Between the resignation of embattled coach Bucky Waters in 1973, and the arrival of Gene Banks and Kenny Dennard in 1977, there wasn’t a whole lot to celebrate for Duke Basketball.
Bill Foster took the job after a ludicrous plan to bring Adolph Rupp out of retirement didn’t work out, and Foster was a builder.
In his first class, he got what players he could, but in his second, he found Jim Spanarkel, who would become the first ACC Rookie of the Year.
He also found Duke’s first (and only) JUCO transfer,
6-5 George Moses, and had some players that Waters and interim coach Neil McGeachy left behind.
Among those were Willie Hodge, a talented but erratic center, Tate Armstrong, who would emerge as a great college guard and who would be on the 1976 Olympic basketball team, and Terry Chili, a modestly gifted big man who would nonetheless carve out a role in Duke history.
In 1976, the ACC powers were UNC, NC State, and Maryland. After the David Thompson era, UNC re-emerged as the dominant power, and Maryland was not far behind.
And when the #7 Terrapins came to Cameron on February 21st, 1976, Duke fans saw an improbable upset.
It was a tight game that night, and when it got down to winning time, Duke found an unlikely hero: Chili.
Terry Chili was a 51% free throw shooter, and in the closing minutes, he went to the line, and, sure enough, was 1-1.
But Chili had a sort of secret weapon: he was in superb condition. And when other guys got tired, Chili didn’t.
And when he was fouled in the closing seconds, Chili stepped up and nailed two free throws with 0:04 left on the clock to give Duke a 68-65 lead.
Maryland would score an impressive basket when Chris Patton got a full-court pass to cut it to 68-67, but the Terps called a timeout they didn’t have, and Armstrong hit a shot to put Duke up 69-67.
Duke fans stormed the court and actually cut the nets, which gives you an idea of what a different era it was.
Just 40 days after this game, Patton would die in a pickup game. His death was attributed to undiagnosed Marfan Syndrome.
This would have been devastating for everyone involved in Maryland basketball, but it was even worse since former Terp Owen Brown had also died playing pickup basketball on February 4th, in his case due to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or a hardening of the heart.
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