Season: 1999-2000
Record: 22-14 overall, 9-7 ACC(3rd place tie)
ACC Tournament: Lost to Wake Forest in the quarterfinals
NCAA Tournament: Lost to Florida in the Final Four
Roster: Michael Brooker, Jason Capel, Ed Cota, Jim Everett, Joseph Forte, Brendan Haywood, Jonathan Holmes, Will Johnson, Matt Laczkowski, Kris Lang, Orlando Melendez, Terrence Newby, Max Owens, Julius Peppers, Kenny White.
Source: UNC Media Guide
By way of review this countdown had named four teams, a group that includes the only losing record in the last 27 years and the only two teams not to make the NCAA Tournament. Moving to the next team we actually get a Final Four team ranked in the 20s. As much as I would love to push this team higher it simply is not happening. The 2000 team, the last coached by Bill Guthridge, had a lot of bad basketball sandwiched in between winning the Maui Invitational to start the season and ending it with a run to the Final Four.
It is interesting how often UNC gets ranked in the top ten or top five to start the season. In this case UNC started off red hot. Ed Cota was a senior and on his way to being a 1000 assist man which is so rare only two of PGs have done it in NCSU’s Chris Corchiani and Duke’s Bobby Hurley. Brendan Haywood, Jason Capel, Kris Lang and Julius Pepper made up the bulk of the lineup with a huge surprise in the person of Joe Forte. Forte came in and right away made a huge impact setting the record for most points by a freshman. I recall when that season began, everything looked so promising with the three wins in Maui then came a loss to Michigan State with the Heels ranked #2. UNC cruised through the cupcakes with ease, got tripped by #1 Cincinnati along the way and seemed to be living up to the top 15 ranking for the most part until the wheels came off.
Starting late December UNC became a virtual yo-yo. Win a few straight, lose a few straight until the Heels found themselves prominently on the NCAA bubble at 18-12 going to the ACC Tournament. They promptly lost to Wake Forest who was also on the bubble with the same record leading many to believe UNC was NIT-bound with Wake Forest getting the NCAA nod. The opposite occurred and UNC apparently took this new life as an excuse to make a run to the Final Four as a #8 seed beating #1 seeded Stanford in the 2nd round and clearing Tennessee and Tulsa before running out of gas against Florida in the Final Four.
In many ways this was a fun team to watch but also frustrating to see them lose so much. Not to cast dispersions on Bill Guthridge but I wonder what Roy Williams could have done with the same squad then I remember had Roy Williams been there you would have had more than Joe Forte in that recruiting class.
Countdown So Far
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Joe Forte. I always think of what could have been when I hear that name…. oh well. The Tennessee win, I think in the first round of the NCAAs, was great. If I remember right Forte and Cota had some key FT’s at the end to put the game in Tar Heel control.
It was a fun team to watch… especially Peppers. Coach Gut did a good job with them, but I felt he was always looking for his replacement to show up. Thanks to him for keeping things together after Coach Smith retired.
Wilf,
We played Missouri in the first round. Tennessee was in the Elite 8.
It was a fun team to watch in Maui and in the NCAAs… the rest of that season was indeed a yo-yo. You could tell things just weren’t right. The Tennessee game was fun… it was the Sweet 16 by the way. I don’t remember if was against the Vols or against Tulsa where Peppers made that incredible shot clock buzzer beater that the refs blew the call on.
They had us believing by the time they got to the Final Four… after all Florida was only a 5 seed that year and they would’ve either been playing a Michigan State team, who they were at least familiar with already, or a Wisconsin team that was setting basketball back 50 years that tournament.
That tournament is also memorable to me because it was the first time I remember thinking that Dick Enberg needed to retire from play-by-play work… and the first time I’d really noticed commercial breaks at every single timeout (including the 30 second ones).
1st Round-Missouri
2nd Round-Stanford
Sweet 16-Tenn.
Elite Eight-Tulsa
FF-Florida
Certainly was a surprise to get the FF that year. I do remember that we played Florida straight up for a good portion of the game, but we tried to run with them in the second half.
You know, talking about these past teams brings up the issue in my mind that even in great seasons like the past year 07-08, all that is remembered and talked about is how “they lost in the tourney”…. Our enemies like to talk about “choking” and “underachievment”.
I appreciate a place to talk about UNC seasons as a whole and to not specifically dwell only on the last game of a season, without some dook or state college troll weighing in……….
We would have won that Florida game if it wasn’t for a phantom call that gave Easy Ed his fourth foul. Coach was faced with either going with Cota who was forced to play matador defense with 4 or Terrence Newby, who had completely imploded at Duke. He chose the former and Florida went on a run. Still one of the great tourney runs of this era. The night that Duke lost to Florida and we beat Tennessee in the Sweet 16 was a great one.
This was also the season of the uniform change with the interlocking “NC” on the chest above the jersey number rather than the traditional “North Carolina”.
UGH!!
I tore my ACL on the afternoon of the Final Four game… needless to say, I drank a lot that night…
Yeah, I botched the Tenn game. Why wouldn’t I have known we wouldn’t be playing Tenn in the first game?
I agree JpinFL. I love seeing that “North Carolina” written across the jerseys. It is a lot more intimidating to opposing teams than that interlocking crap.
You know, after the Top 27 countdown is complete, we should then tackle a Top 10 list of things in the Basketball Program that caused the biggest uproar among fans… I can almost guarantee that the Interlocking NC Jerseys would probably land in the top 5 somewhere. I’m sure there are others who remember the season-long whining/complaining/moaning about how those jerseys were leading to the ruin of North Carolina basketball.
That Final Four appearance was the one that really burned the haters out there. No one so it coming after the Wake loss. This was when Duke was getting all the love and were having one of their over-achieving seasons (29-5) which K’s obsessors (Dukie V, Mike Patrick, etc.) salivated over. The selection commitee took a lot of crap for putting the Heels in, and then UNC rips Stanford and Tennessee and everyone was like, “same old UNC.” I was actaully talking about this Final Four over lunch that spring when a guy actually believed that the uniforms got UNC to the Final Four…the uniforms!?!? His rationale was that the opposition had trouble overcoming the fact that the “North Carolina” was enscribed on the jersies (or “NC” in some games) and simply choked. I said, “oh yeah, just ask the guys on the Weber State team.” By the way, one of my good high school friends was the guy on Weber State who threw the pass away (I believe it was picked by Cota) at the end of the game. In the summer of ‘99, he and I were sitting on the front porch at my parents’ house, sipping on some cold ones, when I asked him, “what were you thinking when you threw that pass?”
His reply?
He mentioned something about noticing the “North Carolina” on the jersies for the first time, right before throwing the ball away
He tried to throw a freakin’ no-look pass on an in-bounds play at the end of the game!!!!
I was glad to see both Cota and Haywood each get one more Final Four under their belts. Especially after the ‘99 loss to Weber State. Ed Cota-affiliated teams went 12-4 in the NCAA tournament in his tenure as a Tar Heel. Isn’t Quinten Thomas the all-time winningest Tar Heel point guard in tournament play (14-3)?
Well, Thomas was not the starter for any of those games. Incidentally, Ty Lawson is 7-2 as a starting PG in the NCAA Tournament. If the Heels can win the title and assuming he is the starter throughout he would end up 13-2.
Lawson is also 6-0 as a starting PG in the ACCT. If UNC wins both tourneys this year, he will leave with a 22-2 record in postseason play. Unreal.
Also, barring the unimaginable, Roy will become only the 3rd coach to have 3 straight 30-win seasons…