Jan. 14, 2003
By Adam Lucas
A rivalry? With Clemson? In basketball?
Oddly enough, the Tigers come to the Smith Center tonight for what may be the most pressure-packed game of the season for North Carolina. Dating back to the 1924-25 season, Clemson has come to Chapel Hill 48 times for a game of basketball. They have lost all 48.
It's a phenomenal streak that defies explanation, unless you believe former Clemson coach Rick Barnes, who was never known for his eloquence.
"If you really need an explanation," Barnes said after his second-ranked Tigers were dispatched 61-48 in 1997, "Take your [rear end] out there and look up at the rafters."
Barnes presumably meant that curious questioners should be answered by the numerous jerseys of talented players hanging in the Smith Center rafters, but even that's not a complete explanation. After all, every other ACC team has been able to occasionally win in Chapel Hill against those very same players. During the streak, Clemson has won in NC State's Reynolds Coliseum, Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium, and Maryland's Cole Field House, all considered very difficult venues for road teams. But they can't seem to put together a victory in Chapel Hill.
If there's a rallying cry for the Tigers, it's, "Well, at least we're not Brown." The Ivy League school has failed to win at Princeton 52 times in a row since 1929. That is the longest streak in NCAA history, followed closely by Clemson's Carolina futility. But despite their record-setting struggles, the Tigers' painful Chapel Hill experiences were largely a footnote until the mid-1990's, when the domination truly became a rivalry-one that extended beyond the boundaries of the Smith Center into Greensboro and across the ACC.
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Rick Barnes came and left Clemson none the better for his presence, but he did find time while in Chapel Hill to fire a few shots at the most venerated coach in the nation. The trouble between Barnes and Carolina head coach Dean Smith began in a 1995 game at Littlejohn Coliseum. The 83-66 win was a foul-marred affair, as were most games for Barnes-coached teams. With 28 seconds left, the rookie Tiger head coach began his theatrics. First, he picked up a technical foul for complaining about a call. Not content with that outcome, he marched across the court to further argue his case, clearly knowing that his actions would result in ejection.
Sure enough, Barnes got the thumb, and he had to be escorted from the court by South Carolina policemen. After the game, Smith would say only, "It was a real aggressive basketball game. Both teams were really going at it. Clemson does play hard."
In this case, however, "hard" didn't have anything to do with intensity. It had to do with the physical nature of the game. Speculation that Barnes had decided to try and beat opponents into submission was seemingly confirmed when Clemson player Rayfield Ragland told eager reporters that the Tiger coaching staff had instructed their team, "If you're going to foul, foul hard."
That was all it took to ignite a rivalry that still simmers, although more quietly, today. But there was nothing quiet about the 1995 ACC Tournament quarterfinal in Greensboro, an old-fashioned blood feud that was so heated that the teams had to be escorted off the floor through different exits instead of using the common pathway used after every other tournament game.
With 3:10 left in the game, Jerry Stackhouse was fouled by Clemson's Iker Iturbe. That set Smith off, which in turn infuriated Barnes. The two coaches met nose-to-nose at midcourt during a Clemson timeout, with Barnes looking like implosion was a real possibility. The sideshow delighted other ACC fans, who had never been able to beat Smith consistently on the court and so reveled in a near brawl with the legend. In the closing moments of the game, Donald Williams was nudged by Bill Harder on a breakaway fast-break attempt, prompting several Tar Heels to spring off the bench in defense of their teammate and leading to the separate escorts off the court. The next day, one fan walked around the Greensboro Coliseum concourse with a sign reading, "There's a new sheriff in town," in reference to Barnes. Each coach was ordered to donate $2500 to charity as punishment for their part in the flareup.
The sheriff would sneak out of town just a couple years later, but not before twisting the knife -- not literally, even Tom Wideman wouldn't resort to that -- a couple more times. There were no flare-ups during the 1995-96 season, but Carolina did continue their Chapel Hill mastery. Clemson came into the January matchup with an 11-0 record and ranked No. 12 in the country, but they departed with an 86-53 whipping and a clear message about their fortunes in Chapel Hill.
"The message to us freshmen was that we're never going to win here, either," Wideman said.
Wideman turned out to be a prophet. Although the games continued to be one-sided, the physicality only increased. The first matchup in 1997 was marred by two intentional fouls on the Tiger, one a vicious hammering of Shammond Williams by Terrell McIntyre. The bad blood overshadowed a stellar defensive performance by Vince Carter, who was assigned to guard the lightning-quick McIntyre and held him to 3-of-13 shooting.
Later that season, a Clemson player again came clean about Barnes's strategy against the Tar Heels. Following a 76-69 Carolina win at Littlejohn Coliseum, Tiger post man Harold Jamison was asked about Clemson's defensive strategy against Antawn Jamison. "Everywhere he went, we bumped him," Harold Jamison said. "It was probably as physical as we ever played. It was like a bunch of Ping-Pong balls bouncing off of everything."
With that comment as prologue, it came as little surprise that Clemson was whistled for an astounding 41 fouls in the 1998 game at the Smith Center. In the first half of that game, in clear view of the television cameras, Barnes informed Tar Heel junior Ademola Okulaja that he was going to "kick his [rear]." Okulaja, memorably, responded by blowing a kiss at Barnes while the two teams were lining up for Carolina to attempt a free throw.
Clemson's Hack-a-'Twan strategy eventually backfired. Due to foul problems, they had to finish the game with only four players on the floor. "It was a strange game," a droll Bill Guthridge said. "Any team that plays us has to make stopping Antawn a goal. I don't like those kinds of games, but the plan was good."
The coach in charge of that plan evacuated Clemson for Texas after the season, and the Tigers hired former assistant coach Larry Shyatt. With the new head Tiger, it appeared that the Carolina-Clemson rivalry might be diffused. When Shyatt showed a trait common to all Tiger head coaches -- an inability to win in Chapel Hill -- it looked like Barnes had taken the bad blood with him to Austin.
Until February 18, 2001. On that day, Shyatt and his Tigers upset top-ranked Carolina at Littlejohn, a victory that still heads his bio in the CU media guide. Holding an insurmountable lead with 5.5 seconds left, Shyatt decided it would be a good idea to call timeout to let his team enjoy the win. Predictably, Carolina took exception.
When the two teams met in March in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals, Carolina cruised to a 99-81 win. Several Tar Heels wanted Doherty to call a timeout late in the game as payback.
"I'd have called all four [timeouts that were left]," senior center Brendan Haywood said. "I'd have been like, 'Timeout, timeout, timeout, timeout.'"
Although the rookie Tar Heel coach declined to call a late-game timeout, he did discuss the matter with Shyatt after the game, which seemed to incite the Clemson head coach. The pair had a heated discussion, which included Shyatt pointing at Doherty and screaming, "You were number one in the country and I shoved it in your face!"
Perhaps sensing it might be his only chance to get a big victory over the Tar Heels, Shyatt milked the incident all summer at Clemson booster events. Then, when he appeared on the Tiger Radio Network's football pregame radio show in the fall of 2001 before Clemson took on Carolina in Death Valley, he announced on the air, "There's been some discussion about us calling timeouts. I'll tell you what, when we beat them this year, I'm going to call every single timeout we have."
He never got the chance. Carolina beat Clemson by a combined 36 points in their two meetings last season.
Adam Lucas is the
publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at
alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.
