‘The Big E made a big difference in this world’: Friends and colleagues remember former UNC center Eric Montross

It’s one of those images that is etched in the memory of Atlantic Coast Conference men’s basketball.

There was Eric Montross – the 7-foot center from North Carolina with the close-cropped haircut, stern facial expression – with blood flowing from his forehead and just under his left eye. They were scars earned from a 1992 battle with then-top-ranked and unbeaten Duke at the Dean E. Smith Center. The Tar Heels prevailed that night, thanks in part to, quite literally, the huge presence of Montross in the middle.

He would go on to an NBA career with the Boston Celtics, who drafted him. He played in the league until 2002.

Montross would become a color analyst for the Tar Heel Sports Network, but he had to leave the job in March after he was diagnosed with cancer. On Sunday, his family announced he had died at age 52.

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“To know Eric was to be his friend, and the family knows that the ripples from the generous, thoughtful way that he lived his life will continue in the lives of the many people he touched with his deep, sincere kindness,” the Montross family said in a statement issued through Carolina Basketball on its X page, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Montross’ death is the second one involving the UNC basketball program within six weeks. Walter Davis, who helped the Tar Heels reach the Final Four in 1977 after winning an Olympic gold medal the previous year, died on Nov. 2. He was 69, and the uncle of current Carolina men’s basketball coach Hubert Davis. Montross was a teammate of the coach.

“I am devastated. Eric was my friend. He was my teammate,” Davis said in a statement. “Eric loved being a husband. He loved being a dad. He loved being a Tar Heel and he loved Carolina basketball. I miss him.”

In the fall of 1993, during his senior year at North Carolina, Montross was a regular visitor to pediatrics patients at what is now UNC Hospitals. He became friends with one of them, Jason Clark, a 15-year-old cancer patient.

According to an account posted on the UNC Health website, Clark gave Montross a three-page list of suggestions to make what was then a planned children’s hospital more child and teen friendly.

The teenager died after his nine-month fight with cancer, but Montross and his wife, Laura, alongside the Clark family, took action to make sure that the list was brought to reality.

In the summer of 1995, the families started the Eric Montross Father’s Day Basketball Camp to honor Jason and support the new hospital.

Reaction to the news of Montross’ death was widespread through the college basketball community.

“CANCER is so VICIOUS,” wrote ESPN analyst Dick Vitale on X. Vitale recently completed treatment for throat cancer. “Just took away one of the nicest guys I have ever met on my basketball journey with ESPN. Only 52 years old and a terrific person.”

Another ESPN analyst, Jay Bilas, expressed his feelings on X as well.

“Eric Montross was the nicest, kindest person one could ever know,” Bilas wrote. “A great player and champion, husband, father, friend, and a truly wonderful, beautiful soul.”

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a UNC alum, added his condolences.

“So very sad to hear of the loss of Eric Montross, whose contributions to the UNC community and our state went far beyond his championship basketball skills,” Cooper wrote. “The Big E made a big difference in this world.”

Ron Stutts, retired morning man at WCHL-AM in Chapel Hill, often crossed paths with Montross at special events in Chapel Hill.

“It’s a cruel irony that that’s what ends up getting him,” Stutts said. “He was a great player, obviously, a really excellent radio analyst, but he was even a better person. I think anybody who ever met him would say that he was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”

Stutts shared the sentiment that a lot of Tar Heels fans held, that Montross would return to take his courtside seat at the Smith Center.

“I always thought that he would beat it,” he said. “I think every Carolina fan probably felt that, that Eric would recover from this, and I was really stung this morning to hear that he passed away.”

Wes Durham remembers how Montross came to help his father, legendary Tar Heel play-by-play Woody Durham, after he had retired and soon lost the ability to communicate. It was the elder Durham who suggested that Montross take the analyst’s role held for a year by Mick Mixon, who went on to become play-by-play man for the Carolina Panthers.

“He was a guy who understood my dad was battling, but yet had enough respect and loyalty to my dad to make sure that he kept him in the best light,” Wes Durham said. “And when my dad lost the ability to communicate, Eric and Jones (Angell, successor to Woody Durham) were just sensational. Those guys were at the forefront of making sure that we put the right message out there.”

Montross also helped bring former players back to campus for philanthropic work, Wes Durham said, adding that Montross graciously agreed to talk to a kindergarten class which included his twins in an Atlanta school just before he was to go on air for a game.

“It makes you think—what he does and his life—makes you think of your own accountability to the way you impact others,” Durham said, “And we don’t get to say that very much, and we should.”

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