“If you get it, knock it in, Michael.”
With under a minute left to play in the 1982 national championship game, one of Georgetown’s most prolific scorers, Eric “Sleepy” Floyd, made a shot that gave his team a one-point lead over North Carolina.
A timeout by UNC head coach Dean Smith with 32 seconds remaining led to one of the most famous quotes of his career, when he told first-year shooting guard Michael Jordan that UNC’s possession might fall into his hands.
As the score sat at 62-61 in the Hoyas’ favor, the established Tar Heel duo of Sam Perkins and James Worthy stayed under the basket as point guard Jimmy Black handled the ball.
Little did they know the legends that would surround the game's last moments — legends still told by Tar Heel fans today.
Second by second, the clock ticked to 15, and breaths stopped across the country as the ball left Black’s hands to find Jordan wide open on the left wing. In the blink of an eye, the ball soared through the air to meet the net as the Louisiana Superdome erupted with the cheers of thousands.
With that shot, Jordan made the score 63-62, and after a sloppy Georgetown turnover, Worthy snatched the ball — and with it, the Hoyas’ national championship dreams.
At the end of regulation, Worthy finished with a game high of 28 points, which soon would reflect his offensive dominance with the Los Angeles Lakers and throughout his NBA career.
Although the competition between the game's two dynamic first-years — Jordan and Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing — was highly anticipated in this game, the marquee matchup was between Gastonia natives Worthy and Floyd. In the near future, both of these duos would go on to compete professionally against each other and use what they learned from their college days to influence their personalities on and off the court.
