Will Every 25 Years Bring a UNC Championship?

If North Carolina basketball fans look back at their school's history, they will certainly like what they see. Twenty-five years ago, the Tar Heels were national champions. Go back 25 years before that, and UNC was once again the national champion.

The 2007 season is the 25th and 50th anniversary of both those teams. They were honored Saturday during halftime of North Carolina's win over Wake Forest.

I remember the 1982 team very well. I was, of course, working at WRAL and covering them that season. It's easy to recall Michael Jordan hitting the winning shot against Georgetown with 17 seconds left and then Fred Brown's mistake sealing the Hoyas' fate. If I didn't remember, I've certainly seen the replay time and time again.

But I want to go back to 1957. The first game that I ever saw on television was the Kansas-Carolina national championship game. I was 8 years old, and I watched the game with my dad and my friend Bill Robbins in our small den in Rocky Mount, N.C.

That was the game that turned the state of North Carolina into the basketball hotbed that it remains today. That game had the entire state captivated, and a television executive named C.D. Chesley who produced the broadcast of the game realized that basketball might have a pretty good future in the fledgling business of television. He hit that one on the head, didn't he?

Over the years I've read a lot about that championship game and that 32-0 UNC season. I love history, and the early history of the ACC has always fascinated me because back then I really did eat, drink, and sleep basketball, just like Everett Case wanted us to. Everything --. the games, the players, the schools -- it was all bigger than life. Former Duke coach and N.C. State player Bucky Waters always wonders why I ask him so many questions about the 1950's and 1960's, and I say, "Coach, you were there when I really loved it."

I must admit that I don't remember that many details of what I saw on television that March night in 1957. I mean, I was just 8, soon to be 9.

I remember this huge banner that hung across the court that said, "NCAA Jayhawks all the way." And every time the camera panned from one end to the other, you saw that sign. And every time that banner appeared, I felt the inclination to read it until finally Bill, who was a huge Carolina fan then and now, said, "I wish you'd shut up reading that." And I did.

I really don't remember much about the game that I actually saw on our little black-and-white television except that it was close and I felt the tension. I do remember Wilt Chamberlain, who was a name that all young budding basketball fans knew. I remember Joe Quigg hitting those two free-throws in the third overtime that gave Carolina the 54-53 lead, and the end of the game when Kansas couldn't get it in to Chamberlain and Tommy Kearns threw the ball to the rafters as the final horn sounded.

I've just finished reading a very enjoyable book by Adam Lucas called, "The Best Game Ever", which chronicles that 1957 UNC championship season leading up to the triple-overtime thriller that capped the Tar Heels undefeated season. I'd like to thank Adam for writing it. It's a great memory of a great season, and for anybody who wants to learn about ACC basketball in its infancy, it will be quite interesting. How it all began leads to a great understanding of why we all love it so now.

That was a magical team, those 1957 Tar Heels of coach Frank McGuire. McGuire, a New York city native, believed in "city" basketball and his starting lineup was made up of five players from the metropolitan New York area. McGuire always believed in having a star, and he had one in Lennie Rosenbluth, college basketball's player of the year.

Going 32-0 and winning that championship was not easy. Carolina had many a scare. They won at South Carolina in overtime. They won at Maryland in two overtimes. They beat Duke at home by two. They had to beat Wake Forest four times and those four games were determined by a total of just 18 points, including a controversial two-point UNC win in the ACC tournament semifinals.

Then, of course, there were the classic games in the NCAA tournament. A triple-overtime win over Michigan State in the semifinals and the triple overtime championship win over Chamberlain and Kansas to win it all.

That was 50 years ago. Twenty-five years later Carolina won a national championship, and this season the Tar Heels have another powerhouse.

Is this team good enough? It's talented enough for sure. But do they have the magic? All champions seem to have it.

No one knows what history will be written in the next two months, but North Carolina fans can look to the past to dream of the present. After all, every 25 years does seem to bring something special to Tar Heel basketball.