Carolina Kids

Nitpickers point out that Reese, given his quicksilver baseline game, will probably wind up at small forward, and that Sullivan, who doctors say may have two more inches of growth in him, could easily become a power forward. Therefore, they say, North Carolina's ostensibly perfect class is really one shooting guard short. The Tar Heels have already signed their rejoinder: Donald Williams, a 6'3" three-point artist at Garner (N.C.) High who is on track to become the state's alltime leading scorer. He's the best player in the state and, according to Gibbons, a national top-10 recruit.

All of this leads naturally to the question of whether this is the group with which Smith will retire. He'll turn 60 in February, and by averaging 25 wins a season between now and 1994, he would surpass his old college coach, Kansas's Phog Allen, for second place, behind Adolph Rupp, on the Division I victory list. At week's end Smith had 692 to Allen's 770. The '94 Final Four will be in Charlotte. And if he were to step down that year, he would have time to gear up for a run at Jesse Helms's U.S. Senate seat in '96. It's a flyer some people close to Smith, who is far from the ultraconservative Helms on such issues as civil rights, wish he would take, even as Smith dismisses it by pointing out that campaigning would involve the two things he likes least about coaching—attending receptions and giving speeches. "Every year I judge how excited I am about basketball around October 15," he says. "I've always been ready. The day that I'm not is the day I retire."

Perhaps this fall Smith was excited—secretly, of course—by his freshmen. And maybe he recalled that it was a freshman, name of Jordan, who sank a late jump shot to win that NCAA title for him. Or does the Carolina caste system not allow delighting in that moment?

"No, no," Smith protests. "I'll take that. We have no pecking order when it comes to performance. If you deserve to play, you play."

Then: "But of course, you know, if Michael had missed that shot, Sam [Perkins] was right there for the rebound."

But, of course. Perkins, you know, was a sophomore.