While college basketball fans all over the country have been mourning the cancellation of March Madness, there are plenty of veteran fans who still feel the loss of the madness that once consumed North Carolina during the Dixie Classic.
The Dixie Classic started in 1949 after Everett Case, the head coach for N.C. State, had the idea. The tournament, played each year between Christmas and New Year’s at N.C. State’s Reynolds Coliseum, consisted of three rounds. Participating teams included North Carolina’s “Big Four” schools — UNC, N.C. State, Duke and Wake Forest — along with four visiting teams from across the country.
UNC alumna Bethany Bradsher, who published a book titled "The Classic" in 2011, said that the ACC wasn’t formed until 1953, four years after the first Dixie Classic was held. By that time, basketball was becoming king in North Carolina.
The intense ACC rivalries, especially between the North Carolina schools, can be ascribed to the Dixie Classic: The tournament allowed the Big Four schools to distinguish themselves despite their geographical proximity.
N.C. State was the powerhouse in the early years of the Dixie Classic, and many people attributed this success to Case, whose Indiana origins gave him a “basketball-first mentality,” Bradsher said.
“As his program grew, Carolina was like ‘Wait a minute, we need to keep up,’ so then they hired Frank McGuire from New York, which was a basketball hotbed,” Bradsher said. “Everett Case built this juggernaut, and then his program was the target.”
Case was in charge of extending invitations to the visiting teams from across the country. No school outside the Big Four ever won the Dixie Classic, and aside from Minnesota, no school was invited more than once.
Visiting schools included Brigham Young, Kansas and Michigan State, but perhaps the most memorable visiting team was Cincinnati in 1958, which included junior Oscar Robertson, the first African American to play in the tournament and a future NBA legend. Case had seen Robertson play as a first-year, later deciding he would invite the team to participate.
“(Case) played some long ball, like, 'Let’s look ahead and see who’s going to be good in a couple years,'” said Bradsher.