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When North Carolina basketball grew up

I was a teenager growing up in an eastern North Carolina town. During those years, I would listen to major league baseball on the radio. This was the only sport of interest to me. Then in 1957, the University of North Carolina had a basketball coach from New York named Frank McGuire. He recruited a New York player named Lenny Rosenbluth, plus four other outstanding recruits from New York.

By winning the last two championship games in triple overtime periods, this team won the NCAA basketball championship.

In the championship final, they defeated a Kansas team that had one of the greatest basketball players of all time, Wilt Chamberlain.

I watched these two games on a black-and-white television screen. These games transformed me into a die-hard college basketball fan.

It is my belief that these games helped to create an environment that brought better coaches to North Carolina and inspired kids all over the state to play basketball at an early age. This moment in sports also produced, eventually, two of the best North Carolina basketball players in college history: David Thompson of N.C. State and Michael Jordan of UNC.

These 1957 games played an integral role in making college basketball the sport that it is in North Carolina today.

Jim Heaton
Blowing Rock
Blue Ridge Electric