If one could create the perfect Georgetown recruit of the 1960's, it might have been Bobby Lewis.

Born and raised in Washington, DC, Lewis learned basketball at the Boys Club at Georgetown's Jelleff Recreation Center, while his mother worked at the University. He attended St. John's College HS, seven miles north of the campus, where the Cadets quickly became one of the two best teams in the city, often playing games before large crowds at McDonough Gymnasium. Georgetown fans knew all about him, but many were surprised when he didn't end up there.

Standing just 6-3, Lewis was dominant on both ends of the court in high school. As a junior at St. John's, he rang up 27 points and 16 rebounds in an upset of DeMatha, placing St. John's atop the local top 25. A 29 point output against the George Washington freshman team was secondary to an epic matchup with the 15-2 Georgetown freshman team in 1962, where Lewis went for 40 and Georgetown freshman Jim Barry answered with 42 in a 90-87 Georgetown win at McDonough Gym. He finished as a runner up to DeMatha's John Austin and Spingarn's Dave Bing for DC Player of the Year honors in 1962.

With Austin and Bing having moved on to Boston College and Syracuse, respectively, Lewis was the star of the 1962-63 prep scene in Washington. He scored 40 points against Archbishop Carroll in January, 1963 and nearly matched it in a 38 point, 25 rebound effort versus James Monroe. On Feb. 16, he returned to McDonough to face the Georgetown freshmen. Held to nine points at halftime, he scored an incredible 36 of the Cadets' 40 second half points to upset the Hoyas, 103-90. At the Knights of Columbus Invitational, held at McDonough after the high school regular season, he scored 68 points and 53 rebounds over three games and was named tournament MVP even as DeMatha claimed the team title. Little wonder that a columnist at the HOYA suggested that "one of most earnest spectators at the tourney is Coach Tom O'Keefe, who will be alert to contact several of the better players, notably Bob Lewis of St. John's. Lewis does everything an All-American should and the prospect of watching him perform with Jim Barry a couple of seasons hence is too tantalizing to resist."

The 1963 D.C. Player of the Year and a Parade All-America selection, Lewis was invited to CBS' Ed Sullivan Show, appearing next to Lew Alcindor among the nation's five best high school players of the season. But Bobby Lewis was no secret to basketball coaches nationwide. Lewis' signing with North Carolina in 1963 was just one of a number of setbacks in Tom O'Keefe's attempts to recruit local talent to Georgetown.

"It's not a matter of not trying," O'Keefe said in a 1965 interview. "[Davidson's Fred] Hetzel, why do you think we let him use our training room every day for all these years? And Lewis, I went after that boy for three years. I saw his mother over at the medical bookstore, three, four times every week....They have to want to come, too."

For as good as Bobby Lewis was in high school, his college play was even better. As a freshman at UNC, the 6-3 guard shredded the reserve team record books, averaging 37.4 points per game on 64 percent shooting from the field. North Carolina State coach Press Maravich went so far as to call Lewis the best player in the ACC...as a freshman.

He joined the varsity for the 1964-65 season, where in just his fourth game Lewis scored 23 to lead UNC past #11 Kentucky for Dean Smith's first ever win over a ranked opponent. Lewis averaged 21 points per game playing alongside Billy Cunningham in the year where Smith turned the Tar Heels into winners, beginning a three decade run of dominance in the ACC.

The reputation grew further in 1966. In a five game stretch early in the season, Lewis scored 34 vs. William and Mary, 30 at Ohio State, 43 vs. Richmond, 33 at Vanderbilt, and a whopping 49 vs. Florida State, the latter of which remains a single game Carolina record.

But Bobby Lewis wasn't doing it alone. He was joined by in the backcourt by 6-4 sophomore Larry Miller, forming one of the dominant guard tandems in the nation. Nicknamed the "L&M Boys" by a local sportswriter (a nod to Liggett & Myers, one of UNC's television sponsors), Lewis and Miller combined to average of 48.3 points per game between them in 1965-66, still a record for any two UNC players in the same season. Of that total, Lewis averaged 27.4 points, with 10 games of 33 or more, 23 games over 20 points in a 27 game schedule, and at one point was less than a half point short of the nation's scoring title, earning All-ACC and Helms Foundation All-America recognition.

In 1967, North Carolina entered the Top 10 for the first time under coach Smith, winning its first ACC title since 1957. Lewis' 31 points in the NCAA regional final against Boston College led the Tar Heels to its first Final Four in ten years, but a season low 11 points from Lewis allowed Dayton to sneak past UNC in the semifinal.

"We played three straight games to get into the tournament, then you played two in the East Regional and then you played in the Final Four," said Miller in a 2018 interview. "We probably ran out of steam, and we had no experience as far as being in the big game." For the season, Lewis repeated All-ACC and All-America recognition, while Miller was named ACC Player of the Year.

A fourth round NBA Draft selection by the San Francisco Warriors, Lewis played four seasons in the NBA but remains best remembered as the catalyst for the first of 11 Final Four teams under Dean Smith. His career average remains third-all time in UNC history, his 740 points as a junior is fourth best all time. His 17 30+ point games have not been matched by a single Tar Heel since. As a show of the school's recognition, Bobby Lewis' #22 jersey hangs in the rafters of the Dean Smith Center as a two time All-American.

"Bobby Lewis was a dream-maker, and part of the famous L&M Boys who together with the three-peat class of 1969 helped save Smith's job and catapult him to a Hall of Fame coaching career," wrote veteran UNC reporter Art Chansky in 2018. Lewis' feats in Carolina blue are only a brief glimpse to what he might have done in Georgetown's blue and gray.