Most basketball teams end their seasons with a loss.
Most basketball coaches end their careers with a loss.
Bobby Knight ended his career with a loss. Dean Smith ended his career with a loss. Adolph Rupp ended his career with a loss.
That’s just the way the game is designed.
Thus, it’s no surprise that Vic Bubas ended his career with a loss.
But what a loss, what a game, what an opportunity. It took what still is the greatest individual performance in ACC Tournament history to end Duke and Bubas’ 1969 season in the title game of the ACC Tournament.
What if Charlie Scott had been just an ordinary All-American that Saturday in Charlotte?
Some context. Duke ended its 1968 season at 22-6, with a loss in the NIT.
The graduation losses were severe. All-America center Mike Lewis took 22 points and 14 rebounds to the ABA. Ron Wendelin was a two-year starter at point guard, while Joe Kennedy was a solid forward and the team’s best defender.
But the cupboard wasn’t bare. It never was under Bubas. Dave Golden was a top shooting guard and Steve Vandenberg was a tough 6-7, 220-pound forward. Both were seniors in 1969 and both had averaged double figures in scoring in 1968, with Vandenberg adding over eight rebounds per game.
Fred Lind was another senior, fresh off a break-out game against North Carolina at the end of the 1968 season. C.B. Claiborne and Warren Chapman were also seniors, the latter coming off a knee injury that caused him to miss the entire ‘68 campaign.
That class provided the experience. The junior class was a miss but the sophomore class was one of Bubas’ most touted. Dick DeVenzio was a first-team Parade All-American. Randy Denton was a 6-10, 240-pound center with strength, mobility and skill. Rick Katherman was a 6-7 sharpshooter, Brad Evans a prep football star who surprised the sports world when he picked Bubas and hoops over countless football offers from traditional gridiron powers.
All Bubas had to do was put it together.
It looked good early. Duke beat Virginia Tech, Alabama and Princeton to open the season. The last win was especially impressive, 81-62 at Madison Square Garden over a Tigers team led by future NBA star Geoff Petrie.
Duke jumped to ninth in the AP poll, which seemed about right for a Bubas-coached team.
Then it all fell apart. Rudy Tomjanovich-29 points, 12 rebounds-and Michigan came in to Durham and delivered a 90-80 setback. Duke went to Charlottesville and lost to Virginia 81-75. That ended a 22-game Duke winning streak against the Cavaliers. East Tennessee State beat Duke at Duke; no that’s not a typo.
The season hit rock bottom in Greensboro. After the cancellation of the Dixie Classic and before the establishment of the Big Four Tournament Duke and Wake Forest would play a non-conference game in Greensboro in December.
The Deacons blitzed Duke 106-78.
It was the second-worst loss of Bubas’ career, after an 88-54 loss to UCLA two seasons earlier.
It was the only four-game losing streak of Bubas’ career.
What went wrong?
Lind says the sophomore and senior classes didn’t mesh.
“I wouldn’t call it dissension, exactly. But it was not good chemistry. It was a weird dynamic. It was not the most harmonious team.”
Vandenberg agrees.
“Usually players are fighting and clawing for playing time when practice starts. It seemed like Randy and Dickie were going to start no matter what. Not that they weren’t good. But it seemed like there was no competition for playing time. Dave [Golden] and I were captains and we went to Coach Bubas. He just said ‘my team.’ “
Every step forward was followed by a step back. After losing four straight, Duke pounded Clemson and then went to New Orleans and defeated Western Kentucky and Iowa to capture the Sugar Bowl. Denton had emerged as a standout center and he outplayed Western Kentucky’s touted Jim McDaniels in a 73-72 win.
Turn-around? Nope. Duke lost to North Carolina by 24, won two, lost three, a win, a loss, rinse and repeat.
Bubas told his team he was retiring after the season right before a February 12 game against Wake Forest. Duke responded with a 122-93 blow-out, a 51-point turnaround against the Deacons.
And lost their next game.
Bubas’ plans gradually became public knowledge. Duke hosted North Carolina in the regular-season finale, Vic Bubas’ final home game. Duke was 12-12, hosting a 22-2 UNC team ranked second in the AP poll. A losing season loomed.
It also was Senior Day. Lind emerged as a senior, averaging almost 11 points and eight rebounds per game. But Golden and Vandenberg struggled, the former shooting only 42 percent, the latter losing his starting job to Lind and Katherman.
Vandenberg said he hung in there because “I just wanted to prove something. I was mad at first. But I deserved it.”
Vandenberg says he was so nervous that he didn’t sleep a wink the night before the game; his family was coming in and he wasn’t sure he would even play.
He played. Did he ever. Bubas said he played a hunch. Vandenberg found out he was going to start in the locker room before the game.
He was the best player on the floor. Playing inside against 6-11 Rusty Clark and 6-8 Bill Bunting, both All-ACC performers that season, Vandenberg hit 10-of-14 field goals and 13-of-13 foul shots, for 33 points. He added a dozen rebounds.
Lind also went out in style, with 18 points and 10 rebounds. Golden scored 10 points.
Duke led 46-33 and held off a late Carolina comeback for an 87-81 win.
The win made Duke the third seed in the ACC Tournament.
Win it all and Duke would be the ACC’s only NCAA representative.
They almost pulled it off. Duke defeated Virginia 99-86 in the opener. Denton and DeVenzio had 24 points apiece, with the suddenly rejuvenated Vandenberg adding 23.
But Virginia ended that season 10-15. Could Duke continue its run against better competition?
The answer was not long in coming. Duke met 13th-ranked South Carolina in the semifinals.
The Gamecocks had owned Duke over the previous two seasons, winning all four games. Only a month earlier they had defeated Duke 82-72 at Duke, a game in which guard John Roche (37 points) and center Tom Owens (26 points) had shredded Duke’s defense with a two-man game that looked for all the world like Karl Malone and John Stockton a generation later.
The third time was the charm for Duke. Lind and Vandenberg agree that Duke didn’t make any major schematic changes. They just played better. Certainly Duke did a better job of controlling the tempo. But South Carolina shot 59 percent against Duke in February, 39 percent in March.
“We were optimistic,” Lind says, going into the game. “The lineup change helped. Bubas was going with experience. And we felt more comfortable with our zone.”
Duke led most of the way. Only a 19-of-20 South Carolina game from the line kept it close. But Duke held on for a 68-59 win. Golden led Duke with 18 points, making 9-of-12 from the field. Was he finding his stroke at the right time?
DeVenzio and Vandenberg had 14 points each, Lind 13. Denton was held to nine points but tied Bobby Cremins for the game high in rebounds, with 10.
A team effort indeed.
But there was an ominous sidebar. Neither team subbed. At all. Ten players played forty minutes.
And this was against a South Carolina team that started Owens and John Ribock, two very physical players.
Less than 24 hours later Duke tipped off against a North Carolina team that had more depth and had an easier road to the title game.
The South Carolina win was Duke’s third three-game winning streak of the season. But Duke had never won that fourth straight and nobody thought they could do it this time.
But Duke was playing at an extraordinarily high level. In fact Duke would shoot an astonishing 58.1 percent from the field for the entire tournament. After falling behind early Duke took a 22-21 lead on a Lind tip-in and extended the lead to 43-34 at intermission. The Tar Heels also lost Grubar to a knee injury suffered when he collided with Lind.
Duke led 53-42 with 17:18 left.
“I thought we had them,” Vandenberg recalls.
Scott thought otherwise.
It’s difficult to explain how good Scott was down the stretch. He was a skinny 6-6 but tough enough to average over seven rebounds that season. He could shoot, he could handle. He was too quick for Duke’s big men, too big for Duke’s wings.
Lind says Duke was “helpless” against the onslaught. “I think he might be the most underrated player in ACC history. We couldn’t do anything to slow him down.”
And Duke went ice-cold at the wrong time.
Scott hit a jumper, a foul shot and another jumper and it was 53-47. Scott tied it at 56 with a layup and gave the Tar Heels a 58-56 lead with another. He scored 12 of their 14 points in a run that lasted less than five minutes.
Remember Duke didn’t play any subs the night before.
“Fatigue was a factor,” Lind concedes. “No doubt.”
“We were gassed,” Vandenberg adds.
Duke trailed by only 71-70 with 6:48 left. But by this time they were running on fumes. Carolina went to the four corners with a 75-70 lead. Duke got a steal but DeVenzio missed and Scott answered with a three-point play. That was it.
The final was 85-74. Scott scored 28 of his 40 points after intermission. He hit 17-of-23 from the field.
Even without Grubar the Tar Heels won the Eastern Regional and advanced to the Final Four, where they lost twice.
Denton led Duke with 19 points. DeVenzio and Vandenberg each had 15 and made the all-tournament team.
What if Scott had been a little more human that game? Could Duke have been the ACC team advancing to the Final Four?
At first glance it seems like a ludicrous question. After all the loss ended Duke’s season at 15-13.
But teams weren’t seeded in those days and everybody stayed in their natural region.
The 1969 East Regional was played in College Park, familiar territory for Duke. The Blue Devils would have gone into the tournament on a four-game winning streak and with the added incentive of sending Bubas out in style. The seniors were playing well and despite the chemistry issues Lind and Vandenberg agree that no one wanted the season to end the way it did.
Duke’s first game would have been against Duquesne, ironically nicknamed the Dukes. They only lost five times that season, the final one a 79-78 setback to North Carolina.
Absolutely no guarantee Duke would have gotten past them
But no guarantee they wouldn’t have. Duquesne was an independent and a lot of their wins were against teams like American, Kent State and Fairfield. Then again, they also posted wins against St. John’s, St. Bonaventure and Providence.
So, probably not.
A Duke win would have put the Devils in the title game against Davidson. The teams had met earlier in the season at Charlotte. Davidson won but they had to go into overtime to do it. DeVenzio had a career-high 28 points in that game and he wasn’t likely to duplicate that.
And very little chance Duke gets past Purdue in the Final Four and no chance they get past UCLA in the finals.
Vandenberg concedes Duke would have had to have been “very lucky” to make it to the final weekend but adds that he would have loved the chance.
“I was hoping for a couple of more games,” Lind adds. “Who knows? We were playing pretty good basketball. I’ve thought about it. We would have had a shot.”
A shot that Charlie Scott deprived them of.