BuzzerBeater Forums

February 24, 1979: #6 Duke 47, #4 North Carolina 40

Jim Spanarkel’s Senior Day game turned into one of the strangest afternoons in ACC basketball history as Duke held North Carolina scoreless for a half before knocking off the No. 4-ranked Tar Heels 47-40. Dean Smith resorted to the four corners offense and the Tar Heels held the ball throughout the first half, but Duke led 7-0 as Spanarkel forced two turnovers, assisted on a basket to Mike Gminski and scored the last bucket of the half on a short jumper. (Smith later said, "It should have been 2-0, or something like that, at the half.") North Carolina's only two shots of the first half were air balls, that resulted in the first-ever chants of "Air ball . . . Air ball!" from the Cameron Crazies. Sparnakel added 15 points in the second half and finished with a game-high 17, hitting 8-of-9 field goal attempts. The win allowed Duke to tie North Carolina for the ACC regular season title.

Duke coach Bill Foster wasn't amused by Smith's tactics in the first half and the next day said, "I've been doing this a long time, but during the first half last night I began to think maybe I've been doing it for too long." He then added this infamous dig: "I thought Naismith invented basketball, not Deansmith."

Can happen even college vs. college.

yeah and the D3 team of course has, great defense. I think his D was like 10 or 11 or so. so how could he score then?

I just think the D3 team had great D, while his team had no O

I wonder sometimes why you bother with this terrible game at all
can`t imagine anyone spits on it more than you
there must be better ways to spend your time that pleases you
better games out there surely
a game for you to design that lives in a perfect world

Last edited by Headless T Gunner at 11/3/2012 6:18:36 PM

when i was 17 i had to ref the 15 year olds inter-school basketball game. The guys who signed up for it had never actually played basketball, they thought it was just some kind of fun thing, little did they know they would be playing against 15 year olds from other schools who were basically the best in the state.

So they played 5 games at the inter-school tournament. . They scored 2 points. literally, 2 points. for the whole five games. they hardly even got a shot up most of the time. it was just turnover turnover turnover. it was horrible to watch.

so im sorry to break it to you, but this does actually happen in real life.

A few years back, my wife and I, were leaving Vegas. I was up 300$ from card tables. On the way out the casino I wanted to make 1 big bet, you know double it or nothing. So I was watching this 1 roulette wheel. It kept hitting red. It was up to 13 straight red numbers. I watched hit red a few more times, it was about 17 or 18 straight red, so I put my winnings on black. It had to hit right. Wrong. So I kept watching until it hit black. 22 times it hit red consecutively, then a green. It went back to red two more times before hitting black. Long story short, I wasn't leaving Vegas with the 300$!

This is the old Gambler's Fallacy which is a favorite of mine. Remember watching a movie where some kid was like...roulette just hit Red 12 times in a row. Black is FOR SURE going to hit. And they hit and won.

He had a 50% chance of winning, not 51% or 52% becaues the wheel showed Red the last 12 times. If he would have said a bit earlier, red just hit 7 times in a row, black is going to hit this next one FOR SURE...he would have lost 5 times in a row.

With games of pure chance you can't include previous results. The wheel has no memory. If anything, I would be inclined to choose the color that keeps getting picked because maybe the wheel or marble has a flaw that gives it a preference for Red?

I think the buzzerbeater random calculation is very minimal in impact and mimics real results. The results here are pretty standard and I usually win games I expect to win and have close games where the level is pretty close.