Record Or No Record, Dean’s Best

North Carolina’s Tar Heels were running away from Tulane, working on an 89-71 victory in the Tournament of Champions at the Coliseum Friday night, and one of the security men said, “I thought those Tulane guys were supposed to be good.”

They are good, I said.

“So what happened?”

They couldn’t handle the man in the dark suit, I said.

Dean Smith’s fingerprints were all over this one. His team shot layups, Tulane got caught up in firing long jumpers before it ever worked its offense and suddenly, it was a 20-pointer. You know the drill. You’ve seen it 834 times.

Eight hundred and 34 victories leave Smith just 43 short of breaking Adolph Rupp’s record. That could happen next season, his 36th. At one time, Smith said he would never break the record. He would quit first, because he felt the record would reflect more favorably on him than on his players and assistants and he didn’t want that.

He may have backed off that stance. If he hasn’t, he should.

He has given too much to basketball, means too much to the game and to college athletics in general, to be driven out of it by a number. He has always said his won-lost record is not important to him personally. If that’s the case, then he should simply say Rupp’s record is not important to him, either, and keep on coaching until he’s tired of it.

If Smith wants to quit, really wants to quit, and go play golf, then he should. But if he has any notion of leaving the game out of some sense of duty to everyone he has touched with his coaching, then he’s got it all wrong.

The record should belong to him. Twenty-five NCAA’s, 20 Final 16’s, 14 Final Eights, 10 Final Fours, two championships and all those other banners hanging in the rafters at Dean Smith Center attest to it. He will have done it against competition that has depth of quality that, with all due respect, would undoubtedly have been beyond Rupp’s imagination.

Rupp never faced Mike Krzyzewski two or three times a year, or Bobby Knight nine times, or John Wooden or Vic Bubas or Norm Sloan or Bones McKinney or a bunch of others who could torch you when you stepped off the bus.

Tulane is 0-10 against North Carolina after Friday’s loss. That’s no disgrace. Smith has faced 157 teams in 1,070 games. Five of them have winning records against him. Three of those records are 1-0. Another is 2-1, another 5-4. It’s not just what Smith has done, but how he has done it. He has not violated the rules. His players graduate. He has been the game’s most inventive coach and its best teacher.

Along with Krzyzewski’s Duke Blue Devils the past dozen years or so, along with Sloan’s great N.C. State teams for awhile, his has been the premier program in the toughest basketball conference in America.

Friday night, Shammond Williams started ahead of star Jeff McInnis. “Starting is an honor,” said Smith. “We were honoring Shammond for his defense against Richmond Tuesday night.”

That’s Smith. Loves defense. Loves effort. Loves picks and passes. Is not impressed with scoring averages.

This is not one of his best teams.

But eventually, it will win 20 or more games and then next year, the record could fall.

The record would honor Smith, yes, but it would also honor all of his players over the years, his assistants, the university, the ACC and the game. And having it beside his name would honor the record itself.