ACC-SEC Challenge Opponents Head-To-Head Records

Some surprising history revealed

Talk about symmetry!

Call Dec. 4 double-rivals day in the ACC-SEC Challenge. While Auburn visits Duke, Alabama takes on North Carolina.

The Crimson’s Tide visit to Chapel Hill in the second edition of the 16-team interleague series is a rematch of last season’s NCAA tournament meeting with the Tar Heels. On that occasion Nate Oats’ Crimson Tide won by a basket to reach the Elite 8 and advanced to a resounding defeat by UConn in the national championship game, the program’s deepest penetration ever in NCAA play.

The other notable meeting in the sporadic series between the schools, which first faced off in 1922, came at Tuscaloosa on Jan. 4, 1955.

This was years before, under athletic director and football legend Paul (Bear) Bryant, the Tide integrated its sports programs. In fact, its teams were forbidden to face opponents with Black players on their roster, causing Alabama, like several of its SEC brethren, to reject NCAA tournament bids. One consequence, reflected indirectly in won-lost records, was that Kentucky took the declined NCAA berths instead, allowing Adolph Rupp more chances to bolster UK’s postseason and overall marks.

The ’55 game meeting between former Southern Conference rivals was played on Alabama’s mid-campus home court, Foster Auditorium. Less than a decade later Foster was the background for a notorious gesture when the state’s segregationist governor, George Wallace, stood outside and struck his so-called stance in “the schoolhouse door” against integration.

More significant from a basketball perspective, 13^th-ranked Alabama beat the Tar Heels by 22 points in that 1955 game marked by what for 30 years remained the longest shot in NCAA history.

Those Tide players, a powerful unit nicknamed the “Rocket 8” after a popular V-8 Oldsmobile, were 19-5 and ranked in 1955 for the first time in school history. In 1956 Alabama went undefeated in SEC play and finished fifth in the AP poll.

In that 1955 meeting with the Tar Heels, who in two years became the undefeated NCAA champions, Alabama was led by All-American George Linn. He rebounded a missed field goal attempt beside his own backboard and sank a jumper that went 84 foot 11 inches. (Marshall’s Bruce Morris hit from 89 feet, 10 inches against Appalachian State to set the current mark in Feb. 2005.)

Captivated, UNC coach Frank McGuire came off his bench and, in a striking gesture of sportsmanship, stood exactly on the spot from which Linn launched his shot. That allowed the spot to be duly memorialized. Later a permanent bronze X was affixed to the court to commemorate the shot. It was only worth two points.

Last year, after TV contractual complications ended the ACC’s annual series with the Big Ten, the SEC and ACC inaugurated their Challenge series. The men’s teams broke even at 7-7. The women were 7-7 as well.

And let’s not forget Auburn’s appearance in the short-lived Iron Duke Classic at Cameron Indoor Stadium in December of 1981. The Blue Devils finished third in their own tournament behind Vince Taylor’s 29 points, edging a Tiger squad featured a hefty, mobile 6-6 freshman center, eventual Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, known as the “Round Mound of Rebound”.

SMU and Stanford are sitting out this year’s edition of the Challenge.