The UConn men’s basketball team will face North Carolina for the seventh time in history and the first time since 2005 when the two storied programs take the floor at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night.
The Huskies are 1-5 all-time against the Tar Heels, but they’ve had some memorable meetings over the years, many of which seemed to serve as motivation for national championship runs. It would have been natural for UConn to look up to North Carolina as a program in the earlier days, and competing with them would have given the Huskies confidence, as it seemed to after the ’98 matchup. But that also worked the other way too, as UNC proved in 2004.
Here’s a look back at the history between the Huskies and ‘Heels:
Dec. 6, 1990
No. 10 North Carolina 79, No. 14 UConn 64
There was barely any time for a greeting in the first-ever meeting between these two, as UConn raced out to a 12-1 lead thanks to a press that had North Carolina flummoxed.
“We would have never beaten Connecticut except here at home, the way we played,” Smith said after the game, according to a New York Times report. “I never thought in my wildest dreams that their press would bother us as much as it seemed to at the beginning of the game.”
UNC rebounded– literally, thanks to future NBA stalwarts Rick Fox, who led the way with 18 points and 10 boards, and George Lynch, who posted 12 points and 14 boards. Carolina outrebounded the Huskies 59-32 in the game.
Chris Smith, who would become UConn’s all-time leading scorer, led the Huskies with 21 points.
North Carolina would go on to lose to Kansas in the Final Four that season, while UConn lost a memorable game to Christian Laettner and Duke in the Sweet 16.
March 21, 1998
(1) North Carolina 75, (2) UConn 64
The second-ever meeting between these two programs came in the 1998 Elite Eight, which was played in a heavily pro-UNC environment in Greensboro, N.C. A loaded Tar Heels squad featuring Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, Ed Cota and Shammond Williams just had enough to push past the Huskies, who had beaten Indiana and Washington en route to the regional final, edging the other Huskies on a memorable buzzer-beater by Rip Hamilton. (Hamilton, no… another tip, no… Hamilton at the buzzer, yes!)
UConn trailed by 11 in the second half but rallied to bring it to within one on a three-point play by a freshman Khalid El-Amin with 5:37 left in the game. “We knew that we could have beaten them,” then-junior guard Ricky Moore said afterwards, according to the New York Times. The Huskies, who were playing in their fourth regional final in eight years but had yet to reach the Final Four, succumbed to a late Tar Heels run.
”They were courageous enough to push the fast break and old enough and smart enough,” Jim Calhoun told reporters, before wondering if the Tar Heels would have had a similar run at the Hartford Civic Center. ”We should have attacked. They did. We didn’t. They go to Texas. We go home.”
UConn would use the close loss as motivation the following season, when they went 34-2, burst through to the Final Four for the first time ever and won the national championship.
Jan. 19, 2002
UConn 86, North Carolina 54
The Huskies’ lone win over the Tar Heels was an absolute drubbing at Gampel Pavilion, made even worse when you consider that Carolina took an early 11-2 lead. UConn outscored the ‘Heels 84-43 afterwards, embarrassing UNC during what would become one of the worst seasons in its storied history. That North Carolina team, led by second-year coach Matt Doherty, started off the season with losses to Hampton and Davidson, snuck past Division 1 doormat Binghamton, 61-60, and was reeling at 5-9 before it met the Huskies in Storrs.
UConn, led by Caron Butler’s 29 points, extended their misery. Butler erupted after a “calm talk” with Calhoun on the bench, as the Times’ Frank Litsky put it, shortly after the Tar Heels jumped out to a big early lead.
”The thing we wanted to do was pressure them,” Calhoun said, according to the Times. ”We came out and didn’t. So I took him out, and Caron and I talked about it. No, I talked and he listened.”
Jan. 18, 2003
North Carolina 68, No. 6 UConn 65
Almost a year to the day after their beatdown in Storrs, an unranked North Carolina squad upset the No. 6 Huskies in Chapel Hill, led by 27 points from freshman guard Rashad McCants. They did it without big man Sean May, who was out with a broken foot.
UConn rallied from a 19-point deficit to take a 65-64 lead with 1:16 remaining, its first lead of the game, but a Jawad Williams jumper gave North Carolina the lead back for good. The Huskies just didn’t have enough as a sophomore Ben Gordon struggled, going 5-for-19 from the floor and finishing with 10 points. Emeka Okafor finished with 13.
“You can’t keep shooting 5-for-19, which was similar to what he did at Oklahoma,” Calhoun said of Gordon after the game, according to the Associated Press. “I don’t have the answer. He’s a great basketball player, but he didn’t look like a great basketball player tonight. He’s got to play better.”
Big things were ahead for both programs.
Jan. 17, 2004
No. 9 North Carolina 86, No. 1 UConn 83
By the time the two met in mid-January for the third straight year, the Huskies had raced out to a 14-1 start to the season and were considered national championship favorites. The Okafor-Gordon duo had become known as perhaps the nation’s best one-two punch, and UConn would go out and prove it was the best team in the country that spring, winning the program’s second national title in convincing fashion.
On this night however, it was the up-and-coming Tar Heels, with new head coach Roy Williams, who came out on top. Rashad McCants was once again the hero, scoring exactly 27 points again and drilling a 3-pointer with 6.2 seconds left to give Carolina the win.
It was somewhat of a head-scratching loss for UConn, which had annihilated then-No. 6 Oklahoma in Storrs a week before, winning 86-59.
“In the second half we just started playing basketball and got the ball to Emeka,” Calhoun said after the game. “We displayed the heart of a champion in the second half but we didn’t finish it as we have to to be a champion.”
Feb. 13, 2005
No. 2 North Carolina 77, No. 19 UConn 70
A late-season battle between the defending champion Huskies and the eventual champion Tar Heels lived up to the billing, but once again North Carolina outlasted UConn in a hard-fought battle. The title-winning trio of Sean May, Rashad McCants (UConn fans must’ve been sick of him) and Raymond Felton combined for 47 points as North Carolina improved to 20-3 with the win.
“We gave in to great defense. We came apart,” Calhoun told reporters after the game. “We weren’t mentally tough enough to stay in our offense and the turnovers led to fast-break baskets.”
North Carolina would go on to defeat Illinois for the program’s fourth national title, while the Huskies’ title defense would end with a second-round upset at the hands of UNC’s (second biggest) rival, NC State.
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