Category: Basketball

“March Madness” is only a week away when the 64th annual Atlantic Coast Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament takes place starting today, March 7, through March 11, 2017 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.  Officially, it’s the “New York Life ACC Tournament,” but a title sponsor has not always been attached.  That addition is just one of the many changing facets of this classic sporting event that have taken place over the years— and photographer Hugh Morton was there for twenty-one (at least) of them between 1954 and 2005.  On day one of the ACC Tournament, Morton collection volunteer and A View to Hugh contributor Jack Hilliard takes a brief look at the record book.  Within the story, you may follow the links to see Morton’s photographs for the years available in online collection. (Not all the years photographed by Morton are available in the online collection.  See Series 6.1 in the collection finding aid for a full listing.)

In early March, 1997, the ACC Tournament was staged in Greensboro for the 17th time, but the front page basketball story in the March 9th edition of the “News & Record” was titled “Shooting with the Best of Them: At 76, Hugh Morton still keeps life in focus.”  The article told the Hugh Morton story and how he had covered the ACC tournament starting back in 1954. In fact, feature writer Jim Schlosser’s article said:  “He’s been shooting Carolina wins, and the occasional loss, in every ACC tournament, save one, since the first in 1954 in Raleigh.”

The fifteen-team league competing for the 2017 ACC Tournament Championship is a far cry from the league that Morton first photographed in 1954 when only 8 teams made up the conference. That ’54 tournament was played in Raleigh’s William Neal Reynolds Coliseum and was won by Coach Everett Case’s NC State Wolfpack…an 82 to 80 overtime thriller against Coach Murray Greason’s Wake Forest Demon Deacons.  State went on to win the event in ‘55 and ’56 before North Carolina won its first tournament in 1957. And Carolina continued its winning ways as the NCAA Champion that year…the first North Carolina based team to do that since the official formation of the Atlantic Coast Conference in May of 1953.

The University of Maryland won the 1958 tournament, defeating the defending champion Tar Heels as the Terps became the first out-of-North Carolina tournament champion.  In ’59, NC State came back as a winner for the 4th time with a win over UNC.

Duke beat Wake Forest for its first ACC Tournament in 1960, while Wake beat Duke in ’61 for its first tournament win. Wake won again in ’62.  During the next four years, Duke won three more times and State won in ’65. Hugh Morton photographs can be seen in the online collection for the UNC vs USC semifinal game in 1963 and the Duke vs NC State first-round game in 1964.

In 1967, the tournament moved from Reynolds Coliseum to the Greensboro Coliseum where Carolina beat Duke for the title. Carolina continued its winning ways with two wins over State and Duke as the tournament moved to Charlotte in 1968 and 1969.

Following NC State’s 1970 win in Charlotte over South Carolina, it was back to Greensboro for the next five years.  South Carolina won its only ACC Tournament in 1971 and Carolina and State split the next four years: Carolina winning in 1972 and 1975, and State winning in 1973 and 1974—and of course State won the National Championship in 1974, the only time the “Final Four” championship round has been played in Greensboro.

In 1976, the tournament moved to the Capital Center in Landover, Maryland where Virginia won its first ACC Tournament, beating North Carolina 67 to 62.  It was back to the Greensboro Coliseum in 1977 for a four year stint.  Carolina and Duke split with UNC winning in 1977 and 1979 and Duke winning in 1978 and 1980.  (Note: four photographs in the online collection lack definite identifications with “late 1970s” being the estimated date range, and another photograph only dated as “1980s” appears for all searches for the years 1980 through 1989.  Please try your hand at identifying the photographs and leave a comment with your findings!)

Carolina won in 1981 back at Capital Center, and then again in Greensboro in 1982, where the Tar Heels won the NCAA Championship again 1982.  The tournament moved again in 1983—this time to the Omni in Atlanta where NC State won over Virginia and went on to its second NCAA Championship.  Maryland beat Duke back in Greensboro in 1984 and Georgia Tech won its first ACC Tournament at the Omni in 1985, beating North Carolina.

Duke won twice in Greensboro in 1986 and 1988 while NC State won at Capital Center in 1987.  Carolina beat Duke 77 to 74 in 1989 at the Omni before the tournament moved back to the Charlotte Coliseum in 1990 for five years with Georgia Tech winning twice, in 1990 and 1993, and North Carolina twice, in 1991 and 1994.  Duke won in 1992 adding a NCAA Championship. The years 1995 to 1998 were back in Greensboro where Wake Forest won twice, in 1995 and 1996, and Carolina won in 1997.  And I believe that’s where we came in with Morton shooting the 1997 tournament in Greensboro.  Morton’s last ACC Tournament was in 2002 at the Charlotte Coliseum.

Since Morton made “tournament headlines” in Greensboro in 1997, the ACC Tournament has played out nineteen times and Morton’s Tar Heels have won only four of those events, while Duke has won ten. (And it should be pointed out that Duke’s wins in 2001, 2010, and 2015 were followed up with NCAA championships). Florida State, Miami, and Notre Dame have added one win each while Maryland and Virginia have added one each to their championships lists.  Also, the tournament has added two additional venues since 1997: DC in 2006 and Tampa, Florida in 2007.

Ten years after Tampa was added, the tournament moves to Brooklyn, New York in 2017—where Duke will be going for overall tournament championship number twenty, UNC will be going for number nineteen, NC State will be looking for number eleven, and Wake Forest number five.  But as ACC basketball goes, any one of the now fifteen member teams could win in the “Big Apple” this March as “Madness” abounds.

UNC’s ascent to the 1982 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship included a confrontation with Villanova in the East Region Final won by the Tar Heels, 70 to 60.  In 1991 the two universities squared off again in the East Region bracket, an 84 to 69 UNC win in the second round, played in the Carrier Dome at Syracuse, New York.  On the sidelines of those two respective games were assistant coaches who will find themselves as helmsmen during tonight’s contest for the 2016 national championship in Houston: UNC’s Roy Williams seen above as assistant to Dean Smith in 1982, and Jay Wright, seen below, as assistant to Rollie Massimino in 1991.  (A similar photograph by Morton can be seen in the online collection.)

In between those two face-offs was Villanova’s victory over UNC for the 1985 Mideast Region Final, won by Villanova 65 to 44, on the Wildcats way to winning the national championship.  At that time Wright was coaching in Division III at the University of Rochester, and Williams was still the assistant coach at UNC.  Hugh Morton photographed that game but only a shot from the UNC locker is in the online collection.

Back in 2009 Jack Hilliard wrote a post titled “UNC vs. Villanova: 1982 and 1985.” when these school faced each other during the opening round of “Final Four” play.  UNC won handily, 83 to 69.  Those who prefer the lighter shade of blue will be rooting for another Tar Heel title tonight.

Walking to my office from the bus stop this morning while talking with a fellow bus rider, I wondered if Duke and UNC ever won national titles back-to-back.  Checking the records books (okay, Wikipedia), I learned that the answer is yes!  Duke won the national title in 1991 and 1992, followed by UNC in 1993.

Hugh Morton traveled to Indianapolis in 1991 when both schools reached the Final Four.  UNC lost its national semifinal to Kansas, coached by Roy Williams, 79 to 73.  Morton hung around town and returned for the championship game to witness Duke’s downing of Kansas 72 to 65.

Morton did not make the trek to Minneapolis for Duke’s championship at the 1992 Final Four with UNC’s Southeast Regional lost to Ohio State in Lexington, Kentucky, but he certainly was not going know what it means to miss New Orleans in 1993.  Follow that link to our story about that game, published in March 2013.

Duke was last years’s national champion.  Will UNC follow in their footsteps this year and make history repeat itself?

 

 

It was his last college game.  An upset that still rankles a quarter-century later, like a large pebble in his Air Jordans.

—Mike Lopresti, sportswriter, March 3, 2009

This coming Friday night, the UNC Tar Heels will face the Indiana Hoosiers’ in the East Regional Semifinal of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  The two schools last met in the East Regional semifinal round thirty-two years ago today on March 22, 1984 in Atlanta, Georgia.  Michael Jordan played his last game as a Tar Heel that day, because the Hoosiers emerged with a 72-68 victory.

According sportswriter Mike Lopresti, who wrote an article in 2009 titled “After 25 years, Jordan still frustrated by loss to Hoosiers in tourney,” Indiana head coach Bobby Knight made a few strategic changes that led to their upset win over the number on seed UNC: “He ditched his beloved motion offense and spread the floor, to better combat Dean Smith’s trapping defenses . . . and . . . put a blue-collar defender named Dan Dakich on Jordan. Dakich was ordered to deny Jordan the backdoor cut, the post-up and offensive rebounds. Fail at any, and he was on the bench.  Dakich learned of his assignment a few hours before the game. Already ill, he went back to his room and threw up.”

Jordan fouled twice early in the game and it was he who spent unexpected minutes on the bench.  Jordan told Lopresti in an interview: “When I got back in the second half, I felt like I was trying to cram 40 minutes into 20 minutes,” he said. “I could never find any sync in my game.”

A post last week listed all the NCAA basketball tournaments photographed by Hugh Morton.  The list did not include 1984.  Once I heard that these two teams would play against each there once again, I immediately flashed on a photograph I’ve had on my office door for several years until very recently:

I lived in Indiana for fourteen years before moving to North Carolina to work in the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, so it was a fitting photograph—my new state rising above my old state.  What stuck in my mind’s eye, though, was the 1984 banner in the lower right corner.  That’s when I knew I could add another tournament to Morton’s list.  Checking the finding aid revealed that he also photographed the opening rounds played in Charlotte.

In the Morton collection there is one roll of 35mm black-and-white film and second roll of color transparencies.  The latter are mostly substandard as Morton missed focused on most of his exposures.  Only one color image is online; the description, however, did not mention that the game was in the NCAA tournament so it did not turn up in my search.

Today we scanned the roll of black-and-white negatives and present three of Morton’s better photographs from the game.

Four years ago today, my fellow co-worker Bill Richards passed away while watching the Tar Heels play their “Sweet Sixteen” game against Creighton in the 2012 NCAA tournament.  In addition to being an avid UNC football and basketball fan, Bill was the senior digitization technician in the Carolina Digital Library and Archives.  In 1982 Bill was the Chief Photographer for the Chapel Hill Newspaper.  In 1988, he began working as a photographer and graphic designer in the UNC Office of Sports Information.  He began working in the Library Photographic Services unit in 1998, but continued working for Sports information into the 2000s.  Each year at this time I dedicate a post about UNC basketball to Bill.

By my count, Hugh Morton photographed during seventeen NCAA men’s basketball tournaments—in some years at multiple locations, such as 1991 when Morton traveled to East Rutherford for the East Regional and to Indianapolis for the Final Four.  In last year’s post I counted fourteen, so below is an updated list with several new links to images in the online collection.  Bill Richards would have loved this much detail!  Did I miss any this time around?

• The loss in the 1946 championship game against Oklahoma A&M, at Madison Square Garden in New York.
• Duke’s defeat of Connecticut in the 1964 East Regional Final played in Raleigh’s Reynolds Auditorium.
• UNC’s victory over Davidson in the 1968 East Regional Final, also played at Reynold’s Coliseum.
• UNC’s 1969 “Final Four” loss to Purdue in the national semifinal played in Louisville, Kentucky.  Morton also photographed the other national semifinal between Drake and UCLA, the eventual national champion.
• The 1974 national semifinals played in the Greensboro Coliseum, where North Carolina State upset of UCLA in the first round of the Final Four.  Morton photographed the game from the stands, from where he also shot some of the Kansas versus Marquette contest.  Morton did not photograph N. C. State’s win over Marquette for the national championship.
• 1975 first round win over New Mexico State played at the Charlotte Coliseum.
• The 1977 “Final Four” games versus the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Marquette University played at The Omni in Atlanta.
• UNC’s 1981 trip to Final Four at Philadelphia. The online collection includes photographs of the win over Virgina, but not the championship loss to Indiana.
• UNC’s 1982 journey to a championship victory over Georgetown at New Orleans, including trips to Raleigh for the East Regional games agains Alabama and Villanova.
• UNC’s 1983 defeat of Ohio State and its loss to Georgia in the East Regional Final played at Syracuse’s Carrier Dome.
• UNC’s 1987 trip to The Meadowlands for its victory over Notre Dame in the East Regional Semifinal and the Tar Heels’ loss to Syracuse in the regional final.
• UNC’s 1990 upset over number one seed Oklahoma in the second round of the Midwest Regional.
• UNC’s East Regional games against Eastern Michigan and Temple at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, N. J.  Morton also went to Indianapolis for the Final Four.  The online collection, however, on includes on one photograph of Kansas head coach Roy Williams talking to his assistant coach Matt Doherty, and two scenes after Duke won the national championship over Kansas.
• UNC’s 1993 national semifinal game versus Kansas and national championship win over Michigan, 77–71, in New Orleans; and UNC’s regional semifinal against Arkansas and the regional final victory over Cincinnati, both played at the Brendan Bryne Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey.  According to the Morton collection finding aid, Morton did photograph UNC’s regional game against Rhode Island, but there isn’t enough detail to see if he photographed the opening round game versus East Carolina.  Winston-Salem hosted both of these games.
• UNC’s trip to the 1995 Final Four in Seattle, where they lost to Arkansas in the national semifinal.
• UNC’s trip to Indianapolis in the 1997 Final Four, where they lost to Arizona 66-58 in the national semifinal.  Morton also photographed UNC’s regional game versus Colorado played in Winston-Salem.
• Morton’s final trip to the NCAA tournament to him to San Antonio for the 1998 Final Four, when he photographed UNC’s national semifinal loss to Utah, 59-65.

Prolog

It’s a curious malady that sweeps the ACC nation just before most of us catch spring fever.  Many of us deal with the disorder by sitting in front of our TV sets for hours listening to basketball announcers and analysts drone on with a strange and curious language that only those who are infected with the ailment can understand:

“With the game on the line, he tickles the twine with the 3-ball from downtown, to get the “W” and advance to the next level of the big dance and now with a chance to win all the marbles up for grabs . . .”

It’s known as “March Madness” and there is no known cure.

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The Madness is upon us with the 2016 Atlantic Coast Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament on RayCom Sports and ESPN, but what would it be like without that wall-to-wall TV coverage?  There was a time in the early days when ACC basketball was only on radio, but one man saw a bright future for the sport on TV.

Morton collection volunteer Jack Hilliard profiles the man who is often called the father of ACC basketball on television, C.D. Chesley.

He put ACC basketball on the map, about 10 years ahead of everyone else, and they are still trying to catch up.

Hugh Morton, March 8, 2003

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In the early 1950s sports television was nothing like it is today.  I remember as a little kid watching the Washington Redskins on Sunday afternoons at 2:00 on the Amoco Redskins Network.  There were no replays, so in order to see a favorite play for a second time, I had to wait until the following Friday night when the local TV station ran a program called National Pro Highlights.  The program, produced by a company in Philadelphia called Tel Ra Productions, showed filmed highlights of the preceding Sunday’s games.

Castleman DeTolley Chesley was a member of the production team at Tel Ra.  Chesley had a football background having played freshman football at UNC in 1934.  He then moved to the University of Pennsylvania where he was football captain and was also a member of the Penn traveling comedy troupe.  Following graduation he became Penn’s athletic director, he but kept his finger on broadcasting’s pulse.  Chesley later worked with both ABC and NBC coordinating college football coverage with the NCAA.

During the 1956–1957 college basketball season, Chesley became intensely interested in the UNC Tar Heels coached by Frank McGuire as they worked their way through an undefeated season.  The 27 and 0 Tar Heels then beat Yale in Madison Square Garden during the first round of the NCAA Tournament.  At this point, Chesley made his move. Being familiar with the NCAA ins and outs, he was able to set up a three-station regional network for the finals of the Eastern Regional played at the Palestra in Philadelphia. Although station WPFH-TV in Wilmington, Delaware was the switching point, the three stations were in Durham, Greensboro, and Charlotte.  Matt Koukas, a former Philadelphia Warrior NBA star, called the play-by-play.

Even before Carolina had won the two-game regional in Philly, Chesley was already setting up the network for the national finals in Kansas City, Missouri and added two additional stations.  The semi-final with Michigan State and the final with Kansas were both triple-overtime games.  Some folks who watched those two games say that the madness for ACC basketball was born that weekend.  Castleman D. Chesley would most likely agree with those folks.

The next logical step was to approach athletic directors at ACC schools about the possibility of doing weekly football and basketball games during the regular season. In the beginning, ADs and head coaches were not in favor of adding TV to the schedule. They were afraid that people would stay home and watch on TV, rather than attend the games. Chesley was able to convince them otherwise, pointing out how television could be used as a recruiting tool as well as fund raising opportunities.

On October 12, 1957 the first ACC football TV game was broadcast, a game from Byrd Stadium in College Park, Maryland between the University of Maryland and Wake Forest. Charlie Harville and Jim Simpson made up the on-air broadcast team. Three other games were telecast during the ’57 football season: one from NC State, one from UNC, and one from Duke. While the football games were successful, Chesley had his eye on basketball. On December 7, 1957, the first ACC regular season basketball game was telecast on a regional network. The game was Carolina vs. Clemson from Woollen Gym on the UNC campus.

In those early days, the C.D. Chesley Company consisted of three people: Irving “Snuffy” Smith, Peggy Burns, and Mr. Chesley.  From the beginning Chesley used equipment from WUNC-TV and students from the University’s Radio, Television, and Motion Picture Department.  WUNC-TV’s director John Young managed the personnel and equipment. Play-by-play broadcasters like Harville, Simpson, Dan Daniels, Woody Durham, and Jim Thacker, and analysts like Bones McKinney, Billy Packer, and Jeff Mullins were brought in to handle the on-air while directors like John Young from WUNC-TV, Norman Prevatte from WBTV in Charlotte, and Frank Slingland from NBC-TV in Washington called the shots, often from an old converted Trailways bus that UNC-TV used in the early days.

Television coverage of ACC basketball caught on just like Chesley said it would, and his main sponsor Pilot Life Insurance Company became about as famous as the ACC teams.  People across the ACC nation could sing along . . .

Sail with the Pilot at the wheel,
On a ship sturdy from its mast to its keel . . .

C.D. Chesley was pleased with ACC basketball but he was always looking for additional challenges. In 1962 and ’63 he produced TV coverage of the Miss North Carolina Pageant to a regional network of station across the Tar Heel state, and in 1964 he produced regional coverage of the Greater Greensboro Open Golf Tournament.

Chesley was always on the lookout for more football coverage.  In the mid-1960s he started Sunday morning replay coverage of the preceding Saturday’s Notre Dame games; in 1967 was able to get Hall of Fame Broadcaster Lindsey Nelson to do the play-by-play and Notre Dame Heisman Trophy winner Paul Hornung to do the color commentary.  At one point the Notre Dame games were featured on 136 stations and Nelson became known as that “Notre Dame announcer.”

C.D. Chesley started small but his broadcasts were always first class productions.  By the 1970s he was broadcasting two ACC basketball games a week.  On January 14, 1973 just before the Washington Redskins met the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VII, Chesley put together a patch-work national network for the ACC basketball game between North Carolina State and Maryland.  It was big time and NC State All America David Thompson became a national sensation.

The C.D. Chesley Company and ACC basketball continued as household names for twenty-four years through the 1981 season.  At that point ACC basketball was so big that other broadcasters with bigger budgets wanted in on the action.  Chesley’s one million-dollar rights fee could not compete with the likes of MetroSports who offered three million for the 1982 season and RayCom Sports of Charlotte who paid fifteen million for the rights for three seasons starting in 1983.  RayCom continues today as the network for ACC basketball.

“His place in the history of ACC basketball is phenomenal, getting the sport out there in front of the public,” said Tar Heel broadcaster Woody Durham in a 2003 interview.  “We all knew how exciting ACC basketball was, but here was a guy who came along and let the public see it.”

On April 10, 1983, Castleman D. Chesley lost his battle with Alzheimer’s.  He was laid to rest in a small cemetery near his home at Grandfather Mountain.  He was 69 years old.
Four years later the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame inducted Chelsey in the spring of 1987.  Hugh Morton and Ed Rankin, in their 1988 book, Making a Difference in North Carolina, devoted eight pages of words and pictures to “the man who put ACC basketball on the map.”

 

Carolina will kick off its 2015 home football schedule on Saturday, September 12th when Head Coach Rod Broadway brings his North Carolina A&T Aggies to Kenan Stadium.  It will be the first meeting between the two schools on the gridiron; the men’s basketball programs, however, have met on the hardwood twice (in 2001 and 2003).  Morton Collection volunteer Jack Hilliard takes a look back at those two meetings.

Curtis Hunter and Matt Doherty were teammates on UNC Head Basketball Coach Dean Smith’s 1982-83 and 1983-84 teams.  In 2000 each took a head coaching position with teams within the UNC system: Hunter at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and Doherty at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  As was the custom then, and still today, members of the “Carolina Family” often wind up playing each other.  And that was the case with the Tar Heels and the Aggies.  When the two teams met twice in the Smith Center during the early 2000s, photographer Hugh Morton was there on both occasions to document the games.

It was a homecoming of sorts for North Carolina A&T Head Coach Curtis Hunter on December 27, 2001 when he brought his Aggies into the Smith Center to meet coach Matt Doherty’s Tar Heels.  But Hunter realized that his homecoming would need to take a back seat to getting his 1 and 7 team ready to play Doherty’s 3 and 5 Heels.

In a pre-game interview, Hunter said, “To be honest about it, I hadn’t given (coming back to play at UNC) that much thought.  It really hasn’t hit me yet.  Maybe that will all change once the game starts.”  Just minutes before the tipoff, Hunter did notice an old friend seated close by and went over and offered a long embrace.  It was Angela Lee, wife of former Chapel Hill Mayor Howard Lee.  When Curtis played for the Tar Heels, Angela worked in the basketball office.

With former UNC head coaches Dean Smith and Bill Guthridge looking on, it didn’t take long for all to see that the Tar Heels had brought their A-game.  They led 52 to 31 at the half and equaled that 52 in the second half with a final score of 104 to 66.  Tar Heel senior Jason Capel led the way with 26 points.  In all, Carolina hit 16 three-point shots—one off the school record and two short of the ACC record at the time.  A&T hit only 37.9 percent from the floor and committed 18 turnovers. In his post game interview, Hunter said, “All I know is that we just got beat by 38 points.  So, it’s up to me to come up with ways to help my team play up to its capabilities.”

While Coach Doherty was pleased with his team’s win, he admitted that beating a former teammate in a blowout is not all that gratifying.  “After the game I said to him, ‘Sorry you caught us on a bad night.’  A month ago it could have been a different story.”
Coach Hunter was asked one final time about his homecoming.  “It still hasn’t hit me yet,” he replied.  “Maybe that will happen next year.”

That “next year” would be February 18, 2003.  The second meeting between UNC and A&T didn’t offer coach Curtis Hunter a happy homecoming either.  His team was winless going into the game, having lost 20 games, while Carolina was 13 and 11.

The Tar Heels took control early and wound up hitting 54 per cent over all.  A&T hit 4 threes and had an overall percentage of 34.9. The Greensboro News and Record described the Carolina effort as a “dunk-a-thon,” adding that they also hit 11 three-point shots.  The final score was UNC 93, A&T 57.

In his post-game interview, Coach Doherty said, “I’m sorry it had to be Curtis Hunter, my old teammate, on the other bench. I have a lot of respect for him.”

A couple of weeks later when the 2002–2003 college basketball season ended, UNC and A&T had a combined win total of 20 games: Carolina was 19 and 16, A&T was 1 and 26.  And by the time the 2003-2004 college basketball season rolled around, both UNC Chapel Hill and North Carolina A&T had new head coaches in place.