Better Know an ACC Opponent: North Carolina

JEFF TEFORD SHALL BE AVENGED

In case you’ve blissfully forgotten, the Pac-12 is dead and Cal is now in a conference named after the other side of the country. If you’re reading this, it means that this new reality is not a deal breaker for you. Over the rest of the off-season, we’ll profile each and every member of this conference that Cal has joined, that will definitely 100% exist it its current form for years if not decades.

Previously: Boston College; Clemson; Duke; Florida State; Georgia Tech; Louisville; Miami

Give me the basics

North Carolina is one of three schools that claims the title of ‘oldest public university in the USA,” and I’d be inclined to give them the crown since their argument is that they were the first ones to actually hold classes as a public school. That beginning of instruction dates back to 1795, which . . . yeah, that’s pretty old.

Nowadays UNC isn’t quite as big as Cal (~20,000 undergraduates to Cal’s 32,000) but the universities are in many ways peers in style and substance. Hell, UNC even has a similar history of protest as Cal, as UNC was a major hotbed of civil rights protests in the 60s following the university’s desegregation in 1955.

Do they have any relevant history with Cal?

The most high profile match-up was when 5 seed Cal faced 1 seed UNC in the sweet 16 of the 1997 NCAA tournament. Vince Cater and Antwan Jamison were too much for the Bears, though UNC later lost to the Arizona team that won a national title (and who Cal beat in the regular season). The rebuilding Bears would then play UNC in next season’s opener and get demolished, then finally got a win over UNC next year. Cal MBB is 1-4 vs. UNC all time.

Well, Justin Wilcox is already 2-0 vs. North Carolina, with wins in 2017 and 2018. UNC was a miserable 3-9 and 2-9 those years before firing Larry Fedora, which is more evidence that you should not schedule Cal as an out of conference program, because bad luck and extreme misfortune will befall your football program. Those two games happen to be the only meetings between these two schools in football.

Cal WBB has a recent happy memory, blowing out UNC in the first round of the NCAA tournament in 2019 . . . but even that is a bit bittersweet as Cal was crushed by Baylor in the next round, Lindsay Gottlieb left the program with a barren roster, and Cal has only just begun crawling back towards even making the tournament again.

You may remember me from such Pac-12 teams as:

An easy one. A dominant basketball brand that in many ways defines the sport at the college level, combined with an OK-but-bumbling football program that should in theory be better than it is, and also they’ve played an active role in trying to eliminate Cal’s status as a power conference member. Academics that are close to but not quite as esteemed as Cal, and they wear the wrong shade of blue.

UNC is UCLA.

I want to get on their good side. I should agree with them about:

“For decades and decades we had to share a conference with delusional UCLA fans who thought that because John Wooden ran things 50 years ago that UCLA still runs college basketball today. But NOW we’re in a conference with a REAL blue blood.”

I want to troll them incessantly. I should make fun of them for:

“Was losing to us in ‘17 and ‘18 really so bad that you had to vote against us joining the conference? Seems kinda cowardly if you ask me.”

What should I know about their current coaches?

Mack ‘effin Brown, it just had to be him. I don’t need to educate anybody here on the events of 2004 and Mack’s shameless politicking back in the day, right?

After coming out of retirement to coach UNC he’s been . . . fine? 9-5 was his best year, 6-7 his worst, he’s made a bowl every year, but hasn’t exactly maximized two QBs drafted into the NFL. Because he’s 73 there are annual rumors he’s going to retire, but as of right now he’s stated his intentions to continue coaching. Cross your fingers that he still has that coaching itch and you’ll be able to boo him in person at Memorial Stadium in 2025.

Alum Hubert Davis took over from Roy Williams three years ago after nearly a decade as an assistant coach for UNC, and has more or less picked up where Roy left off.

UNC WBB recently hired courtney Banghart away from Princeton, where she built the Ivy League Tigers into a perennial WBB tournament cinderella. She’s improved the UNC women and they’re generally expected to make the tournament most years.

Which alumni keep them stuck in the past?

Michael Jordan, Mia Hamm, Lawrence Taylor . . . UNC can call on some pretty legendary names, and they don’t have to just lean on the MBB program to do it.

Which alumni will they pretend they’ve forgotten?

I didn’t think he was THAT bad, but boy are there a lot of people real mad at Gregg Berhalter these days. Marion Jones was the toast of the town until the whole BALCO thing blew up. Also former ACC commish John Swofford is a Tar Heel, but since plenty of UNC fans want out of the ACC maybe they’ve turned on him?

What’s their school tradition that they take way too seriously?

I became morbidly fascinated with the grim, sometimes horrific history of UNC’s live goat mascot.

Rameses #1:

That ram — the original Rameses — made his debut at a game against the Virginia Military Institute on Nov. 8, 1924 . . . But the original Rameses died before making a return to Kenan Stadium for 1925.

Rameses #2:

Based on an employee’s account in the Daily Tar Heel at the time, Rameses II “became sick for some unknown reason and died shortly thereafter.”

And most disturbingly, this incident in 1996 (though I think wikipedia has the wrong number for this Rameses):

In February 1996, Rameses XXIII was killed in his pasture at the Hogan farm. An attacker slashed the ram's throat and cut off its left front leg, stabbing it as many as 10 times along its chest and neck. Police later charged 26-year-old Scott Wade. Wade stumbled onto the Hogan farm drunk at the time of the slaying. Investigators believed Wade killed the ram because he was hungry. Wade was later charged with misdemeanor animal cruelty.

Maybe I shouldn’t be too worried about the initial deaths - after 100 years of live goat mascots, there have been 22 total goats, so math would indicate that the average Rameses lasts about 4.5 years, like any good college student would.

What non-revenue sport do they care about most?

UNC women’s soccer has won an absurd 21 national titles and their list of alums is basically a who’s who of major US Women’s National Team members. Hell, UNC has produced major internationals for OTHER countries, like Lindsay Bronze and Alessia Russo. Head coach Anson Dorrance is a living legend, though I wonder if UNC fans are getting a little bit itchy what with not winning a national title since 2012?

Should I go see Cal play a game there?

It’s possible you already have, if you were one of the folks that travelled out for Cal’s game at UNC in 2017! But if you’re picking and choosing, you probably want to visit during basketball season to see Cal play at the Dean Smith Center, a mecca of college basketball.

Chapel Hill is one of those towns that shows up somewhere on almost any list of top college towns, with that nice balance of a small town college feel while still being within range of larger cities. It’s got a well regarded restaurant scene with solid southern/soul food, and the campus is lovely. It sounds well worth a visit, as long as you’re cool risking the possibility that Cal basketball suffers a rough loss to a top 10 team.

Is Cal better than them at sports right now?

UNC MBB was a top 10 team and #1 seed last year and their expectations next year are about the same, so no. Not that you were expecting Cal to immediately compete with Tobacco Road teams, right?

On the football side, UNC is only two spots ahead of the Bears in the ACC’s pre-season poll, which is within the margin of error for me. The Tar Heels are replacing a plus QB with mediocre options and haven’t had a good defense in a while. They’re probably just a hair better than Cal, though they won’t play this year anyway.

UNC WBB was an elite program in the mid-00s, but gradually slid into mediocrity under longtime head coach Sylvia Hatchell, who finally resigned after allegations of player abuse in 2019. Since then UNC has been solid but unremarkable under Courtney Banghart.