Читать книгу Duke - Carolina - Volumes 1-5 The Blue Blood Rivalry, The Master Collection - Art Inc. Chansky - Страница 6

With a center jump following every basket, big men could dominate the game and keep the ball on one end of the floor for most of the time — much like dominating soccer teams of today. Knight kept winning the jump balls, and his teammate Curtis “Sis” Perry single-handedly outscored the future Champions of Dixie, 46-25.

The Tar Heels dropped three more games that season but won five games in five days at the grueling Southern Conference tournament in Atlanta to bring home the championship. They beat Howard (now Samford), Alabama Polytechnic (now Auburn), Georgia, Alabama and Mercer to claim the title.

For Trinity, which did not make the trip to Atlanta for the Southern Conference tournament, the highlight of the season was a 37-26 upset of the Durham Y after losing eight straight games in James Baldwin’s one year as coach. He stepped down following the 6-12 final record.

Billy Carmichael, who went into the service for a year, gave up his senior season to coach the UNC freshman team in 1923. McDonald and Cart Carmichael got their revenge against the Durham YMCA in the first two games on their way to 15 straight victories before their only loss, 34-32, to Mississippi in the Southern Conference tournament . (Coaching must have been overrated back then because Cart Carmichael had become UNC’s first All-American on his own.)

Despite its success flying solo, Carolina decided to hire another coach in1924. Norm Shepard, the former Davidson star, took over a team that in today’s parlance was loaded at every position. Cart Carmichael and Monk McDonald were savvied seniors, and they were joined by Durham sophomore Jack Cobb, Carolina’s next All-American. The Tin Can opened that season, and the shivering crowds increased as the home team’s winning streak grew. An estimated 3,000 spectators, all wearing scarves and overcoats in the freezing silo, witnessed a 31-20 win over Trinity on the last day of January. In his only season on the bench, Shepard led the Tar Heels to a 26-0 record, their second Southern Conference title and, eventually, the label of national champion by the Helms Foundation in the pre-NCAA Tournament era. Butler, which won the 1924 AAU Tournament in Kansas City that UNC did not attend because it meant missing too much class time, also claims the 1924 national title. For Dukies, the 1924 banner that hangs in the rafters at UNC has always been a travesty because the Tar Heels did not play a single opponent from above the Mason Dixon Line.

Duke Fans Still Mock First "Championship" Banner Hanging in Smith Center for Unbeaten 1924 Team, Which was Awarded Title by the Helms Foundation Years After Trinity Published Congratulatory Letter

The 1924 season also featured the first-ever game between future bluebloods Carolina and Kentucky, the two teams that would go on to compile the most victories in college basketball through 2010. But, clearly, Trinity and Carolina already had something going.

In perhaps the first off-court exhibition of the rivalry, a group of UNC students who had set bonfires and snake-danced on Franklin Street, drove close to Durham and marched toward the Methodists’ campus. Two days later, the Trinity team and coach Jesse Burbage published a congratulatory letter to their unbeaten rivals in the Durham Morning Herald.

Off-court Rivalry Began with March to Durham

Lost in the mayhem over Carolina’s undefeated record was Trinity’s second-best season ever, going 19-6 while it also opened a new home court, the Alumni Gym that replaced the tiny Ark and actually had a full-size court.

Trinity "Congratulates" UNC's 1924 Team

After 1924, the schools continued reacting to one another — a pattern that would continue to the present day. Trinity hired George Buckheit from Kentucky to head the basketball team and assist football coach Howard Jones, who left after one season to win Rose Bowls at Southern Cal. On December 11, 1924, Trinity received the $40 million charitable trust from tobacco magnate James P. Duke and was renamed for its benefactor; it also adopted “Blue Devils” when the school newspaper began using it after no clear cut winner emerged from a contest to find a new nickname.

Former three-sport star Monk McDonald and Harland Sanborn each coached the UNC team for one year, in 1925 and ’26, finishing with identical 20-5 records and winning two more Southern Conference championships behind Jack Cobb, the Tar Heels’ second All-American who was named the Helms National Player of the Year in 1926. Indeed, stability didn’t seem to matter at Carolina during the coaching carousel of the early 1920s, as Shepard, McDonald and Sanborn combined for a 66-10 record in their three seasons, adding six victories over Trinity/Duke to a total of 16 straight between 1921 and 1928. Meanwhile, Footsie Knight had remained in Durham to run the YMCA and turned out some excellent players, such as brothers Rufus and Bunn Hackney, who captained Carolina teams in the late 1920’s, and their baby brother, Elmore Hackney, who broke ranks and played for Duke. Knight was so respected for his basketball acumen that he eventually became the first supervisor of officials for the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Bill Werber Was First of Duke's Two-Sports Stars

Duke’s first truly great player, Bill Werber, enrolled in 1926, and he discovered a far less pristine setting than he expected. Duke was building its west campus, and Werber found the railroad tracks right through what would be the main quad, all the mud and noise in the morning when he trudged off the class almost too much to take. “Duke in September of 1926 was a sorry looking place,” said Werber, who had been a three-sport star at McKinley High School in Washington, D.C. “I about decided to pack up and go home.”

Werber stayed and became the first of three Duke basketball players who would go on to fame as Major Leaguers — Werber with the Yankees, classmate Henry Kistler with the Reds and, 25 years later, Dick Groat with the Pirates.

...And Duke's First All American.

Buckheit lasted four years with a losing record at Duke, which had become the 23rd member of the massive Southern Conference in 1928. Desperate to keep pace with Carolina, the school tabbed its bright young freshman football coach Eddie Cameron, 26 at the time, to lead the basketball program. In his first game against UNC Cameron snapped the long losing streak, much like Frank McGuire would establish himself as a hero in Chapel Hill in 1952 when he stopped a 15-game skid against N.C. State.

Eddie Cameron Came to Duke As A Football Coach But Took Over Basketball Team To Try to Beat UNC

Cameron’s first great Duke team was his second in 1930, which coincided with the completion of plush West Campus in 1928 and a new playing court (that would be renamed Card Gym 30 years later). Along with his high school teammate Harry “Chalky” Councilor and Duke’s biggest player to date, 6-4 Joe Croson (supposedly recruited by Werber and Councilor behind Cameron’s back), the Blue Devils were finally ready to challenge Carolina for supremacy on Tobacco Road when they defeated the Tar Heels again in the quarterfinals of the Southern Conference tournament.

Duke Gymnasium Opened with New West Campus And was Later Named For First Coach "Cap" Card

Werber made All-American his senior year when he led the Devils to an 18-2 record and their first season sweep of Carolina, including an astounding 22-point victory in the Tin Can. Duke’s 15th straight win that season came in its first-ever game with Kentucky in the semifinals of the Southern Conference tournament.

Despite losing to Alabama in the championship game, Werber and Roland “Bo” Farley had already received some notice as the best backcourt in the country when they engineered an upset of No. 1-ranked Loyola of Chicago team in Durham the day after Loyola nipped North Carolina by one point in Chapel Hill. By this time, basketball had become so popular on the public school level that Durham High School was fielding stronger teams than the YMCA. Cameron got a foothold on the local players and began signing a string of stars that helped build the Duke program into a regional powerhouse. The one Durham High player who got away from Cameron was a loquacious left-handed forward named Horace “Bones” McKinney, who went instead to N.C. State and, after serving in World War II, finished up his college career at UNC.