Carolina Alumni Review - January/February 2010

Jan. 6 and 13, 1965: Just hanging in

Hanging public figures in effigy has a long,
if unpleasant, history, particularly among
sports fans. On the very night Carolina
beat Wake Forest in the 1957 ACC Tourna-
ment, N.C. State students hanged an effigy
of James Weaver, the league commissioner,
to express dismay at their school’s ACC and
NCAA probation. Wake Forest
students hanged effigies of
Weaver in 1959 and of their
own basketball players in 1961.
Maryland students strung up a
dummy representing basketball
coach Bud Millikan in 1963.

And, during a single week in January 1965, impatient Tar Heel fans twice paid similarly unwelcome attention to their struggling young basketball coach. “You don’t forget a thing like that, ever,” Dean Smith said.

Smith’s fourth season as head coach began with Carolina overshadowed by its neighbors. Wake Forest reached the Final Four in 1962, Duke in 1963 and 1964. Wake under Coach Bones McKinney had been to five straight ACC Tournament finals, Duke to four of the previous five under coach Vic Bubas.

There was evidence the bal-
ance of power might shift in
1964-65. Some preseason polls
had Smith’s Tar Heels in the top
10; the Associated Press had
them 13th. But, after a 6-2 start,
UNC stumbled. “The Heels
have been the disappointment
of the year thus far (only Syra-
cuse can threaten them for that
title),” wrote Larry Tarleton ’ 65
in The Daily Tar Heel. “During
four straight losses, the Heels
have looked like the worst team
in the conference instead of the
best.”
The fourth setback came on
Jan. 6. Playing at Winston-
Salem, Carolina missed 13 of its
first 16 shots, fell behind 40-15
and lost by a disheartening 22
points. “If we can ever put all
the pieces together — rebound-
ing, defense and a good selec-

27 CAROLINA ALUMNI REVIEW
tion of shots — well, we’ll be off and running again,” Smith
declared.
Returning home, the team encountered a Smith replica hanged
in effigy in front of Woollen Gym. Several players, the star Billy
Cunningham among them, jumped from the bus and ripped the
dummy from a tree. “It was just instinctive,” Cunningham says. “It
was like, why are you blaming the coach? It wasn’t the coach’s
fault. It was our fault we lost.”
Four days later N.C. State
came to Chapel Hill, only
UNC’s third game of the year
in its 5,000-seat home arena.
The Wolfpack, down 14 points
in the second half, held the
Heels to .278 shooting in the
second period and emerged
with a 65-62 win. Afterward the
happy visitors carried coach
Press Maravich on their shoul-
ders to the center of the
Woollen court.

DAN SEARS ’ 74

The Kangaroo Kid was an All-American, but these were frustrating years to a team used to winning its conference. Cunningham pulled the effigy down from this tree outside Woollen Gym.

A four-foot-long effigy of
Smith was hanged and burned
on the campus as about 100

students watched about 11: 30
that night. “Clad in a bright
shirt and baggy pants stuffed
with gasoline-soaked rags, the
dummy burned while one of
the students in the background
played taps,” reported the
Durham Morning Herald.
Cunningham and other play-
ers never heard of the second
incident, which attracted little
media notice, especially as UNC
proceeded to win eight of its
next nine games to finish tied
for second in the ACC.
“I’m just glad they settled for
hanging a dummy and not the
real thing,” Smith said years later.