Best of CASE District III Award
 

Institution: The University of North Carolina General Alumni Association

Title of entry: Shot by Shot

About this entry: Many of ESPN’s most popular 30 for 30 documentaries are the result of Executive Producer John Dahl '86. Dahl learned his craft while a student at UNC, which was fed by a burning passion for college basketball that he nurtured as a young boy playing hoops in his driveway in Maryland.

The Review took a creative way to tell Dahl’s story in “Shot by Shot.” We were given exclusive access to Dahl’s latest project, The Tournament: A History of ACC Men’s Basketball, which was then an upcoming, 10-episode documentary on the history of the Atlantic Coast Conference’s men’s basketball tournament, the first of its kind. For five weeks leading up to the 2022 ACC basketball tournament, the Review posted video clips from episodes days before they aired on ESPN. Each clip was accompanied by a comment from Dahl, who offered behind-the-scenes anecdotes about interviewing some of the most famous basketball players in Carolina’s storied history. The webpage also provided a trailer for the documentary. The package concluded with a profile of Dahl in the Carolina Alumni Review magazine. The article provides QR codes to the video clips on the Review's website, which readers can access with their cell phones while sitting on their couches.

The package is more than a history of ACC basketball; it takes us through American history itself and how coaches and the game can change lives. We invite you to watch the clip of UNC guard Shammond Williams as an illustration of that.