Tar Heels Battered--but Unbeaten : North Carolina Survives Physical Game With Notre Dame

North Carolina won its 21st game without a loss Sunday, beating No. 16 Notre Dame, 73-61, but the experience left Coach Dean Smith of the No. 1 Tar Heels in a foul mood.

That’s what he and his players had been crying throughout the game at the Smith Center, becoming increasingly more frustrated as the officials paid them little attention.

“I thought the Super Bowl didn’t start until 5 o’clock,” North Carolina center Brad Daugherty said later, exhausted from a game of full-contact basketball.

As Daugherty and some of his teammates could hardly be described as finesse players, Notre Dame Coach Digger Phelps had no sympathy for them.

He said the Irish were “fighting fire with fire.”

The next fire anyone saw was in Smith’s eyes.

After being informed of Phelps’ comments, Smith accused the Irish of “unsportsmanlike conduct” and implied they had learned such conduct from their coaching staff.

Later, when Smith and Phelps passed each other in the hallway outside the dressing rooms, they didn’t look at each other. There was only ice that time.

Specifically, Smith was angry because of tactics used by Notre Dame reserve forward Joe Dolan, who, in attempts to draw charging fouls, twice stepped in front of North Carolina players as they were running down the court without the ball.

Dolan and the North Carolina players went sprawling both times, but no fouls were called by the officials.

“You’ll never see North Carolina players jump in front of Notre Dame players when they’re going down the court,” Smith said. “We don’t coach that.

“They did it twice today and once last year at South Bend. It’s not good for basketball. It’s against the rules. They should have been penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct.”

Smith also complained that Notre Dame’s defenders were holding Daugherty, who took only five shots Sunday and scored seven points. The 6-11 3/4 center is the Tar Heels’ leading scorer, averaging 20.3 points. He had 23 Saturday, when the Tar Heels beat No. 4 Georgia Tech, 85-77.

“We’ll take tearaway jerseys when we go to Notre Dame next year,” Smith said. “When they hold our shirts, we’ll be able to tear away and make layups.”

Daugherty was amused by the prospect.

“I’d love to have had one today,” he said. “I’d be naked as a jaybird right now.”

Asked if this was the most physical game the Tar Heels have played this season, Daugherty said: “No, this wasn’t a physical game at all. There is a difference in physical basketball and the style of basketball that Notre Dame plays.

“Physical is how a team like Duke plays. That’s good, aggressive, defensive basketball. But Notre Dame goes beyond the limitations. They hold you. They knock you out of bounds. If they want to play that type game, they can go in the street.”

Daugherty said he thought it was part of Notre Dame’s game plan to provoke the Tar Heels. They don’t call them the Fighting Irish for nothing.

“Coach Smith wouldn’t let us take our minds off the game,” Daugherty said. “If they had gotten our minds off the game, they would have had a chance to beat us.”

But Notre Dame’s 6-9 center, Tim Kempton, said the Irish were no more or less aggressive than usual.

“I don’t know what they’re complaining about,” he said. “Nobody was cheap-shotting anybody. There were no elbows thrown that I saw.

“Sure, we were physical. I’m a physical player. That’s how I play. That’s how I’m always going to play.”

However Notre Dame was playing, it worked for almost 30 minutes.

With 11:22 remaining, the score was tied at 53. The Tar Heels led by five twice in the first half but had not been able to shake the Irish.

As North Carolina had won an emotional Atlantic Coast Conference game against Georgia Tech at the Smith Center less than 24 hours before, while Notre Dame has been idle since Wednesday, it figured that the Irish might have more pep in the late stages.

Instead, the Tar Heels tightened their man-to-man defense, preventing the Irish from working the ball inside, and were further rewarded as Notre Dame, which shot 68% from the field in the first half, began missing its outside shots.

On their next 12 possessions, the Irish missed 10 shots and turned the ball over twice. It took them 7 1/2 minutes to score another basket.

During that time North Carolina scored only eight points, but that was enough for the sellout crowd of 21,444 at the Dean Dome to begin breathing more comfortably.

“We had good shots,” Phelps said. “We just weren’t hitting them.”

Particularly frustrated was Notre Dame’s penetrating point guard David Rivers, who took 12 shots in the second half but made only 5. He finished with 17 points. Forward Ken Barlow led the Irish with 18.

“What we wanted to do was accomplished,” said North Carolina’s point guard Kenny Smith. “We turned Rivers into a jump shooter.”

Smith outplayed Rivers, hitting 6 of 11 shots from the field against Notre Dame’s zone and finishing with a team-high 20 points.

The only other North Carolina player to score in double figures was forward Joe Wolf, who had 16. Entering the weekend with an 8.1 average, he scored 38 points in two games.

Phelps said he didn’t feel the Tar Heels were affected by playing back-to-back games on Saturday and Sunday. It was the second straight weekend for them to do so, having beaten No. 2 Duke the previous Saturday in the first game at the state-of-the-art Smith Center before traveling to Milwaukee for a victory over Marquette the next day.

“They could play again tonight and it wouldn’t matter,” Phelps said. “They’re so deep and so good.

“Dean’s doing it the right way. He wants to win it all this year. This kind of weekend is going to help him when it comes time to play the ACC tournament and the NCAA tournament.”

But Smith said he had not wanted to play Sunday, that he had agreed only because the other ACC schools requested it. They share in the revenue from nationally televised games. He said he wouldn’t have agreed if he had known that Notre Dame didn’t have a game Saturday.

“It wasn’t very smart scheduling on my part,” Smith said.

It seems he and Phelps couldn’t agree on anything Sunday.