Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 21, 1994 TAG: 9403210022
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LANDOVER, MD. LENGTH: Medium
To that, Dean Smith offered a toast - of whine.
With North Carolina's NCAA Tournament streak of consecutive Sweet Sixteen appearances history Sunday, Smith turned sour. He praised the Eagles, then he ripped them.
It was obvious Smith was trying to make a point, and he might as well have been doing it with the point of an Eric Montross elbow.
BC's 75-72 second-round East Region upset of the defending national champion and top-ranked Tar Heels should have left Carolina blue. Fact is, the Eagles outplayed UNC with a bunch of blue-collar workers.
Against the Tar Heels' bunch of McDonald's All-Americans, O'Brien's team played a whopper of a game. Which of BC's four seniors was recruited by UNC?
"None of us," said center Bill Curley, who punctuated a day of battles inside by scoring 10 of the Eagles' last 11 points.
To hear Smith, it came down to one play, with 15:53 left and Carolina trying to rally from a 50-36 deficit. UNC point guard Derrick Phelps made a steal and while going up for a layup, was hammered into photographers row by BC's Danya Abrams.
Official Tom Rucker called a flagrant foul. Good call, the only call he could make. It wasn't enough for Smith, who angrily ran onto the floor complaining before checking his fallen senior.
Phelps never returned because of a mild concussion. Carolina caught up, but the Eagles wouldn't back down. If BC was using its elbows, knees and hands as Smith suggested, it was an even trade.
"There's no place for that in basketball," Smith said. "We had warned the team before the game about No. 24, stepping on [Georgetown center Othella] Harrington's toes on the tape, and he tripped."
Smith later said he thought Abrams should have been ejected. Shouldn't Smith have gotten a technical foul for his charge?
There's no place for Smith's whining in college basketball, either. It's nothing new. At the ACC tournament, even when the Tar Heels won a championship, Smith went out of the way to make snide suggestions about how the Heels always are mugged in the paint.
"I thought we boxed out well," Smith said. "The tape will be interesting. If you're an underdog, why not push? When you don't feel you're going to win, I would, too."
The Tar Heels then piled on. Freshman forward Jerry Stackhouse echoed his coach's remarks.
"I felt like they took cheap shots," said Stackhouse, who in one season already has learned the Carolina party line. "But it's nothing more than we see in the ACC. They do take some cheap shots."
This from a coach and team that shot 372 more free throws than its opponents in a 28-7 season. ACC coaches have quietly complained about UNC's foul advantage for a long time.
O'Brien, whose inside-out offense stretched UNC's ponderous defense, finally said what a lot of coaches have been thinking.
"Can I just make one simple comment?" the BC coach asked. "We just had the best basketball win, possibly in the history of Boston College, and we have to defend on a flagrant foul, and we're defending ourselves on rough play against that team?
"Please, please . . . will somebody please step up and give these kids a little bit of credit."
The Eagles, led by four senior starters who have soared from a 1-15 Big East Conference season as freshmen to a 22-10 record and the school's first NCAA bid in nine years, deserve more than a little bit of praise.
BC held the Heels to a .397 shooting percentage. Only 33.8 percent in a loss at Wake Forest was worse marksmanship in Smith's 33rd UNC season. The Eagles committed only nine turnovers, their second-best effort of the year.
That, not Phelps' injury, brought the end to a season that was frustrating for UNC long before its bid for a 14th straight NCAA regional semifinal trip. The talented Tar Heels never found the right blend with a nine-man rotation.
To warm up for No. 1 on Sunday morning, the Eagles watched the tape of BC's stunning last-second football upset at top-ranked Notre Dame. It must have been very inspirational.
Carolina should have learned that nobody likes a bully, but considering the postgame remarks, that obviously didn't happen.
Dean Smith may be the winningest active coach in big-time hoops, but he's also a sore loser.
by CNB