The dramatic win Saturday was a brand name game.
In one of the earliest Road to the Final Four broadcasts on CBS, the Tar Heels and their fans came up big at Madison Square Garden.
It is hard to say exactly how many in light blue were in the sold-out building, but there were thousands for sure. UNC alumni, students and fans reunited where they hadn’t in 10 years because the Barclays Center in Brooklyn has stolen some of the Garden’s college basketball thunder.
It was a return that Hubert Davis plans to make every year he is Carolina’s head coach, and there could be another visit in March if the Heels get hot again and are assigned to the NCAA East Regional, where the Sweet Sixteen and Elite 8 are scheduled for the “world’s greatest arena.”
Despite Duke playing there more often over the last decade, Carolina proved that its brand is alive and well in the Big Apple, where the program cut its teeth with a first-round win over Yale in 1957 on the way to the fabled undefeated season and NCAA championship under Frank McGuire.
Dean Smith always credited The Irishman for his own love affair with New York City, where the Kansan bought sharp suits, put his teams in 5-star hotels and ate at the fanciest restaurants. Smith especially loved to dine the night before or after games at Danny Patrissy’s Italian eatery on the lower East Side where McGuire first took his former assistant coach.
Smith learned to recruit “the City” as well as McGuire, embracing ’57 starters Pete Brennan, Bob Cunningham, Tommy Kearns, Joe Quigg and Lennie Rosenbluth who all hailed from that area. As Carolina’s reputation grew – long before cable TV – Smith made sure his radio broadcasts were carried on WBT-AM in Charlotte, which had a massive North-South signal and carried games all the way up the East Coast.
Every Smith team had a handful of players from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania – who inspired future stars from the South to follow the likes of Larry Brown, Billy Cunningham, Larry Miller, Charlie Scott, Dennis Wuycik, Mitch Kupchak, Mike O’Koren, Sam Perkins, Kenny Smith and Rasheed Wallace.
The brand recognition stayed through the Roy Williams era and remains very important to Hubert Davis, who played as a collegian and pro at the Garden, loves its legacy and wants it to remain a part of Carolina’s program.
Featured image via UNC Basketball on Twitter
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