The North Carolina Tar Heels Men's basketball program is a college basketball team of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, having one of the greatest traditions in the history of college basketball. The Tar Heels have won six national championships (1957, 1982, 1993, 2005, 2009, and 2017), in addition to a Helms Athletic Foundation retroactive title (1924), and participated in a record twenty-one Final Fours.
It is the only school to have an active streak of reaching the National Championship game for nine straight decades (no other school has done it in more than five straight) and at least two Final Fours for six straight decades, all while averaging more wins per season played (20.7) than any other program in college basketball. In 2012, ESPN ranked North Carolina No. 1 on its list of the 50 most successful programs of the past fifty yearsNorth Carolina's six national championships are third-most all-time, behind UCLA (11) and Kentucky (8).
UNC has also won eighteen Atlantic Coast Conference tournament (ACC) titles, thirty-three ACC regular season titles, and has appeared in a record twenty-one NCAA Tournament Final Fours. The program has produced many notable players who went on to play in the NBA, including four of ESPN's top 74 players of all-time: Michael Jordan, James Worthy, Vince Carter, and Bob McAdoo North Carolina has been ranked in the top 25 of the AP Poll an all-time record 927 weeks, has beaten AP No. 1 ranked teams a record fourteen times, has the most 25-win seasons with 38, and has the most consecutive top-three ACC regular season finishes with 37. North Carolina Football has ended the season ranked in the top 25 of the AP Poll 51 times and in the top 25 of the Coaches' Poll 53 times. Furthermore, the Tar Heels have finished the season ranked No. 1 in the AP Poll six times and ranked No. 1 in Coaches' Poll seven times. North Carolina has played in 37 bowl games in its history and won three Southern Conference championships and five Atlantic Coast Conference titles.Thirty Tar Heel players have been honored as first-team All-Americas on 38 occasions. Carolina had 32 All-Southern Conference selections when it played in that league until 1952 and since joining the ACC in 1953, has had 174 first-team All-ACC choices. [4] Since joining the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1953, the team has won five conference championships, with the most recent title coming in 1980. One very important contribution to the game of football by Carolina is the modern use of the forward pass; they were the first college team to use the play in 1895. Bob Quincy notes in his 1973 book They Made the Bell Tower Chime John Heisman, a noted historian, wrote 30 years later that, indeed, the Tar Heels had given birth to the forward pass against the Bulldogs (UGA).
It was conceived to break a scoreless deadlock and give UNC a 6-0 win. The Tar Heels were in a punting situation and a Georgia rush seemed destined to block the ball. The punter, with an impromptu dash to his right, tossed the ball and it was caught by George Stephens, who ran 70 yards for a touchdown. While not a consistent football powerhouse, the Carolina football program has had intermittent success and has featured a number of players who have gone on to play in the National Football League, including Lawrence Taylor, Charlie Justice, Chris Hanburger, Ken Willard, Don McCauley, William Fuller, Harris Barton, Jeff Saturday, Alge Crumpler, Willie Parker, Greg Ellis, Dré Bly, Julius Peppers, Hakeem Nicks, T. Yates, Mitch Trubisky, and Sam Howell.