In 1979, UNC-Duke had it all: From 'Air Ball' to 'Black Sunday'

By Bob Holliday, WRAL contributor

Durham, N.C. — The year 1979 looked so promising for both Duke and North Carolina. The Blue Devils returned their entire starting five from a group that had played for the NCAA Championship in 1978.

UNC had to replace its All-American point guard Phil Ford but returned most of its nucleus from ’78 when the Tar Heels won the ACC regular-season title.

Duke began 1979 ranked No. 1 in the country. North Carolina was good enough to defeat eventual national champion Michigan State with Magic Johnson in December.

Duke and UNC both spent the entire season with a prominent spot in the national rankings, though each had to overcome a stumble or two along the way. The Blue Devils finished the regular season ranked No. 5.

UNC was seventh in the final pre-tournament poll. These two teams dominated ACC play as they often did, finishing 9-3. Each team defeated its big rival at home. Carolina could have clinched the ACC regular season honors and the top seed in the ACC Tournament outright with a win at Duke, but as we shall discuss, that did not happen.

The ACC settled the question of No. 1 seed with a drawing. UNC won.

The issue of who gets the top seed really mattered in 1979 because the ACC only had seven teams. No. 1 received a bye during Thursday’s quarterfinal play.

No. 2 had to play on Thursday. So, while UNC chilled in Chapel Hill on the first day of the festivities in Greensboro, Duke played No. 7 Wake Forest. The Blue Devils barely won. On Friday, when rested Carolina clobbered Maryland in one semifinal, Duke barely slipped past a red-hot NC State team that shot 55 percent in the other.

So, when No. 1 met No. 2 on Saturday night in Greensboro for the ACC Championship, the Tar Heels had a physical advantage, having played one night while Duke played two. The Tar Heels also had a psychological advantage. To understand that you have to go back to the events of the previous Saturday night in Durham.

“Air Ball” and the 7-0 game

It was Jim Spanarkel’s last game at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Spanarkel was highly regarded around the ACC, an Academic All-American. Ironically, he had been the high school teammate of UNC’s Mike O’Koren. Duke’s “main man” in 1979 was the G-Man, Mike Gminski.

Also an Academic All-American, Gminski put together an ACC Player of the Year kind of season in ’79. UNC could not match Gminski inside, playing 6-foot-9 Rich Yonakor at center, with help from Jeff Wolf and Pete Budko, both of whom were 6-foot-10.

Duke, under coach Bill Foster, played a great deal of zone defense, with the G-Man protecting the paint. In the era of college basketball when even long jumpers counted just two points and when teams could search for a good shot for as long as they wanted, tactics played a part in every game.

Though Dean Smith would later become an advocate for both the three-point shot and the shot clock, he often sought to use the rules of the day to his advantage. Or what he thought would be his advantage.

So, after Duke won the opening tip and quickly scored, UNC held the ball. The Tar Heels hoped Duke would ultimately abandon the zone and pick up man to man, in which case Gminski would have had to leave the basket to defend Yonakor, who could hit the 15-foot jumper. Needless to say, Duke stuck with the zone.

The Tar Heels worked the ball around the perimeter for 10 or 11 minutes. Then at some point, Yonakor decided to shoot. To this day, I don’t know why. Maybe he was bored? Certainly he wasn't in any kind of rhythm.

Yonakor, after not taking a shot since pre-game warm ups (nor had any of his teammates), put up a shot that missed everything, and I do mean everything.

These were the days before Duke’s loud and creative student cheering section had become known as the “Cameron Crazies.” But the students’ presence made an impact just like today. When Yonakor, known to his teammates as “Chick,” put up that first timid Tar Heel attempt from the field, a derisive cheer erupted from the front rows of the Indoor Stadium.

“Air ball, air ball, air ball,” they chanted. I believe that was the moment the “air ball” chant, which is common today, was first born. I have heard Mike Gminski say on television he believes that was the first time the cheer was used. And I know I had never heard it before.

Duke, now with possession for the first time since the opening tip, scored again. And I think there must have been a Carolina turnover somewhere along the line. The Blue Devils led 7-0 at halftime.

I remember the second half as anti-climactic. Carolina attacked. Both teams played up tempo, scoring 40 points apiece. The Blue Devils sent senior leader Spanarkel out with a 47-40 victory.

Reaction? A halftime conversation with my friend Lou Bello summed it up best. Bello, a Duke graduate and arguably one of the ACC’s best-ever referees (certainly the most flamboyant) who was by 1979 working in the media, told me bluntly, “This is bad for the game.”

Lou wasn't the only one who felt that way. Personally, I loved the tactics, for a while at least. I had a pretty good feeling that 7-0 first half was something folks would talk about for decades.

But I was in a minority. From Sunday until Thursday’s start of the ACC Tournament, columnists weighed in with their opinions on the Carolina slowdown. In fact, during Dean Smith’s press conference after the ACC Championship game, the late Don Shea of WTVD asked Smith if he considered slowing that game down.

Smith replied, “No, we would have had to hire two more secretaries to handle the mail!” Remember this was before ESPN or talk radio in the Triangle, not to mention Twitter. Can you imagine the furor in today’s social media?

Yonakor, especially, took heat from fans for that shot that missed everything. Not only did Duke’s students chant “air ball” whenever he got a touch in the second half, they actually came up with a second “air ball” cheer the following season. I vividly remember Yonakor being in the layup line with his teammates before the 1980 UNC-Duke game at Cameron and hearing an uptempo version of the cheer. “Air ball,” clap clap. “Air ball,” clap clap. “Air ball,” clap clap.

To me, this was the more interesting of the two cheers, but I never heard it again beyond that game in 1980.

But back to 1979. By game time Saturday, Dean Smith felt like his team, widely mocked for holding the ball in Durham, would be ready to play. The Heels, in fact, crushed Maryland in the semi-finals that Friday, 102-79. But then Duke, which had barely survived the great effort by NC State in those same semis, lost its point guard before the championship game.

Bob Bender suffered appendicitis Saturday afternoon. He was taken to the hospital for an appendectomy before the game. Bender’s absence was discussed by both coaches in the post-game press conference. Smith wondered if the psychological advantage (in which he always held a somewhat unique interest) had shifted the Blue Devils’ way. Duke did, however, still have John Harrell, who had quarterbacked the team that played Kentucky for the whole shooting match in 1978. But not a question, Bender was missed.

UNC took a 31-25 lead in the first half at the Greensboro Coliseum. That was a big change from being down by a touchdown. Duke rallied to tie in the second half 39 all. Then, the Tar Heels, behind a series of steals by Dudley Bradley, retook command and won 71-63.

Mike Gminski put up the usual terrific numbers for Duke with 19 points and 16 rebounds. Vince Taylor, who along with Gene Banks and Kenny Dennard would later play on the first Blue Devil team coached by Mike Krzyzewski in 1981, gave the Devils a big boost, making five of seven shots off the bench. Beyond that, Bill Foster felt like his team did not shoot well.

Duke hit 45 percent of its shots against the 50 percent put up by North Carolina. Both teams hit 19-25 from the free throw line (the ACC was known in that era as a “touch call” league).

So, the difference in shooting mattered. But the biggest story of the game was Bradley, who collected an incredible seven steals, and when Bradley made a steal, he nearly always finished with a dunk at the other end. Bradley ultimately even dunked over Gminski. Sports Illustrated used a photo of a Bradley dunk on its cover, which was entitled “Stealing the ACC Title,” subheading, “Dudley Bradley dunks Duke.”

We should not overlook Rich Yonakor. Bill Foster certainly didn't in his post-game remarks. Yonakor hit five of seven from the floor. His good buddy Mike O’Koren also played quite well. Maybe they had something to prove after the whole “air ball” thing.

Post game, Foster made no excuses. And he certainly could have dwelled on Bender’s absence or even the fact that Spanarkel had taken a nasty spill late in the semi-finals while scoring and had to leave the game (Steve Gray came in to shoot the “and one”).

The senior leader hit just three of 12 shots in the ACC Championship Game. Smith, meanwhile, bemoaned Bender’s absence and predicted a good NCAA Tournament for the Blue Devils. Smith believed both ACC finalists had a chance to win it all.

Week one of the NCAA Tournament, though, brought an all-time stunner on Tobacco Road. Maybe it was the Sports Illustrated jinx, which during the '70s was very much a THING. Certainly, Penn and St. John’s, the out-of-town teams that traveled to Raleigh to play UNC and Duke, were very motivated.

I remember Penn’s Tony Price telling me, “North Carolina is like a TV show. They’re on every week.” In that era, televised appearances for most teams were rare. You might say those Eastern teams had the Dean Smith “psychological advantage.”

Whatever, first Penn and then St. John’s, took down the two most ballyhooed programs in America. Back to back. In Reynolds Coliseum, which that day was packed with light and dark blue. All between noon and 4 p.m. in one single afternoon. Black Sunday.

Footnote: Black Sunday, 1979, marked the last time an ACC team failed to reach the NCAA Sweet Sixteen. That was 39 years ago.