1990 North Carolina at Maryland Men's Basketball

ACC Men's Basketball

Cole Field House

College Park, MD

Jan 10, 1990

North Carolina Tarheels @ Maryland Terrapins

It was Gary Williams' first year as head coach of the basketball team. Previously he had been the head coach at Ohio State, Boston College, and American University. Maryland had a pretty abysmal record the year before. They were off to a good start in the 1989-90 season. They were 8-4 overall and 1-1 in conference play. The Terrapins had not beat North Carolina at Cole Field House since 1983.

For the most part the video was clear although everyone in a while the tape would pause for a few seconds and when it would restart it would have skipped ahead and missed a play or two.

The first half opened slow but once the Terrapins got the lead they stretched it out and held on to it. The lead got to be as big as 12 but the Terps were up by 10 at halftime.

Maryland opened up strong in the second half. They pushed the lead from 10 up to 17 but then North Carolina started to shut them down. The Tarheels cut the Terrapins lead to 9 with just under 12 minutes left in the game. Maryland came back and scored 8 unanswered points. The Tarheels did not give up but Maryland maintained a sizable lead which stretched up to 18 points on at least a couple occasions.

The game slowed down in the last 10 minutes of the second half. North Carolina hit quite a few three pointers put Maryland continued to score even if not on every single possession.  North Carolina got to within 8 points (85-77) with about 3 minutes left. The Tarheels cut it to 4 points with less than 1:30 to go. They just kept shooting 3-point shots, and hitting most of them, but they went cold in the last minute-and-a-half. The Terps outscored the Tarheels 8-2 in the final 30 seconds and won the game 98-88.

Four Tarheels (Scott Williams, George Lynch, Kevin Madden, Rick Fox) fouled out of the game. Fox scored 26 point which included 6 three-point shots. 

Walt Williams scored a career high 33 points. He was 13-14 on free throws.

I was at this game with my youngest brother. I was in my sophomore year at Maryland at the time. I didn't make it to the first home conference game, Wake Forest, but I went to this one and the five that followed it over the next couple months. The Terps didn't have a great year but they provided a heck of a lot of excitement on campus. during the season.

Despite having seen this games before and despite knowing what the final score would be I still found it to be fun to watch. The Tarheels looked in the last few minutes like they might actually pull out a win. I've seen things like that happen before.