No. 19: 1976
Our series counting down the Top 30 North Carolina basketball teams of all time continues.
Our mission isn't to make any declarative statements, but rather have some fun, give our readers something to discuss, walk down memory lane some and provide a needed escape.
Your thoughts and picks are welcome in our message board thread for this series.
No. 19: 1976
Record: 25-4 (11-1)
NCAA Tournament: NCAA 1st Round
ACC Tournament: Lost in finals
Ranking: 8
Coach: Dean Smith
All-Americans: Phil Ford; Mitch Kupchak.
All-ACC: Phil Ford (1st); Mitch Kupchak (1st); Walter Davis (2nd).
Honors: Mitch Kupchak: ACC Player of the Year; Dean Smith, ACC Coach of the Year.
What's To Know: A team with four gold-medal winning Olympians has to be pretty good, right? That was the case for the 1975-76 Tar Heels.
Dean Smith was the U.S. Olympic basketball coach and four of his players - Walter Davis, Phil Ford, Tommy LaGarde, and Mitch Kupchak - made the squad. Bill Guthridge was one of Smith's assistants. Kupchak and Ford both scored in double figures in delivering the gold back to the U.S., and Davis and LaGarde handled important roles. They legitimately made the squad, which is why the late struggles of the '76 Tar Heels remains so frustrating for many UNC fans 44 years later.
The Heels waltzed into the ACC Tournament championship game in Landover, MD, owning a 25-2 record and having won 13 consecutive contests, which included six true road games and three at neutral sites. Carolina was cruising. But Mark Iavaroni and next-to-last-place Virginia had a surprise for UNC, the ACC and the nation. A Cavaliers team that had four-game and three-game losing streaks during the season and finished 4-8 in the ACC, turned back the Tar Heels 67-62.
The reality was UVa was an up and coming program under young coach Terry Holland and most of the Wahoos' losses that season were by narrow margins, but still, the loss to them and then by 15 points to Alabama in Carolina's opening game of the NCAA Tournament crashed this team to a series ranking not fitting of its regular season.
1976 NBA Draft
Mitch Kupchak, 1st Round, No. 13 overall selection