me something quickly, I’m coming in with the kids.”
The kids, the second team, had been coming in as a unit in the first half for the last three games. But never in the second half, especially not with an ACC title at stake and Carolina on a roll. But Krzyzewski felt he needed to do something drastic.
Snyder did break the second half shutout—the 4–0 start meant the run had reached 14–1—with a three-pointer that cut the lead to 41–40. But Reid immediately went inside and King was forced to foul him to prevent a dunk. It was his fourth foul. Reid only made one of two but Krzyzewski had made his decision: In came the kids. The starters were surprised.
“Carolina was all wound up,” King said. “They were saying to each other, ‘Come on, let’s make this a big run.’ We were definitely down. We were feeling sorry for ourselves. If a couple more possessions had gone by like that, it might have gotten to the point where we just said, ‘well, we gave it our best effort.’ Sitting on the bench, we watched the young guys. We figured if they cared enough to play that hard, we could suck it up one more time.”
The kiddie corps didn’t score. But during the two minutes they played, the Tar Heels only stretched the lead to 46–40. Snyder was the first starter to go back in and he promptly hit another three-pointer to breathe some life back into his team. Then, John Smith, still in the game for Ferry, made a spectacular spinning lay-up, got fouled, and made the free throw. The score was tied at 46–46. The rest of the starters came back. The run was done. Duke had its second wind.
From there, the game was anybody’s. Fatigue became a factor for both teams. Carolina couldn’t score, but neither could Duke. Smith put the Blue Devils up with a neat inside move, 58–57, with 5:07 left. Ferry then hit a huge shot, a three-pointer with 4:14 left. That pushed the lead to 61–57. Both teams kept missing. Scott Williams’s two free throws cut it to 61–59 with 2:26 left. Ferry missed. Bucknall charged at the other end.
Carolina fouled King with 1:28 left to keep Duke from using up too much clock. King has always been a poor foul shooter. “When I was eight, I can remember not being able to make free throws,” he said. “It just never changed. This time, though, I thought I was going to make it. I just told myself the shot was going in. I was shocked when it didn’t.”
So, apparently, were the Tar Heels. While Reid and Kevin Madden watched helplessly, Ferry grabbed the ball off the rim and quickly put it back in. Again, something that never happened to Carolina had happened to Carolina. Careless boxing out in a critical situation had been costly. Now, it was 63–59 with 1:16 left. Carolina worked the ball inside again and Madden was fouled. He made both free throws with fifty-seven ticks to go. It was 63–61. Duke had to score again.
The Blue Devils let the game clock run to twenty seconds, the shot clock to ten. Naturally, the ball went to Ferry. But Lebo made a brilliant play, dropping off his man and reaching in on Ferry as he tried to go the basket. He stripped the ball cleanly and took off, heading for a tying lay-up. Freshman King Rice was with Lebo. The only Blue Devil back was Snyder. Lebo fed Rice and they went in on Snyder two-on-one.
“At first I thought sure Rice would go back to Jeff,” Snyder said later. “I thought about going towards him but then out of the corner of my eye I saw Kevin [Strickland] coming back and getting close to Jeff. I gambled and stayed with Rice.”
Rice also saw Strickland. It would have taken a miraculous play by Strickland to stop Lebo if he had gotten the ball back. But Rice didn’t want to take the chance. He went to the basket, looking for a lay-up or a foul. Snyder, 6–3 and perhaps the second-best athlete on the Duke team (behind Brickey), jumped with him. Rice had to try to shoot over Snyder. The ball rolled off the rim. Strickland grabbed it, turned and saw everyone else still sprinting toward him and the Carolina basket.
Except for Brickey, who was a step behind—but now a step ahead—of everyone. Instinctively, he released the ball to Brickey who went in so pumped to dunk that he rammed the ball off the rim. It went high in the air and, remarkably, it was Snyder who grabbed it. He had turned and raced back downcourt, taking nothing for granted. With time running out, Lebo had to foul. Four seconds were now left.
Carolina called time to let Snyder think about the situation. If he missed, Carolina could tie with a two-point shot, win with a three. If he made one, a three could still tie the game. If he made both, it was over.
Snyder was the first one out of the huddle. He went right to the foul line while King gathered the rest of the team to double-check on matchups. Standing on the line, waiting to hand him the ball was Forte, who had made the call on Lebo.
“That was a good call, Mr. Forte,” Snyder said, glad to have someone to talk to.
“Thank you, Quin,” Forte answered. “You’re right.”
They both laughed. Both teams were now in position. As Snyder stepped up to the line, King walked up behind him. “End this shit,” he hissed. Snyder nodded and took the ball. He stared at the rim and shot. Swish. It was 64–61. Snyder took the ball again, his eyes never leaving the rim. He aimed and shot again. Swish. 65–61.
Now, it was over. Brickey intercepted the inbounds pass and time ran out. Krzyzewski was so thrilled that he forgot to shake Smith’s hand before joining the celebration. He was in midleap when he looked down and saw Smith standing there, forlornly, waiting to congratulate him. “I felt like an idiot,” Coach K said later. “That was bad after a game like that. If anyone thinks this tournament is meaningless, they should have watched this game.”
No doubt. Snyder and King were locked in an endless hug. In eight short days they had turned their season completely around. The Tar Heels were devastated. “It really hurts to lose this,” Smith admitted, “because we put so much into it.”
Both teams had put heart and soul into it. Not because it would influence where they went in the NCAA Tournament—even though it would—but because of the championship that was at stake. The ACC Championship.
Two hours after Duke and Carolina decided the ACC title, they learned, along with everyone else, where they would be going to start NCAA Tournament play.
The four No. 1 seeds had been locked in for a couple of weeks: Temple, the top-ranked team in the country, was No. 1 in the East. Oklahoma was No. 1 in the Southeast. Purdue was No. 1 in the Midwest. And Arizona was No. 1 in the West. By their seeding, they were installed as the favorites to reach the Final Four in Kansas City.
By upsetting Carolina, Duke had won the right to stay near home. Instead of being shipped west as the No. 2 seed in the West Regional, the Blue Devils were installed as the No. 2 seed in the East, meaning they would open play that Thursday in the Deandome. Instead of getting to play at home, Carolina had to trek to Salt Lake City as the No. 2 seed in the West. Kentucky was the No. 2 seed in the Southeast and Pittsburgh, in spite of losing to Villanova in the Big East semifinals, was No. 2 in the Midwest.
Villanova, after losing the Big East final to Syracuse, was No. 6 in the Southeast—the highest one of Rollie Massimino’s teams had ever been seeded. Kansas was also a No. 6 seed after being bombed in the Big Eight semifinals by Kansas State. The Jayhawks would open in the Midwest against a Xavier team many people thought might upset them. N.C. State was also in the Midwest, with a tough first-round game against Murray State. “I hate playing teams where every guy is 6–6 and can jump,” Valvano said. “If we win, we’ll win by two.”
Ohio State, in spite of upsetting Purdue in the last week of the season to finish 16–12, did not get a bid. Gary Williams and his team gathered in the locker room on Sunday afternoon to watch the pairings. When the last two teams had gone up on the board, Williams clicked the TV off.
“We just didn’t play well enough, guys,” he said. “We’ll get an NIT bid. Seniors, look at it as a chance to go out on an up note. You younger guys, use the experience to learn and get better so we won’t go through this again next year.” Williams went home that evening depressed. “I expect to have a long career in coaching,” he said. “I’ll get to the NCAAs again. But the players only get four shots. I feel bad for them.”
Don DeVoe’s Tennessee team didn’t get a bid either. But DeVoe hadn’t expected one after losing in the first round of the SEC Tournament to Florida to finish 16–12. Tennessee also received an NIT bid.
One coach whose phone didn’t ring at all on that Sunday night was Rick Barnes. He had hoped that George Mason’s 20–10 record would earn it an NIT bid even though the Patriots were not the name type of team the NIT looks for to sell tickets. The call never came. Most of the teams in the NIT field had weaker records than George Mason—but records don’t really matter to the NIT.
“First thing tomorrow morning,” Barnes said, “I get on the road recruiting. We’re going to get players so we don’t have to wait for a phone call anymore.”
Of the 291 teams that started on October 15, 96 were going to postseason play—32 to the NIT and 64 to the NCAAs. The 32 would play for a consolation prize. The 64 would play 63 games. Only one of them would end the season with a victory.