Counting down Kentucky’s basketball grievances with North Carolina
On Saturday, John Calipari’s No. 19 Kentucky Wildcats (8-2) and Roy Williams’ No. 9 North Carolina Tar Heels (8-2) will face off in the CBS Sports Classic at the United Center in Chicago.
It will be the 40th head-to-head meeting between two of college basketball’s ultimate blue bloods.
Across that history, Kentucky has formed a bevy of basketball grievances toward North Carolina. Let’s air them:
As a young coach building his name, Smith and UNC went 5-2 against an aging Adolph Rupp and Kentucky.
In the prime of his coaching days, Smith was 5-1 against UK’s Joe B. Hall.
Late in his Hall of Fame coaching career, Smith went 3-0 against Rick Pitino and Kentucky.
Add it up, Smith — who died in 2015 at age 83 — was a robust 13-3 vs. Kentucky.
Among college basketball’s coaching titans, no one else has ever bedeviled UK like Smith did.
Four times, Kentucky and North Carolina have faced each other in the NCAA Tournament while only one victory from the Final Four.
Three of those times — 1977, 1995 and 2017 — it was the Tar Heels who advanced to the final weekend.
In that 1977 East Region final vs. UNC, Kentucky cut a 53-41 halftime deficit to 59-53.
UNC’s Smith responded by ordering his team into its famed “four corners” delay game. That meant putting one player literally in each corner of the half-court while the fifth player killed clock with the dribble.
During those pre-shot clock days, North Carolina did not take a shot from the field for the final 9:35 of the game — yet won 79-72 thanks to making 33 of 36 free throws.
To Kentuckians, who from the time Adolph Rupp came to the commonwealth in 1930 have relished racehorse basketball, Carolina’s affinity for “stall ball” seemed sort of yellow.
Late in that 1977 NCAA Tournament game, UK’s Robey delivered a hard foul on UNC guard John Kuester to stop the clock.
An incensed Smith charged the UK big man and berated him.
After the game, Robey told reporters the North Carolina coach had called him a “cheap son of a b----” and said “’All you do is throw elbows.’”
Smith denied directing any off-color language at Robey. “I don’t swear. I was badly misquoted. My mom and dad will be mad if they hear I said those things,” he said.
The idea of an opposing coach daring to berate a Wildcats player outraged Kentuckians.
It is a controversy with staying power. In 2014, 37 years after the event, I wrote a column about the Robey-Smith incident.
I got more email in response — all from UK backers still angry about Smith’s actions — than to any column I wrote in that calendar year.
The North Carolina swingman sent UK’s Rick Pitino storming off the court in defeat in the 1995 NCAA tourney round of eight by dropping 18 points, 12 rebounds and six assists on the Cats in a 74-61 UNC upset.
For decades, national media accounts portrayed Kentucky as overzealous and scandal-prone in its pursuit of college basketball excellence.
Meanwhile, Smith and “The Carolina Way” were held up as exemplars of “doing things the right way” and the epitome of maintaining the proper balance between academics and athletics.
From 1993 through 2011, “sham courses” offered in the University of North Carolina Department of African and Afro-American Studies were taken by some 3,100 UNC students, almost half (48 percent) of whom were athletes.
According to the Raleigh News & Observer, UNC men’s basketball players accounted for 54 enrollments in sham courses under Dean Smith (1993-97); 17 under Bill Guthridge (1997-2000); 42 under Matt Doherty (2000-03); and 117 under Roy Williams (2003-11).
All those years of being compared unfavorably in the national media to North Carolina did not imbue Kentuckians with great empathy toward UNC’s subsequent unmasking.
“Daggum Roy” was only 1-3 against Kentucky as Kansas head man. Since moving to Chapel Hill in 2003-04, he is 8-6 vs. the Cats.
By NCAA Tournament time, De’Aaron Fox, Malik Monk and Kentucky’s 2016-17 Cats were playing like a team that could win it all. Instead, Luke Maye’s buzzer-beating jumper for UNC sent UK home, 75-73, in the South Region finals.
Duke (10-12) does not have an all-time winning record against Kentucky. Neither does Kansas (9-22), Indiana (25-32), Louisville (16-35) or UCLA (7-8).
North Carolina does have an all-time winning record against Kentucky — and by the healthy margin of 24-15.
In the commonwealth, that remains the primary grievance against the Tar Heels.
