BURLINGTON - March Madness equates to nail-biting athletic theater for any basketball fan, and Reid Suggs was no exception. Like so many others, he had his team, the Carolina Tar Heels. Unlike the rest, though, he had his memories.

Flash back nearly seven decades to the late 1930s and early 1940s, especially 1941, when his Tar Heels played in their first NCAA Tournament, and he, Reid Suggs, wore his number emblazoned on his jersey.

Fast forward 67 years. Time had been nothing but kind to the Carolina team. Its members racked up titles and transitioned from the old Tin Can, the tin-sheathed frame structure where they played, to a stadium seating thousands of raucous fans in row upon row of Carolina blue seats.

This year, like so many before, they reached the NCAA tournament.

This year, Reid Suggs was too sick to really follow along.

Days before Carolina was to face Mount St. Mary's, Reid Suggs' son, Vernon, told him the tournament was about to start. Reid Suggs must have understood because he opened his eyes and squeezed his son's hand. "It was the last time he really responded to anything," Vernon Suggs said.

The next day he slipped into a coma. The following day, March 20, he died of complications of pneumonia. He was 87.

Reid Suggs was born in Randolph County, the 13th child of parents who died when he was 12. As a teenager, he was sent to The Children's Home in Winston-Salem.

In high school, he played basketball, baseball and football. When he arrived in Chapel Hill as a freshman, he joined the 1939 team as a freshman, playing for three years until he enlisted in the Navy.

He wasn't a star player, often warming the bench when the opening buzzer sounded, but he still played, even in the NCAA Tournament.

Suggs was a solid, steady shooter, a 6-foot guard who shunned risks. He preferred to pass the ball, then keep it out of the other team's reach.

"He was what you'd call a great help to the team," said his teammate, Bobby Gersten, now 87.

Carolina faced Dartmouth in the 1941 Eastern Regional. Suggs and Gersten took turns guarding Dartmouth's All-America forward. North Carolina lost, and when the game ended, the Tar Heels headed back to Chapel Hill for good.

The Tar Heels were 19-9 that season and 14-1 in the Southern Conference, the ACC's predecessor. George Glamack was the Tar Heels' ace in the hole back then. He was known as the Blind Bomber, but Gersten says he wasn't really all that blind.

After he was discharged from the Navy, Suggs married a college classmate. They had a daughter in the early 1950s who died within days. After that trauma, they decided to adopt. They raised two sons, adopting them from the same agency that oversees the group home where Suggs used to live.

For a while, the family called Chapel Hill home. They attended basketball games as often as they could. Suggs was glad that black players had joined the team in contrast to his all-white days so long ago. It was good for the game and good for society, he told his boys. He also taught them about the Four Corners, the Tar Heels' famous stall formation.

"We always joked about him teaching us to butter our toast on all four corners because of that," said his son Bobby Suggs.

Suggs worked as a teacher, a principal and an administrator in the state Department of Correction. He and his wife, Jane, moved to Southern Pines, to Sanford and ultimately to a Burlington retirement community.

A few years ago, the surviving members of the 1941 team were invited to Chapel Hill for a banner-hanging ceremony recognizing the school's inaugural NCAA appearance. Suggs, Gersten and another teammate showed up. White-haired, they descended the stairs and stood in the middle of the shellacked floor at halftime. Coach Roy Williams came over to hug them. The students roared.

Much had changed since the three octogenarians donned the school's uniform.

When Suggs played, the game was different. Scoring hovered in the 40s and 50s, a hallmark of a slow, deliberate game that bears scant resemblance to today's heart-thumping, split-second play. There were no fast breaks, no rushing up the floor to sink a basket, no three-pointers arcing through the air.

Suggs and Gersten kept in touch over the years. They reveled in the adrenaline of the new style of play even as they recalled how they'd meticulously let fly their two-handed set shots. Now one-handed shooting is the way to go. They regretted they hadn't played a similar game.

"We talked about how we wished we could have done the fast break because we were both fast and loved to run," Gersten said.

A few years ago, Suggs traveled to New York for a reunion with Gersten and a few other teammates. They met at a summer camp run by Gersten's family. Suggs was not well by then, but he shot some baskets with his old buddies, for old time's sake.

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Reid Suggs is survived by his wife, Jane, a brother, two sons and four grandchildren.