Can Roy Williams pass Dean Smith? Or will Clemson finally win at UNC?
Clemson basketball has played UNC in Chapel Hill 59 times.
The Tar Heels have won every one of those games. It is the longest home-winning streak against an opponent in NCAA history. Could it end Saturday when the Tigers play the Tar Heels at the Dean Smith Center? Or will UNC coach Roy Williams finally pass his former boss Dean Smith for fourth-most wins of all time?
“I’ve said the same thing for 17 years, that it’s a streak that people talk about. You have nothing to do with it,” UNC coach Roy Williams said, referring to what he tells his players. “It’s going to end at some time. Let’s try to put it off another year.
“It’s unusual. That’s it.”
Clemson has a good chance to win this one. The Tar Heels are struggling. They’ve lost seven of their last 10 games, including their last two against Georgia Tech and Pitt, as Williams sits tied with Dean Smith at 879 wins.
Either Williams or the Tigers will make history Saturday.
At least one player, freshman forward Armando Bacot, said he wasn’t even aware of the Clemson streak until this week.
“I saw it on the internet or something,” he said when asked about it.
The Tigers (7-7, 1-3 ACC), like the Tar Heels (8-7, 1-3), are struggling while dealing with a number of injuries to key players. However, the Tigers won their most recent game against N.C. State 81-70 on Jan. 4.
According to Ken Pomeroy’s advanced analytics, Clemson has a 31 percent chance to beat the Tar Heels.
A loss to Clemson on Saturday would only further diminish UNC’s chances of getting an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.
The last close call
The last time Clemson came close to beating UNC in Chapel Hill was during the 2007-08 season. The third-ranked Tar Heels, led by juniors Tyler Hansbrough and Danny Green and sophomores Ty Lawson and Wayne Ellington entered the game 21-2.
Clemson, 17-5 at the time, was talented, too. Its roster included K.C. Rivers, Trevor Booker, Cliff Hammonds, Demontez Stitt and Terrence Oglesby.
“That was a really good Clemson team, and we were really good,” Williams said. “That may have been as good of a team as we ever had.”
Booker, who played at Clemson from 2006 to 2010, said the players had talked about breaking the streak. He said fans on Facebook were messaging them all week and constantly brought it up.
A month earlier, UNC and Clemson played at Clemson, where the Tar Heels won 90-88 in overtime on a game-winning shot by Ellington. So the Tigers were ready.
“We just went in confident,” Booker said. “We thought we really had a shot to beat them. We went in looking to win.”
The Tigers, who led by 11 with 3:12 left, gave the Tar Heels problems.
“We kind of gave them a hard time because we were so athletic,” said Terrence Oglesby, who played for Clemson from 2007 to 2009. “We were long and we were really top heavy in our press.”
But Green gave the Tar Heels a spark. He scored 8 points and had 3 steals in the final three minutes of play, to help the Tar Heels force the game into overtime.
“Danny Green went berserk,” Ogelsby recalled. “I just don’t remember an arena being as loud as it was there. It was so loud, if you were to talk, you couldn’t hear yourself talk.”
The game lasted two overtimes, as UNC came up with a 103-93 win. Hansbrough led all scorers with 39 points. Ellington had 28. Efforts to reach Hansbrough, who plays in China, were unsuccessful. Efforts to reach Ellington, who now plays for the New York Knicks, were also unsuccessful.
Since then, the Tar Heels have won the past six home games against Clemson by an average of 15.7 points per game.
Injury news
Williams revealed at a press conference Friday that he wasn’t sure whether freshman guard Jeremiah Francis would be available prior to UNC’s 73-65 loss to Pitt this past Wednesday..
Francis, who started the season injured after having surgeries on both knees in high school, was experiencing soreness prior to the game.
Francis did, however, play. He finished with two points and was 1 of 9 from the floor. The Tar Heels are without starting point guard Cole Anthony, who is expected to miss at least one more week as he recovers from a knee injury.
Clemson at UNC
When: 4:30 p.m., Saturday
Where: Dean Smith Center, Chapel Hill
TV: Fox Sports Carolinas
This story was originally published January 10, 2020 at 5:15 PM with the headline "Can Roy Williams pass Dean Smith? Or will Clemson finally win at UNC?."
