Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook is presented by The Casual Pint. YOUR place for delicious pub food paired with local beer. Choose among 35 rotating taps and 200+ beers in the cooler.
Carolina has a brief, but weird, connection to SMU in basketball.
The match-up against the Mustangs is the fourth meeting between the two schools, with the previous three coming over a four-year span in the 1980s.
The first game was at the sold-out Greensboro Coliseum, scheduled with the help of Indiana coach Bob Knight, a good friend of Dean Smith and whose former assistant Dave Bliss was then the coach of the Mustangs. SMU won 84-82 behind 31 points from All-American center Jon Koncak, who got the better of UNC sophomore big man Brad Daugherty, playing only 19 minutes before fouling out with 7 points and 3 rebounds.
The teams played a home and home series in the 1987 and ’88 seasons. The Tar Heels won another two-point game in Dallas and then blew out SMU in the Smith Center. Carolina was ranked in the top 5 for all three of those games.
That’s their history, but SMU is also related by having two UNC alumni as their head coaches 20 and 30 years later.
After Matt Doherty’s three-year tenure leading the Tar Heels to one NCAA tournament and one NIT, he went on to coach SMU for six seasons and did not make the Big Dance even once.
Then the wandering minstrel of basketball, Hall of Famer Larry Brown took over for Doherty. In his own famous four years, he led SMU to the NIT Finals, its first conference title in 22 years and then lost the controversial first-round NCAA game to UCLA on a terrible goal-tending call. After that ending, Brown was slapped with his second NCAA punishment, as SMU went on probation for the next season for recruiting violations and still won its first 18 games and finished with a 25-5 record and No. 24 national ranking.
SMU coming back to Chapel Hill is another big story, having joined the ACC along with Cal and Stanford and not taking any TV rights fees for an undesignated period of time. The Mustangs’ first-year coach Andy Enfield has a roster of seven transfers, three freshmen and three returnees. They are 11-3 and 2-1 in league play after losing badly at home to Duke on Saturday.
Enfield pointed out Monday that his team leads the league in scoring (Carolina is second), 3-point shooting and rebounding margin and has two former ACC players, point guard and leading scorer Boopie Miller (from Wake Forest) and strong rebounder Matt Cross (from Miami and then Louisville).
The Tar Heels faced Enfield once in the 2016 NCAA Tournament when he coached Florida Gulf Coast. The Heels won that game in Raleigh rather easily and advanced to the Final Four, where they lost to Villanova on THAT buzzer beater.
Enfield said something that Dean Smith used to say in “trying to win this game. . . we have to play better, smarter and harder.”
chapelboroaudio.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/2025/January/07/Art%27s%20Notebook%20010725%20-%20FINAL.mp3
Featured image via Associated Press/Jerome Miron
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
Chansky’s Notebook: Here Comes SMU Chapelboro.com.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Chansky’s Notebook: Here Comes SMU )
Also on site :
- Hamas executes Palestinians for looting as desperation grows under Israeli blockade
- ALM vs GGL Dream11 Prediction Today Match, Dream11 Team Today, Fantasy Cricket Tips, Playing XI, Pitch Report, Injury Update- Kuwait T10 Challengers League 2025, Match 32
- South Sacramento standoff ends with suspect surrendering to SWAT officers