Injuries which had the greatest impact on a season?
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Phil Ford and Walter Davis were both injured during that run to the 77 finals; we let that one get away...
Phil and Walter in 77, The jet in 84 ,Butter in 2012 after being ATTACKED by that miserable POS from Cretin. Just a FEW of what we have dealt with for the last 40 years.
I have no doubt we win another NC in 2012 if it wasn't for Kendall's injury. No doubt whatsoever.
The injury to Kenny and to Kendall were both some punk-azz thuggery by the opponents. Same goes for Tyler in 08, of course but those break-away layups always make me hold my breath whenever a defender is closing in.
I can't say 100% we would have beaten Kentucy, but i'm dang sure we'd have beaten Kansas and Kentucky would have been a heck of a game. That said, screw Creighton and I wish bad things on them.
I agree with that... we would've made the finals, but beating Kentucky wasn't a given. I would've liked our chances though (with a healthy Kendall).
Same thing with that 84 team... Georgetown was pretty damn good, so maybe we see a rematch of the 82 title game, but certainly no garauntees that the Heels win.
Easy. Tommy LaGarde in '76-77. They were calling that the "Dream Team" long before it was used elsewhere.
People forget just how good LaGarde was, and he was our only legit big man returning on that squad.
Amazing that we got to the finals without him.
Ford, Keuster, Davis, O'Koren, LaGarde would have been sweet.
Others: MJ in 82-83, Kenny Smith in 84, Phelps in 94
All of these may have cost us Natty's
People forget just how good LaGarde was, and he was our only legit big man returning on that squad.
Amazing that we got to the finals without him.
Ford, Keuster, Davis, O'Koren, LaGarde would have been sweet.
Others: MJ in 82-83, Kenny Smith in 84, Phelps in 94
All of these may have cost us Natty's
Didn't Steve Hale also get cheap-shotted as well, resuliting in an injury? Maybe it wasn't Hale, but I seem to recall another one of our guys getting hurt back in the 80's in a similar fashion as the Jet.
A fully healthy 76 UNC team would have been the only team that might have beaten Indiana. A fully healthy 77 UNC team wins the championship, perhaps easily.
Marquette won the game because neither Ford nor Davis was 100%. But Marquitte won primarily becaue Lagarde did not play. The Warriros Center was a 6-10 250 pound banger bamed Jerome Whitehead. Lagarde was a better all around player and big enough and tough enough to get Whitehead ionto early foul trouble and keep him off the boards. But skinny 6-9 freshman Rich Yonaker was no match for Whitehead's size and strenght.
Once McGuire saw the refs were not going to call more thna half the fouls committed by Whitehead, his game plan became one of having his center bang all the time on both ends. Over time, it meant that Marquitte owned the lanes on both ends. Put that with the fact that Butch was fully healthy and the 2nd best PG in the country going against hobbled Ford, and the game was Marquette's.
Steve Hale had a collapsed lung. I can't remember how it happened other than it seemed to involve diving for a ball around the mid-court area?
The 85 teram lost in the Regional Final, the Elite 8, to eventual champ Villanova. We got there without Hale, who was our best preimeter defender, hands down, and who had become a sneaky scorer. Ds tended to overlook him.
Hale was injured in the 1st round, against Middle Tennessee. I think it was from a hard hit by their star, whose name I recall as Kerry Hammonds.
Anybody know for certain?
Hands down LaGarde in '77. We has no one to match up with a mediocre Marquette's 2 mediocre big men. That Marquette team was just lucky to get by UNCC when Bo Ellis(I believe was his name) took a length of the court pass with the longest second in the history of recorded time and laid the ball in. Ellis had a short stint in the NBA and Whithead was paralyzed in a car accident a couple of years later. Also Middle Tenn. had a star???
Whitehead was not paralyzed in a car wreck had him mixed up with someone else. It was also he who scored the last second basket and not Ellis. Whitehead was found dead in 2012 of natural causes at age 56. Age clouds the memories.
This post was edited on 2/16 7:08 PM by HeelFan58
This post was edited on 2/16 7:08 PM by HeelFan58
That sounds about right. I was thinking we lost Hale either late in season or during the tourney and while he wasn't a super-star, he was a key contributor, and his loss so late in the season was hard to overcome.
No way in hell we lost with a healthy LaGarde. He was my all time favorite Tar Heel before Hansbrough, and is still right up there with T-Hans.
"Star guard Phil Ford from Rocky Mount was playing in a limited role as the result of a badly swollen elbow and a lingering knee injury.
All-star wingman Walter Davis of Charlotte was playing with a broken finger.
And center Tom LaGarde, the Heels' best big man, had been out of the lineup for weeks with a knee injury.
"We were really beaten up," Buckley said. "That's not an excuse. It was just the way things had gone for us."
In McGuire's last game, the Warriors began with the sort of explosiveness they didn't show against the 49ers.
With Ford watching much of the first half, Marquette led 39-27 at the break before UNC staged the sort of unlikely rally that had marked its play dating to mid-February."
And despite all our injuries it STILL took 3 Zebras who were determined to give Al McGuire a "going away present" to let Marquette beat us for the National Crown.
Ellis was skinny. He had some skills, but was not a truly great BF. McGuire used Whitehead as enforcer to knock everyone else out of the lane, thus allowing Ellis a lot of wiggle room. Largarde would have put an end to Whitehead's banging, and that would have left Ellis exposed.
Whitehead just banged and mugged, and Ellis was a sneaky fouler, playing the role of innoicnet skinny guy victim, McGuire sod to refs very well, and Bo got away with a god deal.
Hammonds was a star by OVC standards. I think he was 1st team All OVC as a freshman. And he was a goon.
We would have beaten Kentucky, no doubt in my mind. That team was playing their best since they started playing together, and we were one possession away from beating them at Rupp earlier that season. There would have been a 2012 banner in the Dean Dome - no question about it.
Jerry Stackhouse getting hurt right in the first minute of the 1995 Final Four (hip pointer or a charley horse) and the result was that he wasn't able to explode to the hoop like he had all season. He doesn't get hurt, I'm convinced we win that game and go on to beat UCLA. That team played with a chip on their shoulder with the likes of 'Sheed and Stack. I wanted to die after that loss
I hate Dwight Stewart to this day.
Since they've all pretty much been pointed out, I'll do an order
Phil Ford- 77 - Would've been cool to have one in each decade since the 70s, as no one could come close to that level of consistency.
Marshall- 12 - Take away all the injuries and this one's a no-brainer.
Kenny Smith-84 - Don't know much outside of what I've read on this board.
Hansbrough- 08 - I don't remember what injury it was that affected him, but at least we redeemed ourselves the very next year. It's also why Jenkins shot doesn't haunt me anymore.
Phil Ford- 77 - Would've been cool to have one in each decade since the 70s, as no one could come close to that level of consistency.
Marshall- 12 - Take away all the injuries and this one's a no-brainer.
Kenny Smith-84 - Don't know much outside of what I've read on this board.
Hansbrough- 08 - I don't remember what injury it was that affected him, but at least we redeemed ourselves the very next year. It's also why Jenkins shot doesn't haunt me anymore.
Without a doubt...
Kenny Smith in 1984 and Kendall Marshall in 2012. If both stay healthy, I truly believe that we would have two more national championships.
Too young to know anything about the 1977 team other than the things I have read over the years.
Kenny Smith in 1984 and Kendall Marshall in 2012. If both stay healthy, I truly believe that we would have two more national championships.
Too young to know anything about the 1977 team other than the things I have read over the years.
In one of the few clever moments for the Crazies, they chanted "In-hale...Ex-hale". That was pretty funny at the time.
2012 Kendall
Also we had dexter go down early with the knee
And if I remember Henson was hurt with a bad wrist.
A total shame. That team was one of my favorite to watch and I thought could've been Roys best. The talent on that team was insane. I mean Hairston and mcadoo were like 8th and 9th on the depth chart.
Also we had dexter go down early with the knee
And if I remember Henson was hurt with a bad wrist.
A total shame. That team was one of my favorite to watch and I thought could've been Roys best. The talent on that team was insane. I mean Hairston and mcadoo were like 8th and 9th on the depth chart.
The pure answer to the question for me is 2009-10 season when we set (and blew away actually) a new record for numbers of games missed by players in a single season. If I am not mistaken we nearly doubled the existing record. With out such devastating injury numbers there is no way we end up in the NIT.
Don't forget the 77 team lost their best big Tommy LaGarde halfway through the season and still played for the championship.Phil Ford and Walter Davis were both injured during that run to the 77 finals; we let that one get away...
And Leslie McDonald didn't even play the entire season due to his knee injury too.
All of those guys healthy and March ends a heck of a lot differently.
As a youngun, The '77 season is when I became a full fledged Tar Heel fan. I'm still sad when I think about that loss.
'77 was when The Big Four were all something to reckon with. NCSU was our main rival and they had just had the best teams in their history! That team was destined to make everyone forget about the Pack's recent success and dang injuries stopped the train.
I disagree on 2008. The team just didn't show up to start that game. By the time they decided to pull their heads out of their a$$es it was too late to dig out of the hole.
2012 I don't think it's a guarantee that team beats UK. But they were the only team with a legit shot. Once Marshall and Henson got "gooned" by Creighton it was just too much adversity at the wrong time in the tournament.
2012 I don't think it's a guarantee that team beats UK. But they were the only team with a legit shot. Once Marshall and Henson got "gooned" by Creighton it was just too much adversity at the wrong time in the tournament.
Marshall going down was a let down because of all of Kentucky one and done teams that was the best, and I wanted to see we could do against Anthony Davis he was good that year.
