Mutual respect exists between Tobacco Road NCAA champs
Coaches say conference deserves credit for success
By Jim O'Connell The Associated Press
Eight miles. Not even one-third of a marathon.
That is how far the national championship trophy has traveled the last two years. College basketball's most prized possession sat in Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, N.C., from March 1991 until last spring, when it moved to the Smith Center in Chapel Hill.
Eight miles. A decent jogger could cover it in an hour.
There is no rivalry like a neighborhood rivalry, and Duke and North Carolina have one of the best.
The best of coaches, players, tradition and those three straight national championships.
"In a way, the schools feed off each other, but I think the nice thing about that rivalry is that I think there's a mutual respect between the coaches and among the players on both teams," North Carolina coach Dean Smith said.
Smith and Duke's Mike Krzyzewski seem genuine in their admiration of the other's program, and the players do spend a lot of time going against each other during the summer in pickup games that would have NBA scouts drooling.
However, both coaches downplay the thought that it is only those two schools that created all that success. They both mention the entire Atlantic Coast Conference.
"If you had to point one finger at something as to why there are three national championships in a row in our conference, it's because of the conference," said Krzyzewski, the fifth coach ever to win consecutive titles and the first since UCLA's John Wooden 20 years ago. "The conference hardens you. You better be good. Once you get into postseason play, if you let up a little bit, you're out. You may not even let up and you're out. Our tough conference play puts you in a position to do that. That's the foundation on which the conference is built."
The foundation is so solid right now that most people feel the next national champion could very well be from the ACC, just as five of the last 12 have been.
The league has had at least one team in the Final Four for the last six seasons and 11 of the past 12. ACC teams have won 104 NCAA tournament games since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985; the Big Ten is second, with 80.
"There isn't a team in our conference that can't beat either Duke or us," Smith said. "That's partly due to the nature of basketball, but also, there's so many good players out there, and a lot of them want to play in the ACC. So, if they don't go to Duke or Carolina, they go to some other school in the ACC."
Florida State, Virginia and Georgia Tech are all among the best two dozen teams in college basketball, yet for the last three seasons, they have wound up in the catch-all "best of the rest" in their own conference.
"When we came into the ACC, I told our people I wanted to compete with Duke and Carolina," Florida State coach Pat Kennedy said. "If we don't compete with them, we'll never be there. So for me to position our program on the heels of
those teams ... if you're not doing that as a head coach, you're not doing a good job with your program."
There's also the problem of competing with Duke and North Carolina off the court. Both schools are highly regarded academically and the fans have created niches all of their own: Carolina is for coming up with enough funds to build the palace-like Smith Center without the school paying a dime, and Duke's fervent student body that has become the standard by which all others are measured for dedication and sarcasm.
Pity, then, North Carolina State.
Less than 20 miles from both Duke and Carolina, its two national titles seem like ancient history, its Reynolds Coliseum an outdated facility that has seemed almost quiet recently because of last-place finishes in the ACC while the Wolfpack tries to rebound from NCAA sanctions in the 1980s.
Coach Les Robinson has come in second on such outstanding scholastic talent as Jerry Stackhouse and Jeff McInnis, who opted for North Carolina, and Jeff Capel, who decided on Duke.
"I think it's a challenge for the entire conference, where they are right now," Robinson said of Duke and Carolina. "For us right now, it's probably tougher than any of the other schools in the conference because that is the gauge for our fans, the guy at the grocery store, the guy at the bank, at the airport."
"You don't know how many times people say to me, and they're not talking about the overall season, 'Just beat Duke. Just beat Carolina.'
"Name somebody else."
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COLLEGE BASKETBALL PREVIEW • University Daily Kansan • November 17, 1993