Hoopsvibe has uncovered this sweet video of a Michael Jordan-led North Carolina team beating a Len Bias-led Maryland team:
If you watch the whole video, you'll see that Jordan ends the game with one of the best dunks in college basketball history.
Almost as interesting as the video is the game story Hoopsvibe found. Note the byline:
By Michael Wilbon Washington Post Staff Writer Those who argue that two great players can't make a team No. 1 in the nation obviously haven't seen enough of North Carolina all-Americans Michael Jordan and Sam Perkins. Jordan had the presence of three players at times last night, shooting, stealing and rebounding in surreal sequences. His 21 points and 12 rebounds, and Perkins' 26 points and 12 rebounds, enabled Carolina to remain undefeated with a 74-62 victory over Maryland in packed Cole Field House. The Tar Heels, all-Americas or not, held no big edge until the final minute. The Terrapins, for the most part, played like a team ranked fifth in the country. Sophomore forward Len Bias, with a career-high 24 points, and Adrian Branch, with 19, at times matched the splendor of Perkins and Jordan.
I wasn't aware that anyone ever argued that two great players can't make a team No. 1, but overall, you can see the promise in Wilbon just as you can see the promise in Jordan, and the unfulfilled promise in Bias.
Neither Maryland coach Gary Williams nor the school's administrators seem to think that is a big problem, though:
"They had a lot of on-court success, but we would've liked more off-court success," said Anton Goff, associate athletic director for academic support and career development. "For some reason or other, that didn't happen as far as graduation rates are concerned. We can't change the number now. We're not happy about it, but it was 10 years ago."
I don't like the way that a school's graduation rate has become shorthand for its academic integrity. A school with a high graduation rate isn't necessarily educating its student-athletes; it could just be making it incredibly easy to get a diploma.
On the other hand, a school that doesn't graduate any student-athletes is almost certainly not doing a very good job of making sure its scholarship athletes are actual students, which means there are almost certainly some pretty big problems at Maryland.
This will be a transition year for most of the ACC. Pretty much everyone took a hit this offseason, with only four teams really looking like locks for the NCAA tournament. There is little doubt that North Carolina will be the favorite ... but remember that this was the case last year ... and UNC was nearly the #5 seed in the ACC tournament. NC State, Duke and Clemson have the best shot at giving the Heels trouble for the title
1-North Carolina: Sometimes subtraction isn't a bad thing. The Heels lose Brandan Wright and Reyshawn Terry, but the rotation should be tighter and everyone more understanding of their roles. If UNC is going to make its title run, they better do it now before Ty Lawson and Tyler Hansbrough bolt.
2-NC State: Brandon Costner is my pick for ACC Player of the Year. With JJ Hickson running alongside him in the paint, Costner is free to show his entire game [similar to how Wright helped Hansbrough last year in Chapel Hill]. This team is ready to break out and get back into the ACC's elite. At issue is finding Engin Atsur's replacement ... since he was so key in the success of the Pack last year.
3-Duke: With Kyle Singler and Taylor King coming in, expect Duke to go back to its gun-slinging ways. Last year's team wasn't normal Duke: they struggled to find their offense and were very inconsistent shooting. The big issue this year is ... well, what happens if they keep missing those threes? Josh McRoberts is gone and there really isn't anyone reliable in the paint to score or rebound.
4-Clemson: Can the Tigers get back that team that was scorching the early part of the season? Well, they have four returning starters and has one of the better frontcourts in the conference. They just need to get their minds right. This team has the talent ... they just need to tighten the bolts and clean the sawdust.
5-Virginia: Dave Leitao better thank God that Sean Singletary came back. The ACC player of the year candidate will be asked to do even more with JR Reynolds and Jason Cain gone.
6-Maryland: Gotta love those Terps! The head-scratchers are gone, with their understudies ready to take their place. The team will rely on James Gist and Greivis Vasquez to become leaders on and off the floor. However, this streaky team must find someone who can hit a shot.
With the NBA draft coming up soon, today is a stark reminder of maybe the saddest draft related story of all time - the sudden and stunning death of Maryland star and Celtic's pick Len Bias on June 19th, 21 years ago. His death from a drug overdose shook the University of Maryland, the Boston Celtics and the entire NBA to their cores, a young man struck down in the prime of his life with the world laid out before him. It was just almost too sad to be to true.
Bias was a physical specimen, with remarkable strength for a player of his length and athleticism. As a senior at Maryland he averaged 23.2ppg and 7.0rpg and shot a remarkable 54% from the field. With a solid jumpshot that was almost unblockable because of his ability to elevate, he could score from all over the court and was one of the handful of best forwards in ACC history by the time he finished in College Park. Many have speculated what his NBA career would have been like, but there is little doubt that he had Hall of Fame type talent.
Len Bias would be 43 today, maybe just a couple of years removed from the end of a remarkable career where he carried the Celtics in the post-Bird era. Instead, the haunting 911 call - "This is Len Bias, you gotta get him back to life" sums up what many fans still feel.
The University of Maryland men's basketball team could lose two scholarships due to a poor score in the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate.
Four of the six seniors on the Terps' basketball team are on track to graduate, but one is a walk-on who does not count toward the APR. Goff would not release the names of the two players in academic trouble. If those two don't graduate by the end of the summer, they could cost the program points if they don't return to school to earn their degree and they left while ineligible.
If either of those two fail to graduate, the Terps hoops team will fall below the passing mark and could possibly lose 10% of their scholarships ... which will round up to two. Not something that Maryland wants to have happen in the ultra-competitive ACC. The NCAA awards extra credit if you have a former player come back to school and graduate ... so expect Gary Williams to be on the phone to some guys to come back and help the program [hmmm ... Steve Francis usually has summers off].
Former Terp, Byron Mouton, played on that Maryland 2002 National Championship team but done little else. He has played for 13 teams in nine different basketball leagues since then that include stops to Idaho, China, Germany and for a team in Cape Cod that played it's home games in a middle school gym. So when there was a chance for Mouton to return home to play near his Bowie, MD apartment ... he was happy. The team is the Wilmington Sea Dawgs of the ABA and the Delaware address of his new digs would keep him close to his roots. Well, except for one thing: it is the Wilmington that's in North Carolina.
Since he already signed the contract, he had to go [not that his options were all that great, anyways]. He gets $500 a week, 14 paid meals at Golden Corral and 7 meals at Chik-fil-A [no, I'm not kidding]. They play in small arenas in front of crowds that are not much bigger than at a rec league game. They take buses to games and sometimes when they get there, the game could be postponed because their opponent went bankrupt. None of his teammates care about if the team does well, just if they can do enough stat stuffing that some scout may actually look at them again. From the Washington Post:
During a pregame meal at Chick-fil-A in late February, Mouton tried to excite his teammates for a game against the Jacksonville Jam. "I've been looking on the ABA message boards," Mouton said. "Jacksonville is like number eight in the league power rankings. That's a few spots ahead of us."
"Nobody cares about this league, man," said Terrence Todd, Mouton's teammate. "Eat your chicken nuggets."
For every guy with NBA dreams that sets foot on the Final Four court in Atlanta this weekend, there will be four or five guys who will face the same challenges for the rest of their basketball careers. It won't be multi-million dollar contracts, fancy hotels or "making it rain" at strip clubs ... but dinners at fast food joints, bus rides and living check to check.
Just ask Byron Mouton about that. After, all, he was on that same huge stage in Atlanta five years ago.
Defending NCAA women's champion Maryland lost its second-round game to Ole Miss Tuesday night, and while that's bad news for the Terps, it's very good news for women's basketball, a sport that is getting more competitive and therefore more interesting.
There was a time in the not-too-distant past when a 2 seed defending champion like Maryland would hardly even need to show up to beat a 7 seed like Ole Miss -- the talent gap between the elite few and the middle of the pack was too great. In the 1980s and 1990s, women's basketball was emerging as a successful sport but not a particularly competitive one. Maryland, however, is the third defending champion this decade to lose in the second round of the tournament.
Other good signs for women's basketball include the fact that the women get more TV time than the men, and the emergence of players with back-to-the-basket low-post skills, like Courtney Paris, who are showing that women can play a tough, physical style. The women's game is better now than it's ever been.
Maryland had one heck of a run at the end of the regular season, winning 7 straight games. That included beating Duke twice and North Carolina once. However, since then, they lost to the last place team in the ACC [Miami] in the first round of the ACC Tournament, had a tough go-around with Davidson in the first round of the NCAA tournament ... then gets beat by the 5th seeded Butler Bulldogs, 62-59.
If anything typifies Maryland's recent three season stretch [in which this is the only season they made the tournament], it was the final minute of this Butler game. Maryland gave themselves a good chance to tie or take the lead by stealing an inbounds pass. However, they go down the floor and DJ Strawberry commits an offensive foul [a bad call, I might add] and never get a shot off. Now, down two, they play great defense for the entirety of the shot clock, only to give up an offensive rebound, resorting them to foul with under :04 remaining. After Butler hit the first free throw, Maryland rebounded the missed second shot and nearly got the ball stolen from them [Butler knocked it out of bounds]. On the final play, Mike Jones bobbled the pass, time runs out, and Maryland wasted another opportunity.
Now that is the Maryland we all know and love. A Terps team that just can't get it together. In a close game, the Terps missed 8 of 15 FTs, they forgot where their hottest shooter [Mike Jones] was, star DJ Strawberry goes 3-for-10 from the field and scores just 8 points and they turned the ball over 16 times. Despite all of the feelings that we shouldn't buy into them ... we did. Now they are back out of the tournament.
The ACC contiued its stellar week [ACC clubs NC State, Clemson and Florida State each won their opening round NIT games] as Boston College and Maryland won their NCAA tournament openers.
Boston College beat Texas Tech, 84-75, in their East Regional first round game. The Eagles stars shone bright this afternoon as Tyrese Rice, Sean Marshall and ACC Player of the Year Jared Dudley all caught fire and carried BC into the 2nd round. BC did was BC does. Those three stars combined for 66 points and shot 25-for-48 from the field and were the catalysts for a 14-4 run midway through the 2nd half that took control of this game.
BC heads to on to play tournament darling Georgetown on Saturday.
As for the Terps, they fought off a game Davidson squad, 82-70 in their Midwest Region opener. Maryland had problems dealing with Stephen Curry ... son of former Charlotte Hornet Dell Curry . But Maryland coach Gary Williams made the adjustment to have DJ Strawberry get in his face the rest of the game, making Curry's shots more difficult and forcing other Davidson players to have to beat them. It worked. Curry's shots weren't falling and he ultimately fouled out after scoring 30 points. Rest assured, Curry and Davidson will be heard from again as they will return all five starters.
Maryland advances to play the winner of the Butler-Old Dominion game.
The ACC is now 5-0 in post-season play with Duke and North Carolina set to lace them up tonight. Tomorrow, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech begin their tournaments.
My two favorite hairstyles are ones that look like they took a ton of time to fix ... and those that look like they haven't been touched in weeks. I really prefer the latter, since I haven't used a comb in about six years (for a variety of reasons).
That's why I love Maryland's Bambale "Boom" Osby. He's got that "I don't give a crap" fro going on to the point where you think he has his own personal theme music supplied by Sly and the Family Stone. If there is a pick with a fist back there, it's hidden pretty good. Now I know what the Incredible Hulk would look like if he was black. As Method Man once rapped, "I like my head notty and my nose piece snotty," and it fits Osby to a tee!.
Osby also fits the prototypical player that college fans love. No one heard of this guy before he arrived, but he busts his hump more than any of the stars on his team. He's a Ben Wallace-type whose chisled frame, work ethic and, of course, hair style makes him a fan favorite.
The NCAA on Wednesday released data on the graduation rates of college student-athletes who entered school between 1997 and 2000, and 
This will be a transition year for most of the ACC. Pretty much everyone took a hit this offseason, with only four teams really looking like locks for the NCAA tournament. There is little doubt that North Carolina will be the favorite ... but remember that this was the case last year ... and UNC was nearly the #5 seed in the ACC tournament. NC State, Duke and Clemson have the best shot at giving the Heels trouble for the title
The University of Maryland men's basketball team could lose two scholarships due to a poor score in the NCAA's 
Former Terp, Byron Mouton, played on that Maryland 2002 National Championship team but done little else. He has played for 13 teams in nine different basketball leagues since then that include stops to Idaho, China, Germany and for a team in Cape Cod that played it's home games in a middle school gym. So when there was a chance for Mouton to return home to play near his Bowie, MD apartment ... he was happy. The team is the Wilmington Sea Dawgs of the ABA and the Delaware address of his new digs would keep him close to his roots. Well, except for one thing: it is the Wilmington that's in North Carolina. 
Defending NCAA women's champion 
Maryland had one heck of a run at the end of the regular season, winning 7 straight games. That included beating Duke twice and North Carolina once. However, since then, they lost to the last place team in the ACC [Miami] in the first round of the ACC Tournament, had a tough go-around with Davidson in the first round of the NCAA tournament ... then gets beat by the 5th seeded Butler Bulldogs, 62-59. 
The ACC contiued its stellar week [ACC clubs NC State, Clemson and Florida State each won their opening round NIT games] as Boston College and Maryland won their NCAA tournament openers.
My two favorite hairstyles are ones that look like they took a ton of time to fix ... and those that look like they haven't been touched in weeks. I really prefer the latter, since I haven't used a comb in about six years (for a variety of reasons).
