The Pride of March did it on the Ides of March, 1997, defeating our state’s CU Buffs en route to history.
Dean Smith passed away on Sunday, and he’s in so many memorable ways. But his on March 15, 1997, gave him the most wins of any D-I coach, and it fittingly occurred in the NCAA Tournament, which Smith’s North Carolina Tar Heels twice won. Sure enough, CU was the team in the way that day.
The No. 9-seeded Buffs, led by an in-state recruit named Chauncey Billups, actually led No. 1-seeded UNC at the half, 31-30.
“I tried to get the guys to understand that I’m excited that Dean Smith was trying to get the record,” CU coach Ricardo Patton said at the time, “(but) I just thought he should wait until next year.”
But Smith’s squad outscored Colorado 43-25 in the second half. In the 73-56 loss, Fred Edmonds led CU with 18 points. Chauncey scored 11.
Smith’s win surpassed Kentucky’s Adolph Rupp. North Carolina won two more games in the tourney, reaching the Final Four (Smith’s 11th trip) before losing in the semis to eventual champ Arizona. It was Smith’s final game. He finished 879-254 (.776) for his career.
He passed away Sunday at 83.
• The Post’s longtime college writer Tom Kensler was in Winston-Salem, N.C., for that 1997 game. He wrote this sidebar about the final seconds of the game:
It wasn’t intentional, but Rick Brownstein, Colorado’s sophomore walk-on guard, found a way to get into many of those stories written about Dean Smith for today’s newspapers.
Brownstein, who had entered Saturday’s game with 2:19 remaining, was dribbling the basketball in the open court when time expired — giving Smith victory No. 877.
Coming from Brownstein’s blind side, North Carolina’s 7-foot-3, 275-pound center, Serge Zwikker, ripped the ball from Brownstein. It’s a wonder that Zwikker didn’t break a couple of Brownstein’s fingers. Brownstein is 6-foot, 185 pounds.
“We decided that if we won, we’d grab the ball and run off with it and give it to Coach (Smith),” Zwikker said.
A female security guard immediately asked Zwikker for the ball and tried to reach for it. Zwikker extended his arms and held it above his head. Case closed.
“She wanted the ball pretty bad,” Zwikker said. “She kept running after me and told me she’d give the ball to him later. I told her, ‘No, we’ll give it to him now.’ “
Brownstein, from Deerfield, Ill., recorded a steal and an assist, which ordinarily would not be noteworthy in a blowout loss. But in this case, reporters from newspapers everywhere were asking all about him after Saturday’s game.
“Not a bad year for a guy who hadn’t played organized basketball since high school,” Brownstein said.
• What are the odds of this — while writing this Lunch Special at a Denver coffeeshop, I ran into , who knew Smith well. In fact, when Clarkson was in Lawrence, Kan., in the 1950s, he traveled with the hoops team and sometimes roomed with, yep, KU bench player Dean Smith. Clarkson took of Smith in the pregame locker room in 1952.
Clarkson told me that he would watch Smith work his way up the bench during games, to try to get closer to the assistant coaches and talk shop.
“I knew even then that he would be a coach,” Clarkson said.
In 2011, then-Post writer Lindsay H. Jones .
• The great Dave Zirin wrote this piece on Monday about Smith’s over the years.
CHEW ON THIS
• San Diego Super Padres? The NL West, man. Padres , now set sights on . Will the Rockies even crack 70 wins this season?
• A fun read: .
• Retired janitor dies, to library, hospital.
• I wanted to share this one more time — my Sunday piece on a , who you might not know (but should).
• And finally, happy 66th birthday to !
Benjamin Hochman: bhochman@denverpost.com or
