Inside the Most Storied Rivalry in College Hoops

	November 2005 Cover Courtesy: St. Martin's Press Inside Blue Blood • 10 Spot's review | Read an excerpt | Buy it Hot Off The Press The Education of a Coach By David Halberstam ($24.95). Pulitzer Prize-winning author examines Belichick's upbringing and what drives him to be the NFL's top coach. Driven from Within By Michael Jordan, Mark Vancil ($35). The NBA legend looks back at his life, from his humble North Carolina upbringing to becoming the most recognized athlete in the world. Sports Illustrated: The Football Book By Rob Fledler (Editor), Rick Reilly ($29.95). Chronicle of the best players, coaches, teams and dynasties through SI's first 50 years. Payton By Connie Payton, Jarrett Payton and Brittney Payton ($29.95). The life of "Sweetness," one of the NFL's best running backs, as told by his widow and children. Greatest Sports Rivalries: 25 of the Most Intense and Historic Battles Ever By James Buckley Jr. and Davis Fischer ($24.95). A compilation of highlights, statistics, and stories from 25 of the most notable and entertaining match-ups the athletic world has ever seen. Five Under $5 Think words are cheap? These books won't break your bank (prices from barnesandnoble.com): • More than a Champion: The Mind of Muhammad Ali By Jan Philipp Reemtsma ($3.99). A unique look at 1975 Thriller in Manila Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, as told by Ali. • Amazing but True Sports Stories By Phyllis Hollander, Zander Hollander ($4.50). Biography of former tennis star and his impact on not only sports, but society as a whole. • Babe Ruth By Paul Mercer ($4.95). Biography of baseball's first true superstar. • Covering the Bases: Quotations on Baseball By Paul Gangi ($4.95). A witty collection of baseball quotations by Hall of Famers, minor leaguers, sportswriters, managers and team presidents. • Lessons from the Hardwoods By Rita M. Fisher ($4.97). A collection of 30 stories from golf, each with an application to a life lesson, as told by legends such as Ben Hogan to modern players like John Daly.

SI.com's Book Club will feature an excerpt each month from a recently published sports book. Below is an excerpt from Blue Blood: Duke-Carolina: Inside the Most Storied Rivalry in College Hoops, written by Art Chansky (St. Martin's Press, $25.95).

In the spring of 1988, Kenny Anderson and Bobby Hurley were the rich man-poor man of high school point guards.

Anderson was the thoroughbred, a lithe lefty who had been a legend since his day on the playgrounds of New York City. He was the first Stephon Marbury and Sebastian Telfair, the boy who played with men and could only avoid college stardom if he didn't do the right thing on the street corner and class room. The college coach who got him might only have him for two years, but those years would make someone's program. That's how good Kenny Anderson was.

Hurley was Seabiscuit from across the sea, or at least the Hudson River. Smaller and slower than Anderson, his pedigree was more impressive than his performance on some nights. He had game, taught to him by a strict coaching father in a hardscrabble neighborhood, but he also had a funny-looking jump shot that he sort of spun off his hands from in front of his forehead. Where Anderson was a can't miss, recruiting analysts debated whether Hurley was good enough to star for a major college.

Anderson was the No. 1 prospect on Dean Smith's list. Smith didn't rule New York recruiting like his predecessor Frank McGuire once had, but Carolina's connections with high school coaches such as Jack Curran of Archbishop Malloy in Queens still made the Tar Heels the favorite for almost any player they wanted. Smith had swooped in at virtually the last minute in 1983 and stolen Kenny Smith away from Virginia. Kenny Smith was related to Kenny Anderson, truly the next great guard out of the City.

Duke recruited Anderson but didn't seem to have much luck with New York City kids. After Johnny Dawkins and Tom Amaker graduated, Mike Krzyzewski's prime target had been Chris Corchianni, another sensational southpaw from Miami, but Coach K was up against Coach V -- the Jim Valvano road show. The N.C. State funny man wanted Corchianni, and an Italian kid from Miami was more in Valvano's comfort zone than the Polish coach from Chicago. Valvano did crazy things in recruiting, including ripping off his dress shirt during a home visit to real a T-shirt with the player's picture, or moving the living room furniture around and have all the family members line up in State's offensive set.

Valvano corralled Corchianni, leaving Duke without a true point guard for the 1988 and '89 seasons. That wasn't the end of the world for Krzyzewski, who disdained Smith's system of numbering positions and preferred putting the five best basketball players and athletes on the court and figuring out how to get the ball in the basket. Down to senior Kevin Strickland and junior Quin Snyder in his starting backcourt, Krzyzewski's priority was definitely finding guards for the 1989-90 season and beyond.

Hurley had followed the Tar Heels since attending Smith's summer camp after the seventh grade. His father Bob Hurley, was the coach at dirt-poor St, Anthony's in Jersey City, which he had turned into a high school powerhouse with basically smoke and mirrors and a lot of elbow grease. Since Jim Spanarkel and Mike O'Koren from rival Hudson Catholic had played for the Blue Devils and Tar Heels, respectively, in the late 1970s, Bob Hurley had followed both teams closely.

Although Smith coveted Anderson, who early on was considered a lock to follow in his cousin Kenny's footsteps, he recruited other point guards. He informed the Hurley family that Anderson was his priority, which had been Smith's long-time policy; generally, he was able to get his second choice to wait to see what No. 1 would do. That's how big playing for Smith and the Tar Heels had become.

Recruiting, however, was changing along with college basketball. High school players received much more publicity, thanks to an increase of all star games and AAU summer teams and he influx of recruiting services that were now ranking players all the way down to the tenth grade. As Duke had proven Carolina was no longer the most followed college team. For high school players who didn't much care about yesterday, today's superstar was Michael Jordan of the Bulls, not the erstwhile Tar Heel.

During the summer of 1988, Hurley and his father told Smith they couldn't wait for Anderson's decision. By that time, Duke was already in there solid. Krzyzewski played off Smith's system,. Forgot Anderson and told Hurley he was Duke's top choice, that they weren't recruiting any other point guards and that he would get to play alongside Billy McCaffery, a shooting guard Duke was also recruiting.

That wasn't going to work at Carolina because Anderson and Hurley were both playmakers who needed to have the basketball. "They had a really good chance at Kenny Anderson, and he was a great player," Hurley said year later. "It looked like he was going to end up there. They suggested us playing together, and tried what they could to keep me interested. But I realized I should move on to other schools."

So Hurley committed to Duke and said he would sign with the Blue Devils before the 1989 season, his senior year at St. Anthony's, Smith continued recruiting Anderson and didn't realize he was losing favor with him. UNC no longer had assistant coach Eddie Fogler, who always had his ear to the ground when it came to recruiting kids in his native New York City. Carolina missed some obvious signs on Anderson.

Georgia Tech coach Bobby Cremins, another New Yorker, had moved in and was chasing Anderson, calling him almost every day and writing him what he eventually estimated as two hundred letters. Plus, Syracuse and coach Jim Boeheim were closing hard. Among coaches, it was common knowledge that Boeheim thought Cremins was going way over the NCAA limit on contacts and visits with Anderson, but coaches rarely blew he whistle on each other.

Anderson, caught up in the hype and with no one from North Carolina to babysit him, told Cremins he didn't think he was going to UNC after all. Rather than joining Dean Smith's stable of stars, he liked the idea of making a new name for himself at Georgia Tech. During the fall signing period of 1988, after Hurley had signed with Duke, Anderson sent his letter of intent to Atlanta instead of Chapel Hill. Cremins welcomed Anderson with the clear understanding that he would stay only until he was a high NBA draft pick.

Smith insisted honesty was still the best policy, but gambling on Anderson left the Tar Heels almost as thin in the backcourt as Duke had been. They had no qualified substitute behind King Rice, leading to Smith's political joke about the beleaguered vice president at the time: "Rice has to remain healthy like (President George H.W.) Bush has to remain healthy, although I don't know who our (Dan) Quayle is."

In retrospect, Hurley was the better choice for Carolina because, regardless of how he turned out, his father's vast connections with high school coaches across the country were going to help whichever program signed his son. Bob Hurley, the long-time UNC fan, turned into a Duke advocate and his son a central figure in the escalating game of one-upsmanship between the two schools that continued into the new decade.