NCAA Tournament Memories

Reading a Sporting News article by Mike DeCourcy this morning reminded me of the very first Carolina men's basketball NCAA Tournament game I watched as a UNC employee – March 17, 1989, vs. Southern University in Atlanta.

DeCourcy's article was a look back at another NCAA game that same night, one in which upstart Princeton went toe to toe with top-seeded Georgetown, a Big East behemoth that was heavily favored but managed only to hang on for a 50-49 win over the No. 16 Tigers.

I watched parts of that game from the same place I watched the Carolina game, a closer-than-expected, 93-79 win for the second-seeded Tar Heels. As the sports information intern in 1988-89, one of my sports was…