No. 27: 1974
No. 27 - 1974
Record: 22-6 (9-3)
Postseason: NIT 1st Round
ACC Tournament: Lost semifinals
Ranking: 12
Coach: Dean Smith
All-Americans: Bobby Jones.
All-ACC: Bobby Jones (1st), Darrell Elstun (2nd).
Honors: None.
What's To Know: The 1974 ACC basketball season will always be remembered for the greatest game ever played between Maryland and N.C. State in the ACC Tournament title game. And it will also be remembered for Maryland, ranked No. 4 in the nation with five losses all to teams in the top 5, turning down an NIT bid.
Also outstanding that season was UNC, which also made its own historical mark that campaign when it overcame an 8-point deficit with 17 seconds left to beat Duke courtesy of a Walter Davis 28-footer that sent the game into overtime. Until Luke Maye’s heroics in 2017, that may have been the most famous shot in UNC history, with competition from Michael Jordan’s jumper late in the 1982 NCAA title game.
The Wolfpack, which won the national title that season, and Terrapins were a tad better than the Heels, but Dean Smith’s team was still formidable enough to remain in the top six of the rankings for 15 consecutive weeks. Bobby Jones, Darrell Elstun, Mitch Kupchak, Walter Davis were the team's best players combining to average more than 56 points per game.
Five of Carolina's losses came to State or Maryland, though the last one was versus Purdue, 82-71, in the first round of the NIT. But the rest of the ACC was so mediocre that Carolina didn't register any quality wins inside the league with the exception of a home win over Maryland. There were some quality non-league wins - Houston, Kentucky, California, Virginia Tech, and Florida State - but overall, there wasn't as much meat on the bone as there normally is for a UNC team.
The 1974 Tar Heels are somewhat forgotten in time because of the two teams that were above them in the ACC and they just didn’t have a spotlight on them. The NCAA Tournament didn’t allow more than one school per conference in 1974 but expanded for the following season allowing multiple schools per league. So, as good as the Tar Heels were, the realities of the time didn’t allow for the kinds of postseason runs of today.
1974 NBA Draft
Bobby Jones, 1st Round, No. 5 overall selection
Darrell Elstun, 3rd Round, No. 43 overall selection
John O’Donnel, 10th Round, No. 174 overall selection