East Rutherford, N.J. – The night Michael Jordan made that shot, Roy Williams and John Thompson III were inside the Superdome, too.
North Carolina and Georgetown play today in the East Regional final, with Tyler Hansbrough, Patrick Ewing Jr. and the other players focused squarely on a trip to the Final Four.
For many fans, the matchup means a lot more than the top-seeded Tar Heels’ transitions vs. the second-seeded Hoyas’ patience. It represents a harmonic convergence of history, harkening back to a true thriller in college basketball.
“I think you don’t have to go down the list of great, great finals very long before you get to the ’82 North Carolina-Georgetown game,” Williams said.
In a game that started the legend of M.J. and ushered in the era of huge crowds for championship night, Jordan’s jumper from the left side with 17 seconds left lifted North Carolina over Georgetown 63-62 on March 29, 1982.
“I’m very blessed for what that shot did, and my name did change from Mike to Michael,” Jordan said this month. “To sit back and think “What if?” is a scary thought. There are a lot of other options. I could be pumping gas back in Wilmington, N.C.”
Williams, now North Carolina’s coach, was then an assistant to Dean Smith.
“Other than my wife and my mother, I don’t know that anybody knew I was on the bench at that point,” he said. “I had dark black hair and it was pretty neat.”
Thompson was a high school junior at the time, sitting across from the Georgetown bench where his father was head coach.
“I remember everything about it,” he said. “It’s difficult to handle it because it’s the national championship game.”
There was no dispute how much that game meant to college hoops.
The matchup was full of stars – James Worthy and Sam Perkins in Carolina blue, Patrick Ewing and Eric Floyd for Georgetown. A crowd of 61,612 roared the whole way, the outcome in doubt until the final seconds when Fred Brown made an inexplicable pass to Worthy.
Ewing Jr. said his Hoyas (29-6) weren’t looking to avenge that loss with a win over the Tar Heels (31-6).
“It hasn’t really been a focus for me, or Coach Thompson or our parents,” he said. “There is no Jordan on the team, no Worthys, no Perkinses. It would be good to get that win just to move on to the next round.”
Teammate Tyler Crawford also wanted to look ahead.
“We’re not talking about what happened in the past,” he said. “We lost that game. Georgetown lost. Why would we laugh or joke about it?”
